Poetry with Pride 2024

This year, Poetry with Pride welcomes Paul Maddern, Padraig Regan, Niamh McNally and Suzi Bloom. We will also be launching this year’s Poetry with Pride Magazine - a collection of original queer poetry from new and established writers across the community.

Suzi Bloom is a queer Belfast-based songwriter and poet. Their poems have been published in Catflap magazine, as well as Belfast Poetry with Pride, and the Finding the Edges pamphlet in collaboration with Ulster Museum. Their indie pop albums, Sanctuary, Chapter, and Eden, can be found on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music.

Niamh McNally is a Belfast-based poet. She completed her MA in Ulster University where she co-created The Paperclip; a student-led literary publication. Niamh is a workshop facilitator in The Seamus Heaney Homeplace and has been published in: The Tulsa Review, Tír na nÓg, The Galway Review, and HOWL: New Irish Writing. Her poetry has featured on the BBC, in two films: 'It Seems' & 'Defining Hope', and in the opening ceremony of the One Young World Summit 2023. Niamh’s poem ‘If Stone Could Speak’ was showcased by Bushmills as part of The Causeway Collection, and her long poem 'New Impressions' was published by The John Hewitt Society and ACNI. Recently, she has read in The NI Executive Office (Brussels), The Embassy of Ireland (The Hague), and in Dublin Castle as part of a 'Shared Island Symphony' collaboration. Niamh is a current Poet-in-Residence for Herstory, Ireland.

Padraig Regan is the author of two poetry pamphlets: Delicious (Lifeboat, 2016) and Who Seemed Alive & Altogether Real (Emma Press, 2017). In 2015, they were a recipient of an Eric Gregory Award, and in 2020 they were awarded the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary Prize. They hold a PhD on creative-critical and hybridised writing practices in medieval texts and the work of Anne Carson from the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen's University Belfast, where they were a Ciaran Carson Writing and the City Fellow in 2021.

Paul Maddern's latest collection is The Tipping Line (Templar Poetry, 2018), and in 2021 he edited Queering the Green: Post-2000 Queer Irish Poetry (Lifeboat Press). He was a 2023 James Merrill House Writer-in-Residence.

BSL: this event will be supported & interpreted by a BSL interpreter.