23 April,
Poetry / Workshop /
Vona Groarke: Writing On Things
Thursday, 23 April 2026, 11:00am
O’Donoghue Theatre, University of Galway / €65
Book NowA three-hour poetry workshop looking at objects, probing them for a possible haul of meaning, stories and significance. What do the objects we choose to keep with us, show off, carry with us from place to place, tell about us? And how can that telling be harnessed as a shortcut, a signpost, a start? There will be writing, plus thinking and talking about it. And there will be poems.
Vona has published fifteen books, including nine collections of poetry with The Gallery Press, most recently Infinity Pool, shortlisted for the 2025 T.S. Eliot Prize.
Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O’Hara – a poetic account of Irish women domestic servants in 1890s New York, which arose out of her time as a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library 2018-19, won the 2024 Michel Déon Award.
Her Selected Poems was awarded the 2017 Piggott Prize for Best Irish Poetry Collection. Recent poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry (Chicago), The Poetry Review, New York Review of Books, and the TLS.
A 2017 recipient of the Irish Literary Hall of Fame Award, she is a member of Aosdána, (Irish Academy of the Arts), and of the U.K.’s Royal Society of Literature.
Former editor of Poetry Ireland Review and poetry critic for The Irish Times, she is Writer in Residence at St John’s College, Cambridge (2022-26) and, in September 2025, was inaugurated by President Michael D. Higgins as the tenth Ireland Professor of Poetry (2025-28).
Event Location
O’Donoghue Theatre, University of Galway
Book Now Back to What's OnStep free venue with accessible toilet facilities. Accessible parking is located on campus in front of the Quadrangle Building four minutes from the venue. There is no Loop system. HEPA filter
will be in use for workshop spaces.
