Vona Groarke, 'A Lonely Began: The Poem Alone and the Poem in Company'

The Ireland Chair of Poetry is delighted to announce the Spring Series for 2026 by the newly appointed Ireland Professor of Poetry, Vona Groarke. Vona Groarke will begin her three-year tenure (2025–2028) in residence at Trinity College Dublin for the Spring Semester, commencing at the end of January.

As part of the series, Vona Groarke will deliver a public lecture entitled ‘A Lonely Began: The Poem Alone and the Poem in Company’, which will take place in the Edmund Burke Theatre, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin, on Thursday 26th February at 7.30pm. Advance booking is essential; please reserve your place here.

NB: Please note the change in venue, this was in Uí Chadhain Theatre and this has now been changed to the Edmund Burke Theatre.

This lecture, the first by Vona Groarke in her role as Ireland Professor of Poetry, will “look at the relationship between poets, poems and loneliness. Often perceived as a solitary figure, sometimes embracing and sometimes resisting that aloneness, poets seem magnetically drawn to the subject of loneliness. This lecture will think about how poets write about it, and have their poems acknowledge, embody or defy that intrinsic loneliness.”

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