Friday, 15th May

No booking needed for library events. No physical tickets will be issued for theatre events; your name will be checked off a list at the door. Bookstall sales will be by card only (we cannot accept cash).

Access to all festival events:

Prebooked Poetry Introductions

2.30pm, Cork City Library | Free

The Prebooked Poetry Introductions involves six individuals who have yet to publish a short chapbook or full-length collection of poems.

Each poet, chosen through open submission, will read in a ten-minute reading slot, in many cases availing of their first opportunity to give a reading in a professional setting. 

Submissions are open at southword.subittable.com from 1st – 24th March. The line-up of chosen poets will be announced here in April.

Anna Gruver (Ukraine) & Xaime Martínez (Spain)

4.00pm, Cork City Library | Free

Anna Gruver (born in 1996) – Ukrainian writer, poetess, translator. Member of PEN Ukraine. Author of the poetry book За вашим запитом нічого не знайдено (Nothing was found for your request), 2019, the novels Її порожні місця (Her Empty Places), 2022, and Нерухомість (Stillness), 2025. Her poems have been translated into many languages. From English she translated the book by Katie Ferris /boysgirls/, 2021 and in collaboration with Vasyl Makhno Bohdan Zadura’s book Прості Істини (Simple Truths), 2024. Gruver translates essays and contemporary poetry from Ukrainian into Polish and vice versa. Winner of the Krakow UNESCO City of Literature Award (2025). Editor of the memorial book dedicated to Ihor Kozlovsky (2025).

Visit the poet's Versopolis page.

“The external ‘geographism’ captures feelings and visions — there’s a kind of breakdown of geodesic and gravitational laws … she believes that the collision, crossing, and blending of genres may be the only way forward today.” — Natalia Belchenko

Xaime Martínez (Uviéu, Spain, 1993) is the author of the Spanish-language poetry collections Fuego cruzado (Hiperión, 2014: Antonio Carvajal Young Poetry Prize) and Cuerpos perdidos en las morgues (Ultramarinos, 2018: Miguel Hernández National Young Poetry Prize). In Asturian, he has published the poetry collections Hibernia (Ediciones Saltadera, 2017) and Pábilun (Ultramarinos, 2025: translated into Spanish by Fruela Fernández). His poems have been translated into English, Swedish and Catalan. He is the author of the novel La fuercia (Hoja de Lata, 2021), also translated into Spanish: La fuerza (Malastierras, 2023). He is responsible for the Asturian literature label Cierva y Culebra Ediciones.

Buy Pábilun from Ultramarinos and visit the poet's Versopolis page.

“The vast array of perspectives offered by Xaime Martínez’s poetry places us before a literary line that is eclectic, mystical, and at times intentionally blurred. His writing is the manifestation of a continuous and voracious literary reflection.” — Guillermo Sánchez Ungidos

(Moderator) Clíona Ní Ríordáin is a critic, translator, and O’Donnell Chair of Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Among her publications are English Language Poets in University College Cork 1970-1980 (Palgrave, 2020). Her translations of Maylis Besserie’s Irish trilogy appeared from Lilliput. A personal anthology of Gerry Murphy's poems, Plus loin encore (co-translator Paul Bensimon) appeared with Circe in 2022. She has also edited four anthologies of Irish poetry.

Simon Maddrell (Isle of Man/UK) & Máighréad Medbh (Ireland)

7.00pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5

Simon Maddrell is a Manx poet, editor and educator whose work appears in Abridged, AMBIT, Gutter, Magma, Poetry Wales, SAND, Southword, Stand, The Gay & Lesbian Review, The London Magazine, The Moth, The Rialto, The Waxed Lemon, and Under the Radar. He has seven chapbooks: Throatbone (UnCollected Press, 2020); Queerfella (The Rialto, 2020); The Whole Island (Valley Press, 2023); Isle of Sin; a finger in derek jarman's mouth and Patient L1 (Polari Press, 2023, 2024, 2025); Jo & Ni Go Cruising (Septum Press, 2025). Simon's debut collection is lamping wild rabbits (Out-Spoken Press, 2026). Find them on social media @simonmaddrell

Buy lamping wild rabbits from the poet's website.

“A queer odyssey, an exquisite and arresting chronicle of the journey from shame to belonging. The skin of these poems are stretched thin and beneath them we glimpse a crystalline world of courage wrought from fear. Bold, surreal, surprising and elegant; this is a breathtaking debut.” — Joelle Taylor

Máighréad Medbh is a poet and prose writer with nine published books. Most of her poetry books are long-form sequences or narratives, and her ecological verse novel, Parvit of Agelast (Arlen House), was shortlisted for the 2017 Pigott Prize. After her first book from Blackstaff Press in 1990, she earned a reputation for dramatic presentation, performing widely in Ireland and abroad. She has written for radio, collaborated on award-winning art films, and has three novels online. In 2025 she was awarded the Aodh Ruadh Ó Domhnaill Poetry Exchange, during which she completed her new work Dwelling, a transhistorical exploration of identity, change and displacement, conflating poetry and essay.

Preorder Dwelling from Macha Press and visit the poet's website.

“Dwelling is a work of excavation: lyrical, archival, and embodied. The reader is drawn into the sense that the past, from ancient myths to emigration stories, is not just subject matter but a living archive that demands an equally compelling, emotionally resonant and formally inventive poetry. A work of breath and vertigo.” — Macha Press

(Moderator) Paul Casey’s poems have most recently appeared in The Stony Thursday Book and Maple Leaf Anthology. Virtual Tides was published by Salmon Poetry in 2016, which followed home more or less (Salmon, 2012) and a chapbook, It's Not All Bad (Heaventree, 2009). He edits the annual Unfinished Book of Poetry anthology for secondary schools. Quilt, a chapbook, will be published by SurVision Books in 2026.

Niall Campbell (UK) & Polly Clark (Canada/UK)

8.30pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5

Niall Campbell is a poet from the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. His first poetry collection, Moontide, won the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award and Saltire First Book of the Year. Noctuary, his second collection, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2019. A selection from these first two books were published in the U.S. as First Nights, part of the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets. His most recent collection, The Island in the Sound, was also shortlisted for the Forward Prize Best Collection in 2025. He is the editor of the acclaimed poetry journal, Poetry London.

Buy The Island in the Sound from Bloodaxe Books.

“There's a deep music to Niall Campbell's The Island in the Sound, as well as a strong sense of place at the edge of the ocean, perhaps the edge of the world. Campbell's poems treat life, death, love, time and belonging with tender exactitude.” — Sean O'Brien

Polly Clark is an award-winning poet and novelist, born in Canada and brought up in Scotland. Afterlife: New and Selected Poems draws on her three previous books of poetry, Kiss, the TS Eliot Prize-shortlisted Take Me With You and Farewell My Lovely. She is the author of three novels, Larchfield (2017), which fictionalised a little-known period in the life of WH Auden, Tiger (2019) and her latest Ocean (2025) described by Louis de Bernières as ‘Strange, wondrous and compelling’. She divides her time between the West of Scotland and a houseboat in London.

Buy Afterlife: New and Selected Poems from Bloodaxe Books and visit the poet's Substack.

“The strength of this collection lies in images so precisely right that they immediately establish the authenticity of whichever perspective is adopted. Her carefully weighted words build pictures of remarkable clarity.” — Sarah Crown

(Moderator) Lucy Holme is a PhD student at University College Cork. She won the Southword Editor’s Award and the Cúirt New Writing Prize for Poetry 2024. Her debut chapbook, Temporary Stasis, (Broken Sleep Books 2022) was shortlisted for The Patrick Kavanagh Award. A nonfiction essay collection, Blue Diagonals, was published in September 2024. Her new poetry chapbook Sardines, written collaboratively with Vasiliki Albedo, has just been published by Dialect Press.

Anthony Joseph (Trinidad and Tobago/UK) & Patricia Smith (USA)

10.00pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5

Dr Anthony Joseph F.R.S.L. is an award-winning Trinidad-born poet, novelist, academic and musician. His 2022 collection Sonnets for Albert won the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry 2022 and the OCM BOCAS Prize for Caribbean Poetry. He is the author of six poetry collections and three novels. His 2018 novel Kitch: A Fictional Biography of a Calypso Icon was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore Award and the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Fiction. As a musician, he has released nine critically acclaimed albums. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Kings College, London.

Buy Haunting the Black Air from Bloomsbury.

“Joseph is both a faithful heir and an agnostic rebel; a Black poet haunted by Africa's past as well as a bilingual post-modernist amused by the possibilities of the future.” — Ali Alizadeh

Patricia Smith has authored ten books of poetry, including The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems, winner of the 2025 National Book Award for Poetry; Unshuttered; Incendiary Art, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Award, the LA Times Book Prize, and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; and Blood Dazzler, a National Book Award finalist. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Best American Essays and Best American Mystery Stories. Smith is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a chancellor in the Academy of American Poets, and a Guggenheim fellow.

Buy The Intentions of Thunder from Bloodaxe Books and visit the poet's website.

“Patricia Smith's The Intentions of Thunder chronicles America's traditions, tragedies, and triumphs with steadfast invention … these new and selected poems are personal while communal; immediate while historical; demonstrative while sublime.” — 2025 National Book Award Judge's Citation

(Moderator) Isabelle Baafi is the author of Chaotic Good (Faber & Faber / Wesleyan University Press, 2025), which won the Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection and is shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Her pamphlet Ripe (ignition press, 2020) won a Somerset Maugham Award and was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice. She won First Prize in the Winchester Poetry Prize 2023 and Second Prize in the London Magazine Poetry Prize 2022.

Image credits: Anthony Joseph photographed by Spencer Mcpherson