Medbh McGuckian (born asMaeve McCaughan on 12 August 1950) is a poet fromNorthern Ireland.
She was born the third of six children as Maeve McCaughan to Hugh and Margaret McCaughan inNorth Belfast. Her father was a school headmaster and her mother an influential art and music enthusiast.[1] She was educated at Holy Family Primary School andDominican College, Fortwilliam and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1972 and aMaster of Arts degree in 1974 atQueen's University Belfast. Maeve McCaughan adopted the Irish spelling of her name, Medbh, when her university teacher,Seamus Heaney, wrote her name that way when signing books to her.[2] She married a teacher and poet, John McGuckian, in 1977.[1]
She has worked as a teacher in her native Belfast atSt. Patrick's College, Knock and an editor and was the first female Writer in Residence atQueen's University Belfast (1985–1988).[3] She spent part of a term appointed as visiting poet and instructor in creative writing at theUniversity of California, Berkeley (1991).
McGuckian's first published poems appeared in two pamphlets,Single Ladies: Sixteen Poems andPortrait of Joanna, in 1980, the year in which she received anEric Gregory Award. In 1981 she co-publishedTrio Poetry 2 with fellow poetsDamian Gorman andDouglas Marshall (poet), and in 1989 she collaborated withNuala Archer onTwo Women, Two Shores. Medbh McGuckian's first major collection,The Flower Master (1982), which explores post-natal breakdown, was awarded aRooney Prize for Irish Literature, anArts Council (Ireland) award (both 1982) and anAlice Hunt Bartlett Prize (1983). She is also the winner of the 1989Cheltenham Prize for her collectionOn Ballycastle Beach (Wake Forest University Press).
Medbh McGuckian has edited an anthology,The Big Striped Golfing Umbrella: Poems by Young People from Northern Ireland (1985) for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, written a study of the car in the poetry of Seamus Heaney, entitledHorsepower Pass By! (1999), and has translated into English (withEiléan Ní Chuilleanáin)The Water Horse (1999), a selection of poems in Irish byNuala Ní Dhomhnaill. A volume ofSelected Poems: 1978–1994 was published in 1997, and among her latest collections areThe Book of the Angel (2004)The Currach Requires No Harbours (2007), andMy Love Has Fared Inland (2008).The Currach Requires No Harbours includes a poem inspired by the lives of theWrens of the Curragh.[4]
She was awarded the 2002Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for her poem "She is in the Past, She Has This Grace". She has been shortlisted twice for thePoetry Now Award for her collection,The Book of the Angel, in 2005, and forThe Currach Requires No Harbour, in 2007.
