Ruth Carr ​was born in Belfast where she lives and works as a freelance tutor and editor, concerned with raising the profile of women in literature. In 1985 she edited ​ The Female Line, the first anthology of women’s writing to come out of Northern Ireland (Northern Ireland Women’s Rights Movement, Belfast, relaunched as an e-book with herpress in 2016). She compiled the section on contemporary women’s fiction in ​ The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing IV/V (Cork University Press, 2001), was a co-editor for ​ The Honest Ulsterman​ poetry magazine​ ​ for about 14 years, and she has written an essay on Word of Mouth Women’s Poetry Collective (of which she was a founding member) in the recently published Female Lines ​ (New Island, 2017).   Her poetry has appeared in a wide range of anthologies and journals and she has read to audiences in places including Derry/ Londonderry, Strabane, Armagh, Dublin, London, Lancaster, Moscow, Oslo and of course, her home city, Belfast. She has published three collections: ​There is a House​ and ​The Airing Cupboard (Summer Palace Press, 1999 & 2008) and most recently, ​ Feather and Bone (Arlen House, December 2017).  "[Her] poems combine a disciplined craftsman’s feel for imagery and rhythm with personal qualities that I can only sum up with inadequate clichés like warmth and deeply-felt humanity​."​ Louis Muinzer.

About her last collection she said: "Mary Ann McCracken was born in Belfast in 1770, Dorothy Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth in 1771. Their paths never crossed yet their lives shared similar preoccupations and activities - reading, letter writing, enthusiasm for the ideas of The  Enlightenment, the education of the poor, the abolition of slavery and lifelong devotion to a  more conspicuous brother. In writing about them I have kept to the facts - where there are facts - but I have drawn on my imagination to respond to these two women’s deep and lengthy lives. There are lots of gaps - this is not a biographical history. These poems are essentially a personal response to two remarkable women."

 

Photo courtesy of Malachi O'Doherty