Efacis Enda Wyley was born in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, and she holds an M.A in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. She currently lives in Dublin and is an experienced primary teacher and member of Aosdána, the Irish affiliation of artists.
She has published six collections of poetry with Dedalus Press; The Painter on his Bike, (2019), Borrowed Space, New and Selected Poems (2014), To Wake to This (2009), Poems for Breakfast (2004), Socrates in the Garden (1998), and Eating Baby Jesus (1993). She was the inaugural winner of the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize, Australia, and in 2014 she was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship for her poetry.
Wyley’s poetry has been widely broadcast, translated and anthologised including in The Harvard Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry, Femmes d'Irlande en Poésie, 1973-2013;Anthologie bilingue, (ed. Clíona Ní Ríordáin), Lines of Vision, The National Gallery of Ireland.
She has collaborated with other artists on many arts projects in Ireland including The People’s Acorn/ Dearcán na nDaoine, with sculptor Rachel Joynt for Áras an Uachtaráin, the Official Residence of the President of Ireland. With the artist Anita Groener she also made the film-poem Home, for Bealtaine Festival. The music was performed by Colm Mac an Iomaire, and the film-poem toured arts venues and galleries throughout Ireland in 2018
Wyley’s books for children include I Won’t Go to China! And The Silver Notebook, O’Brien Press. Her poetry for children has been included in anthologies such as Something Beginning with P (O’Brien Press) and Once Upon A Place, (ed. Eoin Colfer, Little Island).
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Listen to Enda Wyley read and talk about the title poem of her new collection, The Painter on his Bike, Dedalus Press.
(c) Photo: Irish Times / Matt Kavanagh
