Alan Gillis
“Gillis is the dark star of contemporary Irish poetry, and a major talent.”
– Conor O’Callaghan, Poetry Magazine
Alan Gillis was born in Belfast. Since 2006, he has lived in Scotland, where he is Professor of Modern Poetry at The University of Edinburgh. His other books with Wake Forest University Press are The Readiness (2020) and Scapegoat and Other Poems (2016), which includes selections from his previous volumes published by The Gallery Press in Ireland: Scapegoat (2014), Here Comes the Night (2010), Hawks and Doves (2007), and Somebody, Somewhere (2004), which won the Strong Award for Best First Collection in Ireland. He has been shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award. In 2014, he was named a “Next Generation Poet” by the Poetry Book Society in the UK. As a critic, he is author of Irish Poetry of the 1930s (2005) and a contributor to Poetry’s Abracadabra: Essays on Michael Longley (2026), along with many other essays on contemporary Irish and Scottish poetry. He was editor of the Edinburgh Review (2010–2015) and co-edited, with Fran Brearton, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry (2012). He is currently editing The Cambridge Companion to Paul Muldoon.
Praise for Alan Gillis
“Gillis gives contemporary poetry a much-needed shot in the arm; poetic language is vivified, made stimulating and vital, in poems that leave the reader hanging on for dear life over every expertly-executed turn.”
– Maria Johnston, Poetry Ireland Review
“Gillis’s skillful modulation of tone and his aphoristic precision allow him to create moments that ring true to feeling and afterthought, articulating the complex emotional resonance of memory.”
– Moya Catherine Popa, Poetry
“Gillis’s … ability to take a hammer to polite pieties does not involve sacrificing the ability to write affectingly about how we live now.”
– John McAuliffe, The Irish Times
Comments are closed.