Vona Groarke
Image Credit: Steve Pyke
Ireland Professor of Poetry
Writer in Residence
St John's College, Cambridge
NEWS
Vona Groarke inaugurated as the new
Ireland Professor of Poetry by
former President Michael D. Higgins
at Áras an Uachtaráin, 11th September 2025
Vona Groarke inaugurated as the new Ireland Professor of Poetry by President Michael D. Higgins at Áras an Uachtaráin, 11th September 2025
EVENTS
Saturday October 10th @ 2:00pm: In Conversation with Prof Margaret Kelleher to launch her new biography of Padraic and Mary Colum, Lives and the Dream.
Granard Community Library (as part of the 2026 Padraic Colum Gathering, which runs from 11am-4pm). Free to attend.
Wednesday October 15th @ 7:30pm: Poetry Reading with 'So Say So', Wexford Arts Centre. Click here to book online.
Saturday October 17th @ 7:45pm: Poetry Reading with 'Circling the Square', Source Arts Centre, Thurles. Click here for tickets.
Tuesday October 27th @ 5:00pm: Cambridge Group for Irish Studies: In Conversation with Eric Falci, editor of the just-published Cambridge History of Irish Poetry. In person at Magdalene College, Cambridge & online via Zoom.
November 20-22nd: PoetryFest at Irish Arts Centre, New York. A weekend of Irish and U.S. poetry curated by Vona Groarke. Click here for further information.
BOOKS
About
Vona Groarke has published fourteen books with The Gallery Press, including nine original poetry collections, and two translations from the Irish, most recently Woman of Winter (2023), a version of the much-loved Irish poem usually known in English as, 'The Lament of the Hag of Beare'. She published Hereafter: the Telling Life of Ellen O'Hara with New York University Press (2022). A Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library 2018-19; former editor of Poetry Ireland Review and selector for the UK's Poetry Book Society, she has taught at the University of Manchester since 2007. She is the current Writer in Residence at St John's College, Cambridge, and otherwise lives in Co. Sligo in the West of Ireland.
