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Music:
Poets:
Scott McKendry is from North Belfast. His poems have appeared in The Poetry Review, The Stinging Fly, Virginia Quarterly Review and elsewhere. His pamphlet, Curfuffle (Lifeboat, 2019), was a Poetry Book Society Autumn Choice. McKendry won a Patrick Kavanagh Award in 2019. In 2024 he was chosen by Paul Muldoon as the Ireland Chair of Poetry’s Poet of Promise. His debut collection, GUB (2024), is out now with Corsair (Little, Brown).
Matthew Rice is from Belfast. He holds a PhD from the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s, where he is the Ciaran Carson Writing and the City Fellow for 2026. His new book, plastic, is published by Fitzcarraldo in the UK/Europe and by Soft Skull Press in the US.
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 appeared in Poetry London, The Stinging Fly, Banshee, bath magg, and Catflap. They are working on an AHRC-funded PhD at The Seamus Heaney Centre in Belfast.
Josh McCune is a poet from Belfast. He was selected for the Irish Writer’s Centre New Voices: North programme in 2025 and his poems have appeared in Imposter: A Poetry Journal and Abridged.
Kiera Sky Torpie is a singer-songwriter from New York. Channelling her most aching feelings through sound, her acoustic style is distinguished by plainspoken lyrics, folk-inspired fingerpicking, and soft, intimate vocals.
Susanna Galbraith is from East Belfast. Her first book MORSELS was published by Macha Press in 2025. She was a New Voices: North 2025 and Poetry Ireland Introductions 2023 selectee and her poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, New England Review, Propel and elsewhere. She is currently an editor of Abridged and a trainee teacher.