Join us for the annual poetry reading as part of the Music and Mind Festival 2025! This year we have four superb voices:
Martin Mooney’s poems have appeared in four collections – Grub (1993), which won the Brendan Behan Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Rooney Prize and the Forward Prize for a first collection, was followed by Rasputin and his Children (2000), Blue Lamp Disco (2003) and The Resurrection of the Body at Killysuggen (2011). Mooney lives in County Antrim.
Marcella L.A. Prince is a poet from the Midwest but she lives in Belfast now. She holds a PhD from the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s. She is co-editor of Hold Open the Door, a special commemorative anthology from the Ireland Chair of Poetry. Her work appears in The Lonely Crowd, The Midwest Review and The Tangerine among other publications.
Darcey Dugan is a poet based in Belfast whose poems have appeared in journals such as The Rialto, Abridged, The Honest Ulsterman, The Waxed Lemon, The Stony Thursday Book, and elsewhere. She enjoys exploring themes of unease, relationships, place, and dreams, and is currently completing her MA in Poetry at The Seamus Heaney Centre.
Matthew Rice was born in Belfast. Poems have appeared in The Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Asheville Poetry Review, The Dark Horse, The Tangerine, and in the anthologies The Best New British and Irish Poets 2017 (Eyewear), Hold Open the Door: A Commemorative Anthology from The Ireland Chair of Poetry (UCD Press / University of Chicago Press), and The Forward Book of Poetry 2022 (Faber). He holds an MA in Poetry from Queen’s University, Belfast, and is currently finishing a PhD at The Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s. His debut collection, The Last Weather Observer (Summer Palace Press), was published in 2021, was Highly Commended for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and was included on the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s top ten books of the year. His new book, Plastic, is forthcoming with Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) and Soft Skull Press (US) in 2026.
Also check out other Arts events in Carrickfergus, Literary Art events in Carrickfergus, Festivals in Carrickfergus.
