Scott McKendry is a poet-critic from Belfast. He’s currently a Lecturer of Practice at Queen’s University Belfast, where he’s writing a monograph on lesser-known northern poetry – both recently-published work and that of critically neglected twentieth-century figures – exploring aesthetic discourse, literary networking and factionalism, canon-building, and the politics of cultural exclusivity. McKendry’s chapter on language and memory in the Ulster ballad tradition was included in The Oxford Handbook of Irish Song, 1100–1850 (Oxford University Press, 2023). He is a recipient of the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award and his pamphlet, Curfuffle (The Lifeboat), was Poetry Book Society Autumn Choice 2019. His first full collection, titled GUB, Corsair (Little, Brown) was published in February 2024.

(c) photo by Francisco Dapena