Wake Forest University Press

Paula Meehan

Paula Meehan was born in 1955 and raised in two famous working-class districts of Dublin, before graduating from Trinity College and Eastern Washington University. She has written plays for children and adults and has conducted writing workshops with inner city communities and in prisons as well as universities. Her work is much translated, widely anthologized, and among the prizes she has won are The Martin Toonder Award (1995), the Butler Literary Award (1998) and the Denis Devlin Award (2002). More recently she has turned to writing plays. She is a member of Aosdána, and lives in Dublin.

“To say that Paula Meehan’s work is informed by the facts she is of working-class origin, a woman and has integrated into her imagination the folklore and dream consciousness of her forebears would be unfairly reductive and yet it would be misleading not to refer to them at all. Her work has won plaudits from critics and prize-givers at the same time as it has attracted a wide following from non-poetry specialist readers. There is an erotic charge to much of Meehan’s work which, to borrow a phrase from Eavan Boland, lays beneath the surface of conventional sexuality like a reef below water. Her poems are sensual both in her handling of ideas and in her handling of the words which convey those ideas.”  Patrick Cotter

Hear Paula Meehan read "Dharmakaya"

An Interview with Paula Meehan

Issue of An Sionnach dedicated to the poetry of Paula Meehan

Also!

Poetry
Return and No Blame. Beaver Row Press, Dublin 1984
Reading the Sky. Beaver Row Press, Dublin 1985
The Man Who was Marked by Winter. The Gallery Press, Oldcastle, 1991 (shortlisted for the Irish Times/Aer Lingus Irish Literature Prize for Poetry)
Pillow Talk. The Gallery Press, Oldcastle, 1994 (shortlisted for the Irish Times Literature Prize for Poetry)
Mysteries of the Home: A Selection of Poems. Bloodaxe Books, Newcastle Upon Tyne, 1996
Dharmakaya. Carcanet, Manchester, 2000; Wake Forest University Press, Winston-Salem, 2000
Three Irish Poets: Eavan Boland, Paula Meehan, Mary O’Malley. Manchester: Carcanet Press 2003
Painting Rain. Carcanet, Mancheser, 2008; Wake Forest University Press, Winston-Salem, 2009

Drama
Mrs Sweeney Dublin, New Island Books, 1999
Cell: a play. New Island Books, Dublin 2000

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Author photo by Stephanie Joy

Available books by Paula Meehan:

Click one of the books listed below for more information, or see all books by Paula Meehan.

Painting Rain

Dharmakaya