Vona Groarke

Vona Groarke is an Irish poet. From September 2025, she will be Ireland Professor of Poetry.

She has published fifteen books, including nine collections of poetry with the Gallery Press: Shale (1994), Other People's Houses (1999), Flight (2002), Juniper Street (2006), Spindrift (2009), X (2014), Double Negative (2019), Link : Poet and World (2021), and Infinity Pool (2025).^[1] She is also the author of a translation of the eighteenth-century Irish poem, Lament for Art O'Leary (Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire) (Gallery Books, 2008).^[2] and of Woman of Winter (2023), a version of the ninth-century Irish poem usually known as 'The Lament of the Hag of Beare', with illustrations by Isobel Nolan. Selected Poems was published in 2016 and won the Pigott Prize for Best Irish Poetry Collection. Her book-length essay on art frames and much else, Four Sides Full, was also published in 2016.

In 2022, New York University Press published Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O'Hara, an innovative, mixed-genre account of Irish women immigrants in late nineteenth-century New York, and their lives and work as domestic servants. With poetry, prose, history and images, Hereafter arose out of her time as a Fellow of the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, 2018–19.

A previous editor of Poetry Ireland Review (issues 113–120, with best-selling special issues on Seamus Heaney, W.B. Yeats and the Rising Generation of Irish poets), she has also been a Selector for the Poetry Book Society in the U.K., a judge of the Forward Prizes, the Pollard Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award, as well as a poetry reviewer for the Irish Times. Recent essays on poets and poetry have appeared in the L.A. Review of Books, The Poetry Review, P.N. Review, and Poetry Ireland Review.

Groarke has been a co-holder of the Heimbold Chair of Irish Studies at Villanova University and has taught at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. She has taught at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester since 2007.^[3]

In 2010, she was elected a member of Aosdána, the Irish academy of the arts.^{[citation needed]} She is the current Poet in Residence with the Yeats Society in Sligo,^{[citation needed]} and Writer in Residence at St John's College, Cambridge.^{[citation needed]} In 2025 she was appointed Ireland Professor of Poetry from September 2025 to November 2028.^[4]

Groarke's work has been recognized with awards including the Brendan Behan Memorial Award,^[5] the Hennessy Award,^[5] the Michael Hartnett Award,^[3] and the Strokestown International Poetry Award.^[5] Her volumes Spindrift, 'X', and 'Double Negative' have all been nominated for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award.^[1] Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O'Hara was shortlisted for the Irish Independent / Yeats Society Poetry Prize 2023. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2024.^[6]

• Shale. Gallery Press. 1995. ISBN 9781852351311.
• Other People's Houses. Gallery Press. 1999. ISBN 9781852352417.
• The Deserted Village. Gallery Press. 2002. ISBN 9781852353360. (Introduction to Oliver Goldsmith poem, with drawings by Blaise Drummond)
• Flight. Gallery Press. 2004. ISBN 9781852353087.
• Flight and Earlier Poems. Wake Forest University Press. 2004. ISBN 9781930630123.
• Juniper Street. Gallery Press. 2006. ISBN 9781930630284.
• Lament for Art O'Leary. Gallery Press. 2008. ISBN 9781852354459.
• Spindrift. Gallery Press. 2009. ISBN 9781852354763.
• X. Gallery Press. 2014. ISBN 9781852355760.
• Selected Poems. Gallery Press. 2016. ISBN 9781852356675.
• Four Sides Full. Gallery Press. 2016. ISBN 9781852356842.
• Double Negative. Gallery Press. 2019. ISBN 9781911337607.
• Link : Poet and World. Gallery Press. 2021. ISBN 9781911338222.
• Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O'Hara. NYU Press. 2021. ISBN 9781479835324.
• Woman of Winter. Gallery Press. 2023. ISBN 9781911338611.
• Infinity Pool. Gallery Press. 2025. ISBN 9781917371094.

• https://vonagroarke.com
• https://gallerypress.com/authors/g-to-l/vona-groarke/
• https://nyupress.org/9781479817528/hereafter/