Stephen SEXTON

SEXTON Stephen

Poems

The Dancers

Stephen Sexton’s debut collection, If All the World and Love Were Young, detailed how a video game helped him come to terms with grief. The Collection of poems, published by Penguin in August 2019, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection.

Stephen also wrote a pamphlet of poems, Oils, published by the Emma Press in 2014, which was the Poetry Book Society’s Winter Pamphlet Choice of that year. He was the winner of the UK National Poetry Competition in 2016, and an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2018

The author from Co Down has his work published in leading journals in the UK and Ireland such as Granta, Poetry London and Poetry Ireland Review, as well as a number of American publications, including POETRY and The Virginia Quarterly Review.

Poems were featured in The Future Always Makes Me So Thirsty: New Poets from the North of Ireland, edited by Sinéad Morrissey and Stephen Connolly. His work has also been featured in Switching Off Darkness: Young Irish Poets, an anthology of poems by Irish writers in Greek translation, published by Vakxikon Publications in 2019. He has contributed to documentaries for BBC Radio Four, including We Will Arise and Go Now, and Driving Bill Drummond, and has featured on BBC Radio Three’s The Essay.

Stephen has performed his work at numerous venues in Ireland, the UK and international festivals in Athens, Boston, New York and San Francisco and he is now a lecturer in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University in Belfast.

(c) photo: ONIEB

  • MuntPunt
  • Leeuwarden Europan Capital of Culture 2018
  • Permanent Representation of the Republic of Estonia to the European Union
  • Embassy of the Republic of Latvia to the Kingdom of Belgium
  • Embassy of the Republic of Estonia in Belgium
  • Embassy of Andorra
  • Czech Centre Brussels
  • Instituto Cervantes Brussels
  • Lithuanian Culture Institute
  • Austrian Cultural Forum
  • Mission of the Faroes to the EU
  • Yunus Emre Institute
  • Austrian Presidency of the Council of the European Union
  • Etxepare Euskal Institutua
  • Embassy of Ireland
  • Commission européenne
  • Scottish Government EU Office
  • It Skriuwersboun
  • LUCA School of Arts
  • Embassy of Sweden
  • Greenlandic Writers Association
  • Spain Arts and Culture - Cultural and Scientific Service of the Embassy of Spain in Belgium
  • Ville de Bruxelles
  • Camões Instituto de Cooperação e Língua Portugal
  • Orfeu - Livraria Portuguesa
  • Istituto Italiano di Cultura
  • Danish Cultural Institute
  • Romanian Cultural Institute in Brussels
  • Hungarian Cultural Institute Brussels
  • Greenland Representation to the European Union
  • Swedish Institute
  • Ambassade du Luxembourg à Bruxelles
  • Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity
  • LOFT 58
  • Permanent Representation of the Republic of Slovenia to the European Union
  • Polish Institute - Cultural Service of the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Brussels
  • Permanent Representation of Lithuania to the EU
  • Vlaams-Nederlands Huis deBuren