Irish poets
Poets whose books are substantially concerned with the natural world, land, ecology or environmental change.
Titles, publishers and years are checked against the publisher’s catalogue or the poet’s own site.
The editor’s own work is listed below under its own heading.
Earlier and established
Patrick Kavanagh (1904–1967) — Ploughman and Other Poems (1936) · The Great Hunger (1942) · Collected Poems (1964). Small-farm life and soil in Co. Monaghan; later, the Grand Canal in Dublin. Poetry Foundation
Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) — Death of a Naturalist (Faber, 1966) · Wintering Out (Faber, 1972) · North (Faber, 1975) · Sweeney Astray (1983) · Opened Ground (1998). Farmland, bog, water and archaeology. Nobel Prize in Literature, 1995. Estate · Nobel biography
Michael Longley (1939–2025) — Gorse Fires (1991) · The Weather in Japan (2000) · Snow Water (2004) · The Slain Birds (2022) · Ash Keys: New Selected Poems (Cape, 2024). Named flowers, birds and weather in one Co. Mayo townland. Poetry Foundation
Derek Mahon (1941–2020) — The Snow Party (1975); then from The Gallery Press: Harbour Lights (2005) · Life on Earth (2008) · An Autumn Wind (2010) · New Collected Poems (2011) · Against the Clock (2018). Life on Earth and Against the Clock each won the Irish Times Poetry Now Award. Sea, weather, waste and climate. The Gallery Press
Paula Meehan — Reading the Sky (1986) · Dharmakaya (2000) · Painting Rain (Carcanet, 2009), her sixth collection. Urban ground, development and water in Dublin. Poetry Foundation
Moya Cannon — Oar (Salmon, 1990) · Carrying the Songs (2007) · Donegal Tarantella (2019) · Collected Poems (2021), the later books from Carcanet. Geology, archaeology, the sea and migration. moyacannon.ie
Contemporary
Paddy Bushe — Hopkins on Skellig Michael (2001) · The Nitpicking of Cranes (2004) · On A Turning Wing (2016), all Dedalus Press; editor of Voices at the World’s Edge: Irish Poets on Skellig Michael (Dedalus, 2010). Atlantic islands, seabirds and coast. Writes in Irish and English. Dedalus Press
Grace Wells — When God Has Been Called Away to Greater Things (2010) · Fur (2015) · The Church of the Love of the World (2022), all Dedalus Press; editor of The Book of Life: Poems to Tide You Over (Dedalus Press, 2022), an anthology drawn from the press’s back catalogue. Animals, grasses and landscape; her publisher describes the work as moving “more deeply into eco-poetics and eco-feminism”. Dedalus Press
Jane Clarke — The River (Bloodaxe, 2015) · When the Tree Falls (2019) · A Change in the Air (2023) · Coracle (Bloodaxe, 2026). Editor of Windfall: Irish Nature Poems to Inspire and Connect (Hachette Books Ireland, 2023); with Catherine Cleary, The Hare’s Corner (New Island, 2025), made with the Burrenbeo Trust. Farming, rivers, trees. janeclarkepoetry.ie
Seán Hewitt — Tongues of Fire (Cape, 2020); winner of the Laurel Prize in 2021, awarded for a collection of nature or environmental poetry · Rapture’s Road (2024); a version of Buile Suibhne (2021); criticism: J. M. Synge: Nature, Politics, Modernism (OUP, 2021). Woodland, plants and myth. seanehewitt.com
Seán Lysaght — The Clare Island Survey (1991) · Erris (2002) · New Leaf (2022), all Gallery Press; prose: Eagle Country (Little Toller, 2018) · Wild Nephin (2020). Birds, Mayo and natural history; biographer of the naturalist Robert Lloyd Praeger. The Gallery Press · Little Toller
Mary O’Malley — The Knife in the Wave (1997) · Playing the Octopus (Carcanet, 2016), joint winner of the Michael Hartnett Poetry Award 2018 · The Shark Nursery (Carcanet, 2024). Connemara, the Atlantic, fishing and marine life. Carcanet
Patrick Deeley — Intimate Strangers (1986) · Names For Love (1990) · Turane: The Hidden Village (1995) · Decoding Samara (2000) · The Bones of Creation (2008) · Groundswell: New and Selected Poems (2013) · The End of the World (2019) · Keepsake (2024), all Dedalus Press. East Galway, the Shannon callows, birds and insects. A regular contributor to Channel. Dedalus Press
Annemarie Ní Churreáin — Bloodroot (Doire Press, 2017) · The Poison Glen (The Gallery Press, 2021) · Ghostgirl (2023) · Hymn to All the Restless Girls (The Gallery Press, 2025). Donegal bogland and place-lore. The Gallery Press
Jane Robinson — Journey to the Sleeping Whale (Salmon, 2018) · Island and Atoll (Salmon, 2023). Environmental change, islands, species. Salmon Poetry
Annette Skade — Holdfast (Channel, 2024), on the botanist Ellen Hutchins (1785–1815), who collected and identified seaweeds, lichens, mosses and liverworts around Bantry Bay in west Cork. Coast and marine plants. Channel · Ellen Hutchins
Siobhán Campbell — Cross-Talk (2009) · Heat Signature (2017), both Seren. Climate and relations with the non-human; in Empty House, 100 Poems to Save the Earth and Deep Time 2. siobhancampbell.com
Ciarán Hodgers — Cosmocartography (Burning Eye Books, 2018) · Solastalgia (Burning Eye Books). Climate change and environmental loss; the second takes its title from Glenn Albrecht’s term. Burning Eye Books
Ailbhe Darcy — Imaginary Menagerie (Bloodaxe, 2011) · Insistence (Bloodaxe, 2018), winner of the Pigott Poetry Prize and Wales Book of the Year. Domestic life, decay and climate. Bloodaxe
Alice Kinsella — co-editor, with Nessa O’Mahony, of Empty House: Poetry and Prose on the Climate Crisis (Doire Press, 2021). Doire Press
Nessa O’Mahony — co-editor of Empty House; five poetry collections, most recently The Hollow Woman on the Island (Salmon Poetry, 2019). Salmon Poetry
Editor’s own work
Simon James Brady — Winterkeen: Poems 1990–2026 (Five Bar Gate Press, 2026). Poems in Dark Mountain (Issue 1, Summer 2010) and The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy (Vol. 31, 2015). simonjamesbrady.com
Writing in Irish
English-language readers reach this work through translation, and the translators are frequently poets themselves. Bilingual editions from The Gallery Press, Cló Iar-Chonnacht and Coiscéim make most of it available with the Irish facing.
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill — writes in Irish; bilingual editions from The Gallery Press: Pharaoh’s Daughter (1990), translated by thirteen writers · The Astrakhan Cloak (1992), translated by Paul Muldoon · The Water Horse (1999), translated by Medbh McGuckian and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin · The Fifty Minute Mermaid (2007), translated by Paul Muldoon · Northern Lights (2018) · The Multilingual Mermaid (2021). Water, sea and the Kerry Gaeltacht. The Gallery Press
Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh — Péacadh (Coiscéim, 2008) · Tost agus Allagar (Coiscéim, 2016) · The Coast Road (Gallery Press, 2016), bilingual, with English translations by thirteen writers. Coast, Kerry, place names. In Irish. The Gallery Press
Simon Ó Faoláin — collections in Irish from Coiscéim. Corca Dhuibhne coast and archaeology. Coiscéim
Gabriel Rosenstock — poetry in Irish, including haiku, much of it published with his own English versions. Animals, weather, the seasonal. Cló Iar-Chonnacht
Biddy Jenkinson — writes in Irish, and has declined to allow her poetry to be translated into English.
Louis de Paor — poet and critic; published in bilingual editions with facing translations. Bloodaxe · Cló Iar-Chonnacht
Bríd Ní Mhóráin · Máire Dinny Wren · Jackie Mac Donncha · Proinsias Mac a’Bhaird · Pádhraic Ó Finneadha — Irish-language poets given sustained attention in Auge and O’Brien’s Contemporary Irish Poetry and the Climate Crisis (Routledge, 2021). → Routledge
Writing in both languages
Doireann Ní Ghríofa — To Star the Dark (Dedalus Press) · Clasp · Lies. Writes in Irish and English and translates her own work; included in A Different Eden. doireannnighriofa.com
Paddy Bushe publishes in Irish and English and is often his own translator — listed under Contemporary above.
Also named in the anthologies and criticism
Poets whose ecological work appears in Empty House, A Different Eden, Windfall or in Auge and O’Brien’s Contemporary Irish Poetry and the Climate Crisis:
Elizabeth Murtough · Ciaran Berry · Moyra Donaldson · Jessica Traynor · Breda Wall Ryan · Karen J. McDonnell · Ingrid Casey · Geraldine Mitchell · Mary Montague · Sinéad Morrissey · Stephen Sexton
Prose and place-writing
The context this work is read in: Tim Robinson, Stones of Aran and the Connemara trilogy · Michael Viney, the Irish Times Another Life columns · Manchán Magan, Thirty-Two Words for Field (2020) · Kerri ní Dochartaigh, Thin Places (2021) · Robert Lloyd Praeger, The Way That I Went (1937).
Last checked 2026-08-13