Ireland Chair of Poetry
The Ireland Chair of Poetry Trust was set up in 1998 following the award of the Nobel Prize of Literature to Seamus Heaney and is jointly held between Queen’s University Belfast, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
Every three years a poet of honour and distinction is chosen to represent the Chair as Ireland’s Professor of Poetry. During their tenure the holder spends a year attached to each of the three universities and resides for a period of approximately eight weeks at each. While in residence, the poet gives informal workshops or readings, spends time working with students and performing outreach work and makes one formal presentation a year, usually in the form of a lecture.
Ireland Chair of Poetry at Queen's
Professor Frank Ormsby
Frank Ormsby was born in 1947 in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. He was educated at St. Michael’s College and Queen’s University Belfast. His poetry collections include Ripe for Company (1971), A Store of Candles (1977), A Northern Spring (1986), The Ghost Train (1995), Fireflies (2009), Goat’s Milk: New and Selected Poems (2015), The Darkness of Snow (2017). He was editor of The Honest Ulsterman from 1969 – 1989, editor of Poetry Ireland Review, and Head of English at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution from 1976 – 2010. He is a recipient of the Cultural Traditions Award, the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award, and was appointed the Ireland Chair of Poetry in 2019.
17 May, 2021
The Ireland Chair of Poetry Trust and the Seamus Heaney Centre are delighted to present 'The Honest Ulsterman Revisited', a lecture by Professor Frank Ormsby.