Belfast Invites: Scott McKendry & Rachael Allen in conversation

Belfast Invites: a mini-series in which Belfast-based writers are asked who they’d like to have a conversation with.  

For this edition we are pleased to welcome Belfast-based poet Scott McKendry who has invited Rachael Allen, author of two poetry collections, to join him on the stage.

Scott’s debut collection Gub (Hachette) reconfigures visions of mourning, class alienation and aesthetic turmoil forming a new voice out of Belfast. Rachael’s recently published God Complex offers visions of poetic disintegration setting the collapse of a relationship within global degradation offering a book vibrating with urgency and feeling. 

Join Rachael and Scott for an insightful conversation on their poetry, its influences and form. 

Scott McKendry is from North Belfast. He was the recipient of the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award 2019 and his debut pamphlet, Curfuffle (The Lifeboat), was the Poetry Book Society's Autumn Choice for 2019. His work has been included in several major anthologies and in top-tier poetry journals on both sides of the Irish Sea and the Atlantic. After working for the best part of a decade as an electrician, Scott returned to education in 2011. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Trinity College Dublin where he is working on a critical monograph exploring taste, canon and identity in contemporary poetry. In addition to his work as a poet and critic, Scott writes personal essays about art and ideology in the wake of the Trouble'. Gub is his debut Poetry collection.

Rachael Allen is the author of Kingdomland and God Complex, both published by Faber. She works as an editor and lecturer.