Moya Canon & Milena Williamson: Readings & Conversations

Join readings and conversations from a poet at the height of their career, and a poet at the beginning of theirs. 

We are delighted to welcome Moya Cannon and Milena Williamson, in discussion with Natasha Cuddington, about their poetic outputs, influences and journeys. 

Moya’s poetry follows sequences of discovery, from mountains and the sea, along with our responses to the endangered planet, are recurring themes that inspire many of her poems, while archaeology and geology also figure as gateways to a deeper understanding of our relationship with both our past and the natural world. Her Collected Poems (Carcanet 2021) compiles and connects over three decades of work ranging from her first book Oar (1990) to Donegall Tarantella (2019) providing a memorable sequence of discovery. 

Milena’s debut collection Into the Night that Flies So Fast (Dedalus Press 2024) offers exquisite intimacy and an electrifying entry into the poetic world. 

Moya Cannon is an Irish poet, born in Co. Donegal and now living in Dublin. Her Collected Poems was published in 2021 by Carcanet Press, Manchester, and her seventh collection, Bunting’s Honey, is forthcoming from Carcanet Press in 2025. She has been a recipient of the Brendan Behan Award and the O’Shaughnessy Award, was 2011 Heimbold Professor of Irish Studies at the University of Villanova, and is a member of Áosdána. She has read her poetry at festivals and universities in the Americas, North and South, in China, Japan and in many European countries.  Selections of her poetry have been published in Spanish, German and Portuguese. In her poems, history, archaeology, geology and prehistoric art serve as entry-points to an exploration of our relationship with our endangered natural world and with our past. She has a deep interest in music, particularly Irish traditional music, and often gives readings with musicians.

Milena Williamson is from Swarthmore, Pennsylvania and has lived in Belfast since 2017. She has a PhD in poetry from the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University Belfast. A recipient of the Eric Gregory Award, she published her debut pamphlet Charm for Catching a Train in 2022 from Green Bottle Press. Her writing about Bridget Cleary has been supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Ireland Chair of Poetry Trust. Into the Night that Flies So Fast is her debut poetry collection from Dedalus Press.

Natasha Cuddington was born in Saskatchewan, Canada and holds a BA in Creative Writing and English Literature and an MA in Irish Studies. A writing facilitator with experience in a variety of contexts, her translations, poetry, essays and reviews have appeared variously on both sides of the Atlantic. In 2017, she was announced as the recipient of the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary. Her début poetry collection, Each of us (our chronic alphabets) was published by Arlen House (2018). With Ruth Carr, she co-edited Her Other Language: Northern Irish Women Writers Address Domestic Violence and Abuse (Arlen House, 2020).