Longford’s Vona Groarke appointed as Ireland Professor of Poetry

Longford’s Vona Groarke is set to become the tenth Ireland Professor of Poetry and President Michael D. Higgins an event last Thursday, September 11 at Áras an Uachtaráin to mark the appointment.

Speaking at the event, President Higgins said, “In accepting this appointment, Vona Groarke joins a distinguished line of poets who have held this most prestigious of posts, each making their own profound contribution to the role and, in so doing, enriching the cultural and imaginative life of our nation.

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“Born in Mostrim, Vona has been one of the most compelling poetic voices of her generation.

“Through her 15 books, including nine collections of poetry, from ‘Shale’ in 1994 to ‘Infinity Pool’ in 2025, and her wonderful story ‘Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O’Hara’ – a complex dialogue with her late grandmother’s life as an immigrant in New York – she has shaped a body of work remarkable for its lyric beauty and its acute and attentive gaze upon the world around us.

“Each of these collections has marked a deepening and widening of her work, at once intimate and expansive, attentive to the smallest details of daily life yet alive to the largest questions of history, identity and belonging.

“Vona’s work as a translator has also been of immense value, renewing the voices of earlier times for a new generation of readers. Her versions of ‘Lament for Art O'Leary’ (Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire) and ‘The Lament of the Hag of Beare’ have carried into our own moment the profound sorrow and wisdom of the past, ensuring that our great poetic inheritance continues to live and speak.

“Alongside this remarkable body of creative work, Vona has been tireless in her service to the wider community of poetry. An esteemed member of Aosdána since 2010, Vona has held many important roles, including Senior Lecturer in Poetry at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, Poet in Residence with the Yeats Society in Sligo, and Writer in Residence at St John’s College, Cambridge. In all of these roles she has embodied that essential generosity of the poet: a willingness not only to give her own voice, but to foster and encourage the voices of others.

“In Vona’s poems, with their elegance and clarity, we are witness to a rigour of form, precision and resonance of language, and complexity of feeling. She will, I know, bring to the Professorship of Poetry, her extraordinary artistry, along with her intellectual curiosity and profound commitment to the craft of poetry.”

Vona Groarke’s term as Ireland Professor of Poetry runs from September 2025 to November 2028, taking over from the previous holder Professor Paul Muldoon.

During their tenure the Ireland Professor of Poetry is associated for one year with each of the three universities and resides for a period of approximately eight weeks at each. While in residence, the poet engages with students through a series of workshops and readings, performs outreach work and makes one formal presentation, usually in the form of a lecture.

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The Ireland Chair of Poetry Trust was established in 1998 following the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Seamus Heaney. It was felt that this honour should be marked by choosing, every three years, a poet of honour and distinction to hold the Ireland Chair of Poetry. The Chair is supported by Queens University Belfast, Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin, as well as by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.