Eithne Lannon’s poetry has been widely published in Ireland, the UK, USA and Canada. Her début collection, Earth Music, was published by Turas Press in 2019. Her second collection, Everything Gathers Light, also from Turas Press, was launched in May, 2023.
Published poetry
Eithne’s poetry can be found in many contemporary literary journals and magazines, including: The Ogham Stone, Boyne Berries, Skylight 47, FLARE, Stanzas, The Curlew and A New Ulster. She has also had work published in the anthologies Mind and Agamemnon Dead and the anthology The Lea-Green Down: A Response to Patrick Kavanagh, Ed Eileen Casey (Fiery Arrow Press 2018), which can be ordered from: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lea-Green-Down-Edited-Eileen-Casey/dp/1999636805
Competition Achievements
Eithne has won, and been commended in, many competitions. Here are some of her achievements: Ballyroan Library Competition, winner, 2018; Against the Grain Competition 2019, second prize; The Blue Nib Spring Chapbook competition 2018, Highly Commended; Dermot Healy Competition, 2017, longlisted; Galway Hospital Arts Competition in 2018 and in 2016, shortlisted; Jonathan Swift Award 2018, Highly Commended; Goldsmith Poetry Competition, May, 2022, third prize; Shepton Snowdrop Competition, 2022, Highly Commended.
Awards, Residencies and Poetry Festivals
Eithne has been the recipient of several awards and bursaries including: Artist in Residence, Loughshinny Boathouse 2017; Fingal Artist’s Bursary, 2018 and 2019; Words Ireland National Mentoring Award 2019.
As well as hosting local readings in North County Dublin and performing her own work at the Skerries Soundwaves Festival and Skerries Donkey Shots Festival, Eithne is an active participant on the Dublin Open Mic scene. She is a frequent participant in the monthly Dublin Sunflower Sessions. Information about the Sessions, which are held on the last Wednesday of every month, can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/TheSunflowerSessions/. She has also been a featured reader at the Listeners monthly literary event in Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin.
Comments and Reviews of Eithne’s poetry
Earth Music, 2019
Jessica Traynor, writing in Poetry Ireland Review Issue 129, described “Earth Music” as:
“…a collection which revels in language and its ability to render the everyday beautiful…Lannon is a poet of great linguistic facility, whose work is suffused with the numinous.”
The journal containing this review, and many other fine poems by other poets, both Irish and international, is available from Poetry Ireland and can be ordered here: https://bit.ly/35vLgPW.
“One of the strengths of Eithne Lannon’s impressive début collection, Earth Music, is the obvious relish with which she explores both the sensory imagination and the linguistic means to render the sensuous palpable.” David Butler, The Blue Nib, 2019
Thomas McCarthy, judge of the Shine/Strong Award 2020, said of Earth Music
“Eithne Lannon’s delicate, measured and luminous first collection is a masterpiece of cadence and timing. Every line, every phrase and couplet, seems to have been weighed on a heavenly weighing-scales so that her reverence for language is uncannily complete.”
Everything Gathers Light, 2023
“Everything Gathers Light revels in the natural world while revealing intimate, personal experience. Exquisite use of language delivers architectural symphonies in line and form. Everything Gathers Light throbs a lover’s tenderness yet burns with a fierce, insistent flame. Ultimately, these poems are acknowledgement that comes when ‘you know the flesh/is always more than what is visible’ (Rowing in Eden). Above all, they confirm a poet at the height of her powers.” Eileen Casey
“Each poem in Everything Gathers Light is in and of itself a thin place, a numinous energy, a porous veil. Forget for a moment about the exquisite use of language or how skilfully it’s deployed and embrace each poem’s invitation to enter ‘through the mud wall/with gapped patterns a world where beauty and sorrow are mediated through an encounter with what is both within and beyond us.” Anne Tannam