Cathy Galvin Launch Events

 

Cathy Galvin is a poet and a journalist, and has been a champion of other writers and writing, co-founding The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award and founding and directing The Word Factory short story organisation. She has been nominated for a variety of awards including the Ilkley Poetry Prize and Listowel Poetry Prize and is the recipient of a Hawthornden Fellowship, Heinrich Böll (Achill Island) residency and an Arts Council England DYCP award. Her first full-length book of poetry, Ethnology: a love song for Connemara (Bloodaxe Books, 2026), follows three pamphlet sequences of poetry, Black & Blue (Melos Press, 2014), Rough Translation (Melos Press, 2016) and Walking The Coventry Ring Road with Lady Godiva (Guillemot Press, 2019).

Published in February 2026, Ethnology draws on the mystical cry for the dead of Cathy Galvin's Irish-speaking ancestors. Within an epic narrative she reclaims place, people and language, creating a bridge between our own times and a Connemara community on the margins of Europe. Drawing on classic forms within literary and oral traditions, Ethnology becomes a love song for Connemara, witness to vivid encounters: between the living and the dead and between the poets, folklorists and ethnologists who have written about the West of Ireland for their own agendas.

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An excellent review of Cathy Galvin’s first full-length poetry book Ethnology: a love song for Connemara went online in London Grip on 21 February 2026. Read in full here.

‘Ethnology: a love song for Connemara is a tightly focused book. It pursues its themes with a laser-like precision. But Galvin’s world never feels monolithic. For all its emphasis on loss of both people and place, there lies beneath that an abundant sense of life, its meaning and its worth. This is, as the cliché often suggests, a book to return to, a book with real heft and stature.’ – Ian Pople, London Grip

 

Ethnology: a love song for Connemara was well reviewed online in the Spring 2026 issue of The High Window.  Read in full here.

‘…a collection that is rooted in the landscape and nuances of Máisean Island and its past inhabitants. Galvin also questions what home and belonging mean when family roots have left their point of origin.’ – Emma Lee, The High Window

 

Martina Evans' wonderful review of Ethnology: a love song for Connemara was featured her poetry round-up in The Irish Times of 7 March 2026.  Available online by subscription here.

'Cathy Galvin's rich, complex Ethnology: A Love Song for Connemara is a history of Galvin's mother's native Mason Island and a tremendous elegy for her son [...] It is also a burning lyrical investigation into the power of language and those who use that power.  [...] Galvin is verbally adept, a master of many forms, but perhaps it is the further paradox of being so close to a language she didn't understand as a child that creates this hungry, groundbreaking book, brimming with grief and desire'...' – Martina Evans, The Irish Times 

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Cathy Galvin was interviewed live down the line from Cornwall on RTÉ Radio 1’s Arena on 5 March 2026 ahead of her Dublin launch on 24 March. She was discussing her debut poetry book Ethnology: a love song for Connemara with host Rick O’Shea. She read her poems ‘Ethnology’ and ‘Choosing what to say to Dr Hyde’, part 2 of the sequence ‘Mythology’.   

A separate podcast of Cathy Galvin's interview is here. 

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For more on Cathy Calvin's connections to Coventry, and to read a poem from Ethnology: a love song for Connemara, see a feature in Proletarian Poetry here.

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS

 

Cathy Galvin has been launching Ethnology at series of events in the UK and Ireland over Spring 2026. 

 

Thursday 14 May, 7pm: Cork International Poetry Festival

Cork Arts Theatre, Camden Court, Knapps Square, Carroll's Quay, T23 X72D

Cathy Galvin will be reading from Ethnology: a love song for Connemara at Cork International Poetry Festival alongside Greg Rappleye.

Tickets €5 - more details and booking here.

 

Tuesday 26 May, 6pm, Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, Galway

Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, The Cornstore, Middle St, Galway, H91 AH7A

Galway launch for Ethnology: a love song for Connemara with introduction by Mary O’Malley.

Free event with wine, readings and signings.

Details to follow.

 

Listowel Writers' Week

Cathy Galvin will be taking part in two events at Listowel Writers' Week.

[03 February 2026]

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