The Peacock's Eye is the first collection of poetry from Sheila O'Hagan, the winner of the 1991 Patrick Kavanagh Award for "an assured and memorable collection of imaginative range and lyrical intensity".
"In line with Seamus Heaney's Seeing Things, The Peacock's Eye puts the faculty of vision back at the heart of 'the brighter fire' of the poetic venture. These mature and considered poems are bound together by a sophisticated aesthetic sense that goes well beyond what is usual in a first collection."
Medbh McGuckian
Sheila O'Hagan began writing in 1984 while studying at Birkbeck College, London University. In 1988 she won the Goldsmith Award for Poetry, and in 1990 returned to her native Dublin. In 1991 she won the Patrick Kavanagh Award and in 1992 the Hennessy/Sunday Tribune Award for New Irish Poet of the year. She has twice been awarded First Prize for Poetry at Listowel Writers' Week. She was the winner of the Strokestown International Prize for a single poem in 2000. Her short stories and poems have appeared in, among others, The Adirondack Review, The Sunday Tribune, Syracuse Review and Working Papers in Irish Studies. She has conducted literary workshops in Wormwood Scrubs Prison, UK, in Inter-City Schools, and for three terms in The Writers' Centre, Dublin. She was writer-in-residence for Kildare County Council from 1994 to 1996. In 1990 she conducted radio workshops for prisoners on 98FM. She was editor of the Cork Literary Review from 2005 to 2007. She also edited Under Brigid's Cloak, an anthology of Kildare writers, in 1994. Her three collections are - The Peacock's Eye (1992), The Troubled House (1995) and Along The Liffey: Poems and Short Stories (2009) - are all published by Salmon.
"In line with Seamus Heaney's Seeing Things, The Peacock's Eye puts the faculty of vision back at the heart of 'the brighter fire' of the poetic venture. These mature and considered poems are bound together by a sophisticated aesthetic sense that goes well beyond what is usual in a first collection."
Medbh McGuckian
Sheila O'Hagan began writing in 1984 while studying at Birkbeck College, London University. In 1988 she won the Goldsmith Award for Poetry, and in 1990 returned to her native Dublin. In 1991 she won the Patrick Kavanagh Award and in 1992 the Hennessy/Sunday Tribune Award for New Irish Poet of the year. She has twice been awarded First Prize for Poetry at Listowel Writers' Week. She was the winner of the Strokestown International Prize for a single poem in 2000. Her short stories and poems have appeared in, among others, The Adirondack Review, The Sunday Tribune, Syracuse Review and Working Papers in Irish Studies. She has conducted literary workshops in Wormwood Scrubs Prison, UK, in Inter-City Schools, and for three terms in The Writers' Centre, Dublin. She was writer-in-residence for Kildare County Council from 1994 to 1996. In 1990 she conducted radio workshops for prisoners on 98FM. She was editor of the Cork Literary Review from 2005 to 2007. She also edited Under Brigid's Cloak, an anthology of Kildare writers, in 1994. Her three collections are - The Peacock's Eye (1992), The Troubled House (1995) and Along The Liffey: Poems and Short Stories (2009) - are all published by Salmon.