I grew up in the 1970s on the North side of Dublin, stomping ground of U2 and Roddy Doyle. In 1977, Finglas-born Dermot Bolger founded Raven Arts Press to publish young, marginalized, working-class Irish writers who lacked a voice in the existing literary landscape. In 1982, I sent him some poems, typed on tissuey paper. I was 15, he was 22. Instantly supportive, he published them in the 1984 Raven Introductions anthology for emerging poets, and Raven went on to publish my first two solo collections: Penn (1986) and Home Movie Nights (1989).

I have since published five more collections, working with New Island Books and The Gallery Press in Ireland as well as publishers in Canada, the UK, and the US. In 2023, The Last Cold Day (The Gallery Press) won the inaugural Yeats Poetry Prize. This collection was published in the US by Wake Forest University Press as Some of the Things I've Seen.

After leaving Ireland in 1989, I lived for many years in the San Francisco Bay Area. I now make my home in New York's Hudson Valley where I work full time as a hospice nurse.

In December 2026, Almost A Boat, New and Selected Poems will be published by Wake Forest University Press.