Paul Maddern (Bermuda/Ireland) read for the Hewitt Society in Carnlough for the 2008 Spring School and was scheduled to read at the 2020 John Hewitt International Summer School, alongside Anne-Marie Fyfe.
Paul was born in Bermuda of Irish and Cornish stock. He received a BA(Hons) in Film from Queen’s University, Ontario, and then briefly joined the Colorado Ballet as an apprentice dancer. He worked in catering in San Francisco and London, moving to Northern Ireland in 2000. He returned to university in 2004, obtaining a Creative Writing MA (Poetry) from the Seamus Heaney Centre, QUB, and a PhD from the School of English. He was Creative Writing Fellow with the University of Leeds for three years and is now the owner of The River Mill (www.the-river-mill.co.uk), a writing retreat in South Down. He served previously on the Advisory Board of the Seamus Heaney Centre and is a Committee and Board Member of the John Hewitt Society.
He has four publications with Templar Poetry: “Kelpdings” (2009, winner of the Templar Poetry Pamphlet Competition); “The Beachcomber’s Report” (2010, winner of a Bermuda Government Literary Award and shortlisted for the Shine/Strong Award for Best First Collection); “Pilgrimage” (2017, winner of a Bermuda Government Literary Award); and “The Tipping Line” (2018). He was included in “New Poets from the North of Ireland” (Blackstaff, 2016) edited by Stephen Connolly and Sinéad Morrisey, and his poem, ‘Effacé’, is included on the Northern Irish GCSE syllabus. He is currently editing an anthology of poetry by contemporary queer Irish writers, to be published by Lifeboat Press (Belfast).