Bio

Paul Maddern was born in Bermuda of Irish and Cornish parentage. In addition to Bermuda, he has lived in Colorado, San Francisco, London and, since 2000, in Co Down, Ireland.  He has a BA (Hons) in Film from Queen's University Ontario, and an MA and PhD from the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen's University Belfast. He taught at the Seamus Heaney Centre and was Teaching Fellow in Creative Writing with the University of Leeds for three years. He is now the owner-operator of the River Mill Writers Retreat in South Down.

 

Paul has four publications with Templar Poetry (Derbyshire), the latest being The Tipping Line (2018) and for Lifeboat Press (Belfast) he edited the landmark anthology Queering the Green: Post-2000 Queer Irish Poetry (2021). His debut collection, The Beachcomber's Report, was shortlisted for the 2011 Shine/Strong award for Best First Collection (Ireland), and he is the first poet to win three Bermuda Government Literary Awards - presented every five years for work published in that time frame. He is the recipient of several Arts Council of Northern Ireland grants, and in 2023 he was a James Merrill House Writing Fellow.  His poem, 'Effacé', is studied on the Northern Irish GCSE syllabus.