In 2018, the Newman Fellowship Programme was honoured to receive a donation from the John Pollard Foundation, for the first Newman Fellowship in Creativity. Generous opportunities like this ensure that the Programme continues to extend and diversify its reach in the arts and cultural sectors. The John Pollard Newman Fellowship in Creativity was awarded to the writer and poet, Dr Julie Morrissy.

Dr Julie Morrissy is an Irish poet, academic, critic, and activist. She is a recipient of the Next Generation Artist Award from the Arts Council and her first full collection Where, the Mile End (2019) is published by Book*hug (Canada) and tall-lighthouse (UK &Ireland). Morrissy earned her PhD in Poetry and Poetics in Ulster University and she holds graduate degrees in Creative Writing (UCD) and Literature (Ryerson University), and a bachelor’s degree in Law from UCD.

Dr Morrissy’s poetry practice is concerned with forms that push the boundaries of the Irish literary tradition, and Irish experience more generally. It is situated within a feminist tradition of long-form poetry, drawing on both lyric and documentary impulses. Her work increasingly blends the lyric mode with legal, archival and other sources to explore issues from a variety of perspectives. This fellowship will allow Dr Morrissy to formulate new methods to present her poetry off the page by engaging with technology, including sound, graphics, and animation. This phonotextual poetry will contribute in new and unique ways to contemporary Irish literature and broaden possibilities for audience and engagement in poetry.