Carlow College Logo

Dr Derek Coyle

Lecturer in English

Biography

Dr Derek Coyle has published poems and reviews in the United States, Britain and Ireland. He has been shortlisted for the Patrick Kavanagh Award (2010, 2014), the Bradshaw Prize (2011), and in 2012 he was a chosen poet for the Poetry Ireland ‘Introductions Series’. In 2013 he was a runner-up in the Bradshaw Prize. Dr Coyle has read his poems in museums, galleries and lecture halls in Ireland, Scotland, Sweden and the United States.

Research Interest

Derek’s research interests include Irish and international poetry, particularly the sense of place, and the relationship between poetry, theology and philosophy.

Publications

Academic Presentations
“‘There’s no such place as heaven’: Being in Place in Michael Longley’s ‘Petalwort’”, 17th Biennial Conference for the International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture, University of Leuven, Belgium, 18 – 20 September 2014.

“Made whole, made young again/in a Finglas garden’: The Disclosure of Being in a Dublin Suburb, a Heideggerian reading of Paula Meehan’s ‘My Father Perceived as a Vision of St Francis’”, Encircling Worlds: Imagining Irish Suburbia Conference, Carlow College, Ireland 12 – 13 2014.

“Erased by wind and sea’: Finding Oneself in Place, a Heideggerian reading of Michael Longley’s ‘Above Dooaghtry”’, 15th Triennial Conference of EACLALS, University of Innsbruck, Austria, 14 – 18 April 2014

‘Rallying against Impecuniosity: Oliver Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village – a spiritual resource in a capitalist economy gone wrong’, Trinity College Dublin Metaphysical Society, 22 October 2013.

‘Put in mind of his own father’: Empire, Masculinity, and the Great War in the Poetry of Michael Longley”, 16th Biennial Conference for the International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, 19–21 October 2012.

Finding Oneself in Place, a Heideggerian reading of Michael Longley’s ‘Above Dooaghtry”.  

Selected Academic Publications
Coyle, D. (ed.), Carlow Writer’s Co-operative: What Champagne Was Like, 2013.
— ‘Pennsylvania Coal Town’, Irish Pages, 7.2 (2012).
— ‘A Woman in the Sun’, Irish Pages, 7.2 (2012).
— ‘The Circle Theatre’, Irish Pages, 7.2 (2012).

Reading John Ashbery at Costa Coffee, Carlow‘ (Tranås: Magnus Grehn Förlag, 2019). Published in Swedish and English. This poetry collection was shortlisted for the Shine Strong Award 2019, an award for the best first book by a new Irish poet. A second poetry collection, ‘Sipping Martinis under Mount Leinster’ is due from Magnus Grehn Förlag in the Summer of 2022.

“I got raptures once, and I saw God”: Shabine as Prophetic Shaman of Paradise in Derek Walcott’s “The Schooner Flight”, in Projections of Paradise: Ideal Elsewheres in Postcolonial Migrant Literature, ed. by Helga Ramsey-Kurz and Geetha Ganapathy-Doré (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011), pp. 199 – 216.  

Author of other poems in the following publications:

  • Burning Bush 2
  • Skylight 47
  • Fathers and what must be said
  • The Texas Review
  • Irish Pages
  • Wordlegs
  • The Irish Times
  • The Stony Thursday Book
  • The Honest Ulsterman
  • Orbis

Public Poetry Readings
Public reading on the medieval Irish poem Buile Suibhne at Carlow’s Visual Centre for Contemporary Art and the George Bernard Shaw Theatre (16 November 2014).

Public reading at Carlow’s Visual Centre for Contemporary Art and the George Bernard Shaw Theatre (July, 2014).

Radio Programme with local author John Mc Kenna as part of the Carlow Arts Festival (June, 2014).

Community Outreach

  • Elected Director of the Carlow Writer’s Co-operative at the AGM (2013, 2014).
  • Guest at poetry events around the country, from Café Fusion in Wexford, to Working
    Artists’ Studios, in Skibbereen, County Cork.
  • Developed a series of successful Creative Writing Workshops in collaboration with
    the Arts Office of Kilkenny County Council and Kilkenny County Library.
  • Delivered workshops in the libraries in Castlecomer, Thomastown, Graiguenamanagh
    and Kilkenny

Qualifications

B.A. Th., M.A. Th. (Pontifical University, Maynooth); M.A. (Maynooth University); Ph.D. (University of Glasgow)