Ideas of North New Poetry from Scotland and Irelands North
Charles Lang, Jake Hawkey, andZara Meadows are three of the most accomplished, thematically pertinent, and innovative poets to have emerged within their tradition in recent years. Together, their work represents that most-elusive thing poetry genuinely drawn from the experience of socially and artistically evolving as working-class poets, poetry that represents that specificities and universalities of their communities, the familial and social bonds and boundaries, their private and public languages. Each has passed through the ever-forking path of Belfast and the Seamus Heaney Centre, and each in their own way has fundamentally and generatively challenged what the poetry of that place and what the Poetry of Place means. What does poetry from or of Irelands North and Scotland look like now, and what is it becoming? Who or what does it represent? What are the ends of our art in the current day?
2025 marked the publication of these three poets extraordinary debuts The Oasis , But & Though , and The End of Art this event will feature readings by each poet from their respective work, a discussion between them, and the opportunity for the audience to ask questions and engage with the subjects raised.
Charles Lang is from Glasgow. His poems have appeared in numerous publications including Poetry Ireland Review, The Poetry Review and The Stinging Fly. He was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions series in 2022. In 2024, he was Ciaran Carson Writing and the City Fellow at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queens University Belfast, and was shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. His collection The Oasis was published by Skein Press in 2025.
This debut collection announces Charles Lang as one of the best new poets in Scotland. Alan Gillis
Jake Hawkey grew up in south London. He studied art at the University of Westminster and poetry at Queens University Belfast. His chapbook Breeze Block appeared from Lumpen/The Class Work Project in 2020. His debut collection But & Though was published by Picador in 2025. He lives and works in Belfast.
Hawkey's poems are electric, buzzing with all the possibilities of language. He has much to say, and is saying it brilliantly. Nick Laird, winner of the Forward Prize for Poetry.
Zara Meadows is a writer from the Greater Shankill in Belfast. Their first pamphlet, The End of Art , was published by fourteen poems in 2025, and their work has previously been published in The Stinging Fly, Poetry London, and Banshee. They are currently studying on the MA in Poetry at the Seamus Heaney Centre in Belfast, and will begin a PhD at Queen's University Belfast later this year.
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