Seamus Heaney Home

‘An Ear to the Line’: Poetry Reading with Matthew Rice & Gail McConnell

Chaired by Maureen Boyle
We are delighted to present an afternoon of poetry in the company of three poets who have all released new and debut collections this year.

Matthew Rice was born in Belfast. Poems have appeared
in Poetry Ireland Review, Asheville Poetry Review, The Dark Horse, The
Tangerine, and in The Best New British and Irish Poets 2017. He was
awarded runner-up for the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing 2017, and was
selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series the same year. His debut
collection of poems, The Last Weather Observer, was published in 2021
with Summer Palace Press.

Gail McConnell is Senior Lecturer in English at Queen’s
University Belfast and she publishes poetry and literary criticism. She is the
author of The Sun is Open (Penned in the Margins, September 2021), Northern
Irish Poetry and Theology (Palgrave, 2014) and two poetry pamphlets: Fothermather
(Ink Sweat & Tears, 2019) and Fourteen (Green Bottle Press, 2018).
Gail’s writing interests include violence, creatureliness, queerness and the
possibilities and politics of language and form.

*Please note that Victoria Kennefick was scheduled to read at this event, but is now unable to take part.