Award-winning Irish Poet, Clodagh Beresford Dunne was born in Dublin in 1975 and raised in the harbour town of Dungarvan, Co. Waterford in the southeast of Ireland. She was educated in the Presentation Convent, Dungarvan and in Rockwell College Cashel and earned degrees in English and in Law from University College Galway (1995 and 1997 respectively). She apprenticed and practised as a qualified solicitor in Dublin from 1998 to 2005, receiving her parchment from the Law Society of Ireland in the Long Vacation of 2000. During her university and training years she was an award-winning public speaker and debater (LAMDA Gold Medal recipient) was a finalist in the Irish Times Debating Competition and represented Ireland on 2 occasions at The World Universities Debating Championships including in Princeton University, NJ, USA.
“Here is a brilliant writer. She is a young poet with an old soul. By that I mean she has ancient wisdom and thrust but also a modern, searching, brave sensibility. Clodagh Beresford Dunne is a writer in love with language.
- Edna O’Brien
She was raised in a local newspaper family (‘The Dungarvan Observer in which, during her childhood, her grandfather was editor and her father and her mother both worked) and her writing was first published there at the age of 8. “She domesticates genius.”
- Thomas McCarthy
“I am certain that Clodagh Beresford Dunne is one of the great up and coming poets of our times.”
- Professor Melanie Almeder, Virginia USA
Her poems have been published in outlets such as The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, The Moth, Southword Poetry (Chicago), The London Magazine, Salzburg Poetry Review and Cordite, Australia. The Arts Council of Ireland has awarded her its Emerging Writer Award, its Agility Award and a Travel and Training Award. She was winner of The Irish Book Awards & Irish Poem of the Year Award and, at the request of Edna O’Brien DBE, she received the 2019 Arts Council of England’s Clarissa Luard Emerging Writer Award.
“Her passion and commitment to poetry is infectious. In addition to her talent as a writer, Clodagh Beresford Dunne is an ambassador of poetry and literature.
- Professor Michael Paul Thomas, Director,
Visiting Writers’ Series, Monmouth University, New Jersey, USA.
“These poems are brave and necessary.”
- Jan Beatty, USA