The Irish poet Moya Cannon will read her poetry on Monday, Oct. 23, from noon to 1 p.m., in the Bundy Reading Room in Avery Hall.
Moya has published five collections of poetry, her most recent being Keats Lives (2015) from Carcanet Press. Her poems reflect preoccupations with landscape and seascape, with archaeology, with music, with language itself and with our visceral attachment to the beauty of the earth. The work sings of deep connections – the impulse to ritual and pattern that, across centuries, defines us as human, a web of interdependences that continue to sustain the ‘gratuitous beauty’ of our endangered earth. Her previous collection, Hands, (Carcanet Press, 2011) was nominated for the 2012 Irish Times/Poetry Now Award. Earlier collections are Carrying the Songs (Carcanet Press 2,007); The Parchment Boat (Gallery Press, 1997) and Oar, (Salmon Press, Galway,1990; Poolbeg Press, Dublin, 1994; Gallery Press, Meath, 2,000). A bilingual Spanish/English seclection of her poems, Aves de Invierno, translated by the distinguished Argentinian poet, Jorge Fondebrider, was published by Editorial Pre-Textos, Valencia, Spain, October, 2015. She spent her childhood in Co. Donegal, lived in Galway for most of her adult life and now lives in Dublin. She was educated in Donegal, at University College, Dublin, where she studied History and Politics, and at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where she was awarded an M. Phil in International Relations. A winner of the Brendan Behan award and the O Shaughnessy Award, she has held numerous residencies in Ireland and abroad and was 2011 Heimbold Professor of Irish Studies at Villanova University, P.A..
