Groarke, Vona

(1964- )

   Irish poet, born in Edgeworthstown, County Longford, she is the author of three collections of acclaimed poetry. Shale (Gallery Press, 1994) won the Brendan Behan Memorial Award in 1995. Other People's Houses (Gallery Press, 1999) was received by the Times Literary Supplement as "a remarkable achievement." Her third collection, Flight (Gallery Press, 2002) features three substantial poems that received important prizes: "The Way It Goes," the inaugural Strokestown Poetry Prize (1999); "Or to Come," the Stand Magazine International Poetry Prize (2000); and "Imperial Measure," the inaugural Davoren Hanna Prize (2001). She has been writer-in-residence with the National University at Galway and at Maynooth, County Kildare, and with Cavan County Council. She was co-holder of the Heimbold Chair in Irish Studies at Villanova University, Pennsylvania (spring 2004). Some of her other poems: "Indoors," "The Family Photograph," "The History of My Father's House," "The Riverbed," "Trousseau."

   Sources: Biography of Verona Groark (http://www.gallerypress.com/Authors/Vgroarke/vgroarke.html). Flight, by Vona Groarke, Book Review. The Gallery Press (http://www.gallerypress.com/Authors/Vgroarke/Books/vgf.html). Indoors, Poem by Vona Groarke: Virtual Writer (http://www.virtualwriter.net/vona-groarke.htm). Making for Planet Alice: New Women Poets. Maura Dooley, ed. Bloodaxe Books, 1997. Virtual Writer (http://www.virtualwriter.net/vona-groarke.htm).