Mark Ward

Mark Ward is the author of the collection Nightlight (Salmon Poetry, 2023) as well as five chapbooks, the most recent of which are the interactive sonnet Faultlines (voidspace, 2024) and I Was a Teenage Exorcist (Chaps Poetry, 2024). A three-time Arts Council of Ireland awardee, his work has been featured widely at home and abroad, including in the landmark anthology Queering the Green: Post-2000 Queer Irish Poetry (ed. Paul Maddern, Lifeboat Press), and in March 2025, his poem ‘Romantic Landscape’ was displayed in Cork as part of their Poetry in the Park series. He is the founding editor of Impossible Archetype, an international journal of LGBTQ+ poetry, now in its ninth year. Forthcoming books include Masters, an ekphrastic chapbook responding to dead queer male painters’ work, from The Emma Press in October 2025 and a second full-length collection, Real Estate, which will be published by Salmon Poetry in May 2026.

Mark Ward’s attendance at West Cork Literary Festival is supported by the Irish Writers Centre