Prof. John McAuliffe
Reader in Modern Literature and Creative Writing, and Co-Director of the Centre
Centre co-director John McAuliffe's main interests are in poetry, creative writing, contemporary literature and Irish Studies, and he is interested in supervising research in any of these areas.
He published his first collection of poems, A Better Life (Gallery), in 2002, which received a major bursary from the Irish Arts Council / An Comhairle Ealaion and was shortlisted for the Forward First Collection Award. His second collection Next Door was published in June 2007, and he has also published poems in the TLS, Poetry Ireland Review, Metre, PN Review, Poetry London and Poetry Review.
John writes essays and reviews of contemporary poetry for journals and newspapers in Ireland and the UK, including reviews and short essays on W.B. Yeats, Paul Muldoon, Derek Mahon, Cesare Pavese, Conor O'Callaghan, David Harsent, Peter Sirr, Thomas McCarthy, Mark Doty, contemporary British poetry and Patrick Kavanagh. He has also published critical essays on post-colonial literatures, Victorian travel writing and twentieth-century Irish poetry and fiction.
He previously taught at a number of Irish universities and The Open University, as well as at creative writing workshops at UCD and Birkbeck College and residential courses including the Aran Islands Festival, the Cuirt Festival and the Arvon Foundation.
He was programme director of Ireland's biggest poetry festival Poetry Now at Dun Laoghaire until 2007 and is a contributing editor to the journal Metre. He is also a member of the Irish and Scottish Studies Research Group and co-ordinates and chairs the Irish Times Poetry Now Award, the only award of its kind which awards 5000 Euros to the best collection of poems published by an Irish poet each year.
Poems available online
- Read 'Diversion', 'The Weather', and 'The Reconstruction' on Eire Ireland Muse
- Read 'Context' on AGNI Online
To contact John McAuliffe please email:
John's poetry books
The Way In
These poems tell stories and find images for ‘soul-making’ in the everyday world of sheds, swimming pools, concert halls, parks, ferry ports.
Of All Places
McAuliffe's 2011 book re-enters Yeats’s west of Ireland and visits America’s West Coast.
Next Door
John's second book moves between the ‘silvery dark’ outskirts of Irish towns and English cities ‘where the beautiful / suburbs climb and sprawl’.
A Better Life
Published by The Gallery Press in 2002, A Better Life was John's first book.