Still Hearing You, Loud and Clear

Vona Groarke is the author of fourteen books, including eight poetry collections with Gallery Books (most recently, Link: Poet and World, 2021, and Double Negative, 2019). Her version of the ninth century Irish poem known as ‘The Lament of the Hag of Beare’ was published in 2023 as Woman of Winter, with illustrations by Isobel Nolan. A Cullman Center Fellow at New York Public Library 2018-19, her research there led to Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O’Hara, a multi-genre account of the lives of Irish women domestic servants in late nineteenth century New York, (New York University Press, 2022). Hereafter has been shortlisted for the RIA’s 2024 Michel Déon Prize. Her Selected Poems won the 2017 Pigott Prize for Best Irish Poetry Collection. Poet, essayist, reviewer and editor, her work has recently appeared in New York Review of Books, L.A. Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement and Poetry Review. She is the current Writer in Residence at St John’s College, Cambridge.

Mark Roper’s latest collection, Beyond Stillness, came out in October 2022. It was longlisted for the Laurel Prize and the Julie Suk Award. Bindweed, 2017, was shortlisted for The Irish Times Poetry Now Award. A Gather of Shadow, 2012, was also shortlisted for that Award and won the Michael Hartnett Award in 2014. With photographer Paddy Dwan, he has published The River Book, The Backstrand, and Comeragh and, in October 2023, Sea and Stone. Mark has written the librettos for two operas composed by the late Eric Sweeney. He was Editor of Poetry Irelandfor 1999. A book of short poems, From The Japanese Gardens, with images by the photographer Margaret O’Brien-Moran, will be published in early 2025.

“Mark Roper’s trademark spare, spiritual response to the natural world is intensified in Beyond Stillness.” Martina Evans, The Irish Times. 29/10/2022.

Host or Publisher Limerick Literary Festival