The Cúirt Poetry Sessions, in association with Poetry Ireland/ Éigse Éireann

Lorna is a poet, translator, researcher and editor. Born in Belfast, she now lives in Co Galway where she lectured in Hispanic Studies in The University of Galway until 2024. She has published five poetry collections, Song of the Forgotten Shulamite (Lapwing), Torching the Brown River, Witness Trees, Anchored and Lark Water (Salmon Poetry) and is launching her sixth collection, Throat Full of Feathers, in 2026. She has translated four volumes of Mexican and Spanish poetry and co-edited A Different Eden. Ecopoetry from Ireland and Galicia (Dedalus, 2021). Recent projects include research into multilingualism in Belfast and Galway, and collaborations in theatre and film. She is a co-founding editor of Macha Press.  

Joan is from Sligo. She divides her time between Tuam and Renvyle, County Galway. Her poetry collections are: The Wind Beyond the Wall (Story Line Press, 1990), A Walled Garden in Moylough (Story Line Press and Salmon Poetry, 1995), Winter in the Eye – New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry, 2003), Heather Island (Salmon Poetry, 2009; reprinted 2013 & 2016), and Unbridled Joy (Salmon Poetry). She was awarded an MA from University College, Dublin in 1997. Her anthology The White Page / An Bhileog Bhán – Twentieth-Century Irish Women Poets was published by Salmon in 1999 and is in its third reprint. She also edited and compiled the anthology The Watchful Heart – A New Generation of Irish Poets – Poems and Essays (Salmon, 2009). She was awarded an MA from University College, Dublin in 1997.

Her poetry is published widely in Ireland and abroad and has been broadcast, anthologised and translated into many languages. Her most recent CD is The Mountain Ash in Connemara – Selected Poems by Joan McBreen, read by the poet to new arrangements of Irish airs and original music by composer Glen Austin, performed by the RTÉ Contempo Quartet. Recorded and Mastered by Kenny Ralph, Sun Street Studios, Tuam, County Galway, 2014.

She has given readings and talks in many universities in the USA including Emory, Villanova, de Paul (Chicago), Lenoir Rhyne, N.C. and the University of Missouri – St. Louis.

Her papers are in The Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, in the Robert W. Woodruff Library of Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.

Nessa was born in Dublin. She has published six books of poetry – Bar Talk, (1999), Trapping a Ghost (2005), In Sight of Home (2009),  Her Father’s Daughter (2014), The Hollow Woman on the Island (2019) and Dodder Daughter (2026). She has edited journals and anthologies, including the Poetry Ireland Review Issue 138 tribute to Eavan Boland, and writes fiction and non-fiction. She is an associate lecturer with The Open University and has a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Wales, Bangor.