John McAuliffe

"The Kabul Olympics," writes Daisy Fried, is "a heartening, clarifying, beautiful book, because enormously intelligent and feeling. There are poems here about home, family, political situations, terrorist attacks, history: places where all these things converge. McAuliffe is superb at attending to the details while also managing the panoramic view." (Poetry)

"McAuliffe’s gift is to be mindful of elsewheres. He swerves to effect: his shrewd sideways and backwards glances count, pouring light on a subject from several directions simultaneously. Any given moment is likely to be underpinned by what went on before or what is to come. He knows the power of parallel universes." Kate Kellaway (Observer)

"Manchester is a central character here, its rooms and streets luminous, often ominous under the intensity of McAuliffe’s gaze. The Manchester Arena bombing is the incendiary centre in "City of Trees", tree pollen erupting in “slow green explosions”. Prophetic uncertainty shivers right through this subtly linked seamless collection, building to the final "Blown Away", a mere tent which the narrator failed to secure. But nothing is too insignificant for McAuliffe’s egalitarian, watchful eye". Martina Evans (The Irish Times)

John McAuliffe was born in Ireland in 1973. He won the RTE Poet of the Future Award in 2000, and moved to the UK in 2002. Since 2004, he has taught poetry at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester. He co-edits an online journal there, The Manchester Review, and also writes a regular poetry column for The Irish Times.

The Gallery Press publish "A Better Life" (shortlisted for a Forward Prize, 2002), "Next Door" (2007), "Of All Places" (PBS Recommendation and an Irish Times Book of the Year, 2011), "The Way In" (2015), which won the Michael Hartnett Award for Best Irish Collection that year, and "The Kabul Olympics" (2020).

"Is it possible to write about domestic happiness, or something that promises it, or the modest hope of it?" Sean O'Brien asks. "John McAuliffe seems to think so. At the centre of his excellent fourth collection, The Way In, home is to be found." (Poetry Ireland Review)

"Of All Places", wrote Colm Toibin, "displays an ability to write public poems about Ireland using tones filled with keen wit, and using cadences, forms and rhythms that have a timeless beauty and grace." (The Irish Times)