Dr Victoria Kennefick is a writer, poet, editor and teacher. She completed a PhD in English Literature at University College Cork and was a Fulbright Scholar at Emory University and Georgia College and State University. Her research on the short stories of Flannery O’Connor and Frank O’Connor was also funded by an IRCHSS Scholarship and a MARBL Fellowship. Her debut poetry collection, Eat or We Both Starve (Carcanet Press, 2021), won the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize and the Dalkey Book Festival Emerging Writer of the Year Award. It was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Costa Poetry Book Award, Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry and the Butler Literary Prize. It was a Book of the Year in The Guardian, The Irish Times, The Sunday Independent and The White Review, and was also selected as one of The Telegraph's Best Poetry Books to Buy 2021. Her second collection, Egg/Shell (Carcanet Press, 2024) was a Poetry Book Society Choice for Spring 2024 and won the Farmgate Café National Poetry Award 2025. It was also BBC Poetry Extra Book of the Month for March as well as a Book of the Year in The Telegraph, The Sunday Independent and The Poetry Society UK. In 2023 she was an Arts Council of Ireland/UCD Writer in Residence as well as Poet in Residence at the Yeats Society Sligo. In 2024, she was Cork County Council Arts Office Writer in Residence. In 2025, she was appointed as the Arts Council of Ireland/Trinity College Dublin Writer Fellow.
1 - How did your first book or pamphlet change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first pamphlet, White Whale, was published by Southword Editions as a winner of the Cork International Poetry Festival Fool for Poetry Chapbook Prize and it felt like a miracle that it was chosen to be published and even more so that its launch was part of the festival. It felt like I had finally reached a long-held goal – to publish a book – no matter how slight – and to be a tangible part of the literary conversation I had been following since I was a child and first started to read. Poetry was always my first love – an instinctual language that I recognised and responded to immediately. I think, without putting it too sentimentally, that I felt like I was finally home and a real part of my true community – the poetry community. This validation, and the success and reception of the pamphlet gave me confidence and provided many unexpected opportunities to further publish my work and to hone my craft. My debut collection, Eat or We Both Starve, was published by Carcanet Press in 2021 during the death throes of the pandemic. It was a very weird experience launching it from my mother’s kitchen over Zoom, but I wouldn’t change it for the world now – I think people were available and open to read it as it seemed to just hit at the right moment. It won the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize and the Dalkey Literary Festival Emerging Writer of the Year – as well as being shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Costa Prize for Best Poetry Collection. This success catapulted my words into the wider world and as a result I was able to take a career break from my job as a secondary school teacher (which I am still on!) and work as a writer, poet, mentor and freelance creative writing teacher full-time – my lifelong dream! I am so grateful to all who made this possible and particularly to the Arts Council of Ireland who have supported me financially and creatively every step of my writing career to date. My more recent work is my second poetry collection, Egg/Shell (Carcanet Press, 2024) and it is a very different animal in many respects – particularly as I explore more complex themes and allow myself to experiment more with language and form. It is a more intense book – and a softer one, I think, than my debut.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I loved reading everything as a child – voraciously and without much discernment to begin with – but poetry seemed to be to be the most honest and uncompromising of the genres. I was a very intense, sensitive and curious child – I always felt so very weird being human – being a person constantly confused me (it still does, to be honest!) and poetry seemed to be where people truly and intelligently explored this experience in a way that was entirely vulnerable and utterly frank. It very quickly became the place where I would go find answers to my trickiest questions. There was room to be curious and demanding there! I remember finding out very early on that ‘stanza’ was the Italian word for ‘room’ and this brought me great joy. This poetic language was one I innately understood and felt at home in – these rooms were my rooms. Then I started making small word buildings myself.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
There is no one way! I am in constant flux in my writing process as I am in everything in my life. I am learning still to accept and appreciate this flow. I feel like I am always writing – every day a poem or a line or the feeling of a poem visits me in some way, shape or form. Mostly, I succeed in writing it down on the notes app on my phone or recording it – rarely I forget or can’t access something to record it on so there are some poems that are lost and still floating around hoping for a chance to be caught again – maybe by another poet who is more aligned to the moment! After a period of gathering these snippets and fragments, recording and paintings, articles and songs, I can feel the book coming together because all of these parts start to reach out to one another in some way that I can’t logically explain – they attach on different levels – and often they might grow new offshoots or others might wilt and die. Then it is time to immerse myself. I usually do a week-long retreat once a year – or I try to – and then I write for seven days solid – the bones of the book. It is a frenzy, and I am not very sociable or coherent during this phrase. I hold the feeling. I must live it and let it live through me. I try to let the document sit for a week or so after that and then begin my revisions which are vigorous and lengthy. I use a different brain for that process, and it takes anything from a month to six months depending on the quality of my focus and the busyness of my life. When that part is complete, I finally send it to my wonderful, astute and very sensitive editor at Carcanet Press, John McAuliffe.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
Since publishing my first book, I write short pieces, but I am always conscious of a larger body of work that it may or may not be a part of. I love thinking about the book and how these little fragments will form part of a whole – while also being whole in and of themselves – it’s very organic, don’t you think?
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I do enjoy readings, in my own way. I find enormous peace and focus on the stage reading from the page. It’s like time stops and everything is clear. The more social before and after aspects are a wee bit trickier, I must admit but I think that’s understandable given the nature of the poet brain – always working, always analysing, always feeling – I am totally exhausted and spent after events and yet I am constantly surprised and vexed by this!
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
Yes, I have all the concerns, all the time! Now I am interested in being honest and open on the page, but not necessarily being factual. That’s an important distinction. I am also fascinated by how the structure of the poem allows for vulnerability but also has an inbuilt protector for the writer. I often wonder if poetry is actually a boundary between me and other people rather than the connective force I think it to be.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Personally speaking, I feel my vocation is to ‘say the thing’ – that which is difficult or shameful or impossible for people to express in their own lives. Maybe a poet is a channel of some sort? I also feel it is my calling to honour the complexity and nuance of life’s interior experience and find some kind of acceptance and healing through creating new poems that externalise this in some way. Formally, I think poetic structures, the use of white space, language choices, register etc. have so much to offer in how we process thoughts, emotions and intense feeling of all kinds.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
The key is to find the right editor and to be very aware of your own ego – so for me working with an outside editor is essential when it comes to the near-final stages of book making.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
It doesn’t matter what you do, it only matters that you do it.
10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
This is a dangerous question! My only routine now is that I don’t have one and there is no such thing as a typical day for me. I am in two minds about whether this is a problem or not, but perhaps I would benefit with some kind of balance in this regard – this is always a work-in-progress!
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I go to visual art, the work of other writers and poets, and walking in nature – particularly by the sea – always nourishes and soothes me.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Salty sea spray.
13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Absolutely yes – visual art. Walking through an art gallery is like walking through a poetry collection for me.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
There are so, so many – and their importance waxes and wanes depending on what I am writing about – anyone from Patrick Kavanagh to Miranda July, from Ntozake Shange to Mariana Spada, Gustav Parker Hibbett to Sylvia Plath
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Everything and nothing.
16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
A visual artist or a very earnest and hammy actor.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
There was nothing else.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Great
is such a weighty value – most recently, I loved the adaptation Nosferatu
(Eggers, 2024) because its unrelenting bleak tension and flat intensity (a
compliment) made me feel so extremely calm.
This year I’ve hugely enjoyed Open, Heaven (Cape, 2025) by Seán
Hewitt.
19 - What are you currently working on?
Too many things but also just enough. The new poetry collection is percolating
and there are also some essays brewing. It is an exciting time. I don’t
honestly know what I will write next.
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