SOURCE: McGuckian, Medbh, and Sawnie Morris. “Under the North Window: An Interview with Medbh McGuckian.” Kenyon Review 23, nos. 3 and 4 (summer/fall 2001): 64-74.

In the following interview, originally conducted in July 1998, McGuckian talks about her writing process, the politics of her poetry, the influence of Emily Dickinson and Seamus Heaney on her work, and her place within the Irish poetic tradition.

Medbh McGuckian was born in Belfast in 1950, where she now lives for most of the year with her husband and their four teenagers. Her poems have won the English Poetry Society Competition (1979), an Eric Gregory Award (1980), and the Bass Ireland Award for Literature (1991). She earned her B.A. and M.A. degrees in English from Queen's University in Belfast where she was later the first woman to be named Writer-in-Residence. She has also been a Visiting Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. Her collections include The Flower...