Sinead Morrissey

Sinéad Morrissey (born 1972 in Portadown, County Armagh) is a poet from Northern Ireland.cite web|url=http://www.lannan.org/lf/bios/detail/sinead-morrissey |title=Detailed Biographical Information: Sinéad Morrissey |publisher=Lannan Foundation |accessdate=2008-07-22]

Raised in Belfast, she was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where she took BA and PhD degrees, and won the Patrick Kavanagh Award in 1990. She has published three collections of poetry, all with Carcanet Press: "There Was Fire in Vancouver" (1996), "Between Here and There" (2001), and "The State of the Prisons" (2005), the last two of which were shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. After periods living in Japan and New Zealand she now lives in Belfast, where she has been writer-in-residence at Queen's University, Belfast and currently lectures. Morrissey has a distinctive enrapt style of delivery. She learns her poems by heart and presents them with a crystal sharp vocal intensity that has the power to astonish an audience.Fact|date=July 2008

In November 2007, Sinéad Morrissey was a recipient of a Lannan Foundation Fellowship for "distinctive literary merit and for demonstrating potential for continued outstanding work". Morrissey's poem "Through the Square Window" won first prize in the 2007 British National Poetry Competition.cite web|url=http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/info/news/mediaroom/npcwinner07/ |title=The Poetry Society (The Winner of the National Poetry Competition 2007) |publisher=The Poetry Society |accessdate=2008-07-23] quote
:In my dream the dead have arrived:to wash the windows of my house.:There are no blinds to shut them out with. :The clouds above the Lough are stacked:like the clouds are stacked above Delft.:They have the glutted look of clouds over water. :The heads of the dead are huge. I wonder:if it’s my son they’re after, his:effortless breath, his ribbon of years ─ :but he sleeps on unregarded in his cot,:inured, it would seem, quite naturally:to the sluicing and battering and pairing back of glass

:that delivers this shining exterior …
excerpt from "Through the Square Window"cite web|url=http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/competitions/npc/firstprize/ |title=The Poetry Society (Through the Square Window) |publisher=The Poetry Society |accessdate=2008-07-23]

ee also

*List of Northern Irish writers

References

External links

*cite journal |title=Sinéad Morrissey in interview with Declan Meade |last=Meade |first=Declan |url=http://www.stingingfly.org/issue14/morrissey.html |year=2002-2003 |month=Winter |volume=1 |issue=14 |accessdate=2008-08-17 |journal=The Stinging Fly
*cite web|title=Poetry International Web - Sinead Morrissey |last=McConnell |first=Gail |url=http://ireland.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=7518&x=1 |accessdate=2008-08-05 |publisher=Poetry International Web Foundation Critical summary by McConnell and links to 5 poems.