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Dr Tara McEvoy, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. (Queen’s University Belfast)

Leverhulme Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellow

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Research and Teaching Interests

I am a Leverhulme Trust-funded Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of English, where my research focuses on the modern Irish literary anthology. The working title of my project is ‘Selective Memory: A Cultural History of the Modern Irish Literary Anthology’.

I completed my Ph.D. on the Northern Irish poetry of the 1960s and 1970s at Queen’s University Belfast, where my research was funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, under the auspices of the Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership. My doctoral thesis title is ‘Forms of Dissent in the work of James Simmons and Padraic Fiacc: poetry, politics, and publishing in Northern Ireland, 1960–1980’. Research completed during my Ph.D. course won the English Postgraduate Essay Prize (2020) and an essay completed during my M.A. course won the Irish Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand Postgraduate Essay Prize (2018).

I am a 2022 Ciaran Carson Writing and the City Fellow at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s, and was formerly a Project Assistant at the centre (2020), an O’Donnell Fellow at the University of Melbourne (2021), and Visiting Research Fellow (short-term) at Emory University, Atlanta (2018). I was awarded a Helen Ramsey Turtle Scholarship from Queen’s to facilitate travelling to Atlanta.

In 2019, I co-organised the three-day-long conference ‘Finished and Under Construction: Irish Poetry since 1998’ at Queen’s. I have also taught on a range of undergraduate courses and summer schools, and supervised an M.A. dissertation at the university. During my period of doctoral study, I undertook a work placement at the Seamus Heaney HomePlace, Bellaghy, and was subsequently employed as the centre’s Education Officer.

Further work experience includes 18 months working full-time as Press Officer for Pushkin Press, London, beginning in January 2021. I have since freelanced as a publicist on a number of campaigns for the press. I am a co-founder and editor of The Tangerine, a Belfast-based literary magazine, and my writing has appeared in publications including the Times Literary Supplement, Vogue, Poetry London, Frieze, the Guardian, Observer, Australian Book Review, Wire, Stinging Fly (online), and 3:AM. Essays are forthcoming in Winter Papers and the European Review of Books.

Recent and Forthcoming Publications

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

‘“Variation[s] on a popular tune”: The Poetry of James Simmons’, New Hibernia Review 26.2, Summer 2022, pp. 69–91
‘Sorry Not Sorry: The Vacuum, Satire, and (Non-)Apology’, English: the Journal of the English Association 70.271, Winter 2021, pp. 381–394
‘Bearing Witness to the Body: Medbh McGuckian’s The Flower Master and Paul Muldoon’s Quoof’, Australasian Journal of Irish Studies 18, October 2018, pp. 63–76

Book Chapters

‘“A little silence”: Recovering Lola Ridge’, Irish Women Poets Rediscovered: Readings in poetry from the eighteenth to the twentieth century (Cork University Press), October 2021, pp. 58–65
‘Formalism and Contemporary Women’s Poetry’, The Cambridge History of Irish Women’s Poetry (Cambridge University Press), June 2021, pp. 390–408
‘Voicing “the native tang of idiom”: Lagan Magazine, 1943–1946’, The Modern Short Story and Magazine Culture, 1880–1950 (Edinburgh University Press), March 2021, pp. 273–292
‘A “Handbook for Revolution”: James Simmons’s Honest Ulsterman’, A Magazine for Revolution? An Exploration of the Honest Ulsterman Magazine (Ulsterman Publications), January 2020, pp. 12–23