AFRIC MCGLINCHEY

About Afric

 

 

Afric is an Irish-born poet, reviewer, freelance book editor and mentor for the Munster Literature Centre. An alumna of Rhodes University and the University of Cape Town, she spent her formative years and early adulthood in Zambia and Zimbabwe. She also lived for a time in Paris, London and Spain. Afric is now based in West Cork, Ireland, her home since 1999. 

 

Her début The lucky star of hidden things, is predominantly based around her African upbringing. Her second collection, Ghost of the Fisher Cat is set loosely in medieval Paris. Both have been widely reviewed, and reviews and more details are available on the Salmon Poetry site.

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Here's an Italian review.

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A surrealist chapbook, Invisible Insane, was published by SurVision in 2019 and is available here.

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In 2021, Broken Sleep Books (UK) published her hybrid childhood memoir, Tied to the Wind, available here.

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Her work has been published in numerous journals and anthologies, most recently in Magma, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry International and the Oxford Climate Change Anthology. Poems have been featured in Poethead, the Rochford Street Review, and Numero Cinq and broadcast on RTÉ’s Poetry Programme and Arena. Her work has been translated into Italian, Irish, Spanish, Polish and Romanian.

 

Both of her collections have been translated into Italian and published in Italy by Casa Editric L’Arcolaio.  

 

Some of her reviews can be viewed online, here: The Dublin Review of Books and Sabotage Reviews.

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Awards

Named in Poetry Ireland Review  (Issue 118) as one of Ireland’s Rising Poets, Afric has been awarded the Hennessy Award for Emerging Poetry, the Northern Liberties Poetry Prize (USA), and the Poets Meet Politics Prize. She has been nominated for Pushcart, Best of the Net and Forward awards, and has been placed or highly commended in numerous other competitions, including the Bridport, Magma, Oxford Sci-Po and Saboteur awards.  

 

In 2013, Afric was invited to perform at Poetry Africa in Durban, and the following year, she was one of the seven writers chosen to represent Ireland on the Italo-Irish Literary Exchange, thanks to support from the Irish Writers Centre. 

 

Poetry Ireland gave her the opportunity to read at the Iowa Festival in 2016. She has received several funding awards from the Arts Council of Ireland, including Agility Awards and two Literature Bursaries. A poetry collection is forthcoming, and Afric is currently working on a second memoir.

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