The Irish Poetry Reading Archive captures and preserves Ireland’s diverse poetic landscape, making it freely accessible and safeguarding it for future generations. Established in 2014, this significant archive serves both national and international readers and scholars of Irish poetry.
To date, the archive has recorded over 200 poets, including those based in Ireland and Irish poets abroad. These poets read selections of their work, providing context on their inspiration and influences. Audiovisual recordings, featuring poems in both English and Irish, are available on (opens in a new window)YouTube and preserved in the (opens in a new window)UCD Digital Library. In addition, poets contribute handwritten manuscripts, with over 1,000 poems scanned and accessible alongside their recordings.
Managed by UCD Library, the archive benefits from collaboration with the UCD School of English, Drama and Film and the UCD School of Irish, Celtic Studies and Folklore, strengthening connections between teaching, research, and public engagement. UCD Library also works closely with Poetry Ireland and values partnerships with poets and publishers.
We are deeply grateful to the poets who have contributed, helping to build this important repository of Irish poetry.
Explore the archive by visiting our (opens in a new window)YouTube playlist or through the A-Z of recorded poets listed below.
We are very happy to work with poets, in Ireland and abroad, recording their readings and adding new voices and content. We will also endeavour to invite back poets who have already been recorded to read a new selection of their work. From 2023 a fee of €150 will be paid to each poet who records for the archive.
To have your work included in the Irish Poetry Reading Archive please contact (opens in a new window)ipra@ucd.ie.
UCD Special Collections has unique collection strengths in the area of Irish literature and in poetry in particular. Built up over the last forty years, the poetry collection is a unique gathering of important first editions, literary magazines and anthologies representing the work of a wide range of poets from the late 19th to the 21st century. It also contains the archives of important literary figures.
UCD Special contains material in both the English and Irish languages including the libraries of Thomas Kinsella, Austin Clarke and Dennis O’Driscoll, the Jack and Máire Sweeney collection, the Curran Laird collection, the Rake Yeats Collection, the Joseph Hassett collection and the archives of poets Patrick Kavanagh, Frank McGuinness, Seán Ó Riordáin and Maurice Harmon. These collections complement the Irish Poetry Reading archive
As poets come in to read for the archive, we acquire their most recent published collections which they sign while in UCD. In this way we continue to build the physical book collection alongside the audiovisual archive and the manuscript collection. Thanks to the generosity of poets who have recorded, we have also built up an eclectic collection of poetry ephemera and archival materials such as notebooks containing drafts of poems.
Please see UCD Special Collections for more details.
Over recent years we have developed a digital archive of websites relevant to Irish poetry in the 21st century so that they are available to researchers of the future. This is especially important because material published on the web is vulnerable to loss or change.
Web-archiving is defined as the process of collecting, preserving, and providing enduring access to web content. To preserve this information for the future, a version of a website is captured at a particular point in time is collected and archived digitally. This archived version can be navigated like a live website.
UCD Library archives these materials in the public interest and we make them available for the purposes of research and private study.
Explore the Web archive of Irish Poetry at (opens in a new window)https://archive-it.org/organizations/1846.
The Poetry Jukebox is an interactive sound installation that brings poetry into public spaces. It offers an engaging, interactive installation that allows the UCD community to listen to recorded poetry at their leisure, highlighting the work of the Irish Poetry Reading Archive and creating new opportunities for collaboration with the poetry community and researchers. Curations are managed through the Irish Poetry Reading Archive.
Photo: Jason Clarke
(opens in a new window)Poetry as Commemoration 2022-23 encouraged people on the island of Ireland, to build a greater understanding of our shared past through creative engagement with archival materials relating to the War of Independence and Civil War. It involved 150 creative writing workshops, the deposit of 600 new poems by members of the public, the commissioning and publication of ten new poems in a fine press book entitled Grief’s Broken Brow by The Salvage Press and the dissemination of poems to the public via the poetry jukebox. This project was funded by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht Sports and Media and was part of the Government’s Decade of Commemorations programme.
The (opens in a new window)Poetry in Lockdown project (May 2020-October 2021) captured in poetry some of the experiences of the pandemic for the UCD Community. It holds the work of UCD students, staff, and alumni and from those with associations with the University, and from the wider community.
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