I studied English and Philosophy at University College, Dublin and received both an MA and a PhD from the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen's University, Belfast. I taught creative writing at Queen's University, Belfast, for the Open University and at Edinburgh University for the SUISS program before coming to teach at Lancaster.
I won an Eric Gregory award in 2006, an Irish Arts Council Bursary in 2008 and have been shortlisted for a number of other prizes, such as the Crashaw Prize, the Bridport Prize and the Strong Award for Best First Collection. My first collection, The Salt Harvest, was published in 2011 with Seren.
My main areas of interest are the writing of poetry, Contemporary British and Irish poetry, the teaching of creative writing and the interrelation between modern European thought and contemporary poetics.