Welcome
#WakeUpIrishPoetry
#WakeUpIrishPoetry
Kathy D'Arcy is a poet, workshop facilitator and and youth worker based in Cork city.
Originally trained as a doctor, she has recently completed a Creative Writing PhD in UCC, where she teaches with the Women's Studies MA programme and has taught Creative Writing undergraduate and adult education courses.
From 2012-2014 she was poet in residence with Tigh Fili Cultural Centre, Cork.
Her poetry collections are Encounter (Lapwing 2010) and The Wild Pupil (Bradshaw 2012).
She has performed her work at Irish and international literary and arts festivals as an individual artist and as part of the women's poetry collective Catch the Moon (with Jane Clarke, Shirley McClure, Tina Pisco and Anja Bakker).
In 2013 and again in 2021 she was awarded Arts Council Literature Bursaries, and in 2014 she was granted an Irish Research Council Postgraduate Award to support the further development of her work.
She is part of the Pro-Choice campaign, and was Chair of Cork Together for Yes in 2018.
In 2020 she founded #WakeUpIrishPoetry (http://www.wakeupirishpoetry.ie/), and later the umbrella organisation Safe Arts of Ireland (SAOI: http://www.safeartsofireland.ie/) which brings together many activist groups working for equality and against abuses in the Irish arts. Her chapter, ‘Challenging Abuses of Power in the Irish Arts,’ was published in Austerity and Irish Women’s Writing (edited by Flynn and Murphy) in 2021 (Routledge).
She is Autistic.
Order The Wild Pupil at https://www.paypal.me/KathyDArcy/12
and Encounter from Lapwing Press.
Praise for The Wild Pupil
"I have been struck by two things in particular…the absolute clarity of the style (use of language, handling of syntax, tone, achievement of shape)… and the fascinating concentration on a particular subject… the medical, physical, anatomical, surgical… something most people cannot handle."
- Maurice Harmon
D'Arcy's medical background comes into play in this, her second collection. Sundry body parts and medical complaints are handled in a pithy, witty style, balanced by a serious undercurrent and a clarity that rinses her words.”
- Jean O' Brien
“These are sensuous, tragic and edgy poems; and, without doubt, among the best poems I have read in years.”
- Thomas McCarthy
- Maurice Harmon
D'Arcy's medical background comes into play in this, her second collection. Sundry body parts and medical complaints are handled in a pithy, witty style, balanced by a serious undercurrent and a clarity that rinses her words.”
- Jean O' Brien
“These are sensuous, tragic and edgy poems; and, without doubt, among the best poems I have read in years.”
- Thomas McCarthy
Praise for Encounter
"D'Arcy seems to have arrived fully-fledged: she writes confidently, sometimes stridently, while never abandoning the sensitivity which gives her work its subtle, engaging quality - and which makes it so readable."
- Ian Parks
- Ian Parks
Plums (first published in Southword 2011)
They give me plums,
but I leave them aside;
I leave them alone
until
they fill and darken
and swell,
a sweetness this side of wrong,
and then
I accept them
one by slithering one
into my mouth,
licking the liquid flesh from the bones,
collecting the stones.
but I leave them aside;
I leave them alone
until
they fill and darken
and swell,
a sweetness this side of wrong,
and then
I accept them
one by slithering one
into my mouth,
licking the liquid flesh from the bones,
collecting the stones.