Emma McKervey is an award-winning poet from Holywood in County Down. She is a professionally trained musician in cello and saxophone and has engaged in many musical ventures that include collaborations with composers, dancers and theatre. Her poetry has been widely published and broadcast in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Publications and Achievements
Emma has two collections of poetry:
- Highland Boundary Fault, published by Turas Press in 2024
- The Rag Tree Speaks (Doire Press, 2017)
Highland Boundary Fault tells the tale of her great grandparents’ love affair on the Western Isles of Scotland and the Clyde estuary, the jealousy it aroused from a young village girl who intercepted their letters, and the court case that followed. The story is immersed in the social and historical context of the time, and accompanied by a cast of characters from Celtic, Nordic and eastern myth. Highland Boundary Fault was longlisted for the 2024 International Poetry Books Award.
Emma is a frequent participant in readings and festivals in Ireland, Northern Ireland and beyond, including Faclan, the Hebridean Book Festival and the Wigtown Book Festival, both in Scotland. Here is an article about Emma at Faclan in Stornoway in October, 2024.
Reviews and Responses
“McKervey is sharp as winter. Her poems of Scottish folklore, myth, family, and strange
beasts, came at me like howling winds, lifting me up and down the highlands, islands, coasts,
caves, lochs and bogs of history and imagination. This is a tonic of a book – rattling,
cleansing, energising. Over and over again, Highland Boundary Fault transforms the ordinary
past into the sphere of the magical and the darkly medicinal.”
Annemarie Ní Churreáin, Poet & Editor
“Highland Boundary Fault draws so much into itself: the inheritances of language on either
side of the sheuch, the gods and myths that occupy the land and the imagination, the storms
and geology of the past.”
Alistair Heather, Scottish journalist, poetry podcaster, BBC presenter.
Here is a link to Emma reading one of her poems from Highland Boundary Fault for the
Books Ireland Magazine Poetry Happening slot, May 2024 .
Emma took part in this podcast, A Thousand Shades of Green, in conversation with host Susan Richardson.
Emma is a founder member of the Femina Culpa Poetry Collective a group of four women writers from Co Down and Belfast: Emma McKervey, Milena Williamson, Linda Mckenna & Kelly Creighton. All have recently published poetry collections inspired by the stories of nineteenth century women who were caught up in the criminal justice system or who were victims of crime. Their work has been based on archival research and seeks to uncover the voices of these women through poetry. Femina Culpa gives frequent readings in Ireland, Northern Ireland and beyond.