Ethnology draws on the mystical cry for the dead of Cathy Galvin's Irish-speaking ancestors. Within an epic narrative she reclaims place, people and language, creating a bridge between our own times and a Connemara community on the margins of Europe.

Drawing on classic forms within literary and oral traditions, Ethnology becomes a love song for Connemara, witness to vivid encounters: between the living and the dead and between the poets, folklorists and ethnologists who have written about the West of Ireland for their own agendas. In this debut book-length collection, fragility and strength are finely balanced, focused on the ruins of an island cottage built by her great-grandfather. Here, Cathy Galvin locates both mourning, humour and joy. The poems give a vivid, original voice to the tradition of keening, of honouring the loss of those we love.

Cathy Galvin published three pamphlets, Black & Blue (2014), Rough Translation (2016) and Walking The Coventry Ring Road with Lady Godiva (2019), before her first full-length book of poetry, Ethnology: a love song for Connemara (Bloodaxe Books, 2026). She has been nominated for several awards including the Ilkley Poetry Prize, the Listowel Poetry Collection Prize (twice) and the Goldsmiths/ Spread the Word Life-Writing Prize, and is the recipient of a Hawthornden Fellowship, Heinrich Böll (Achill Island) residency and an Arts Council England DYCP award. She also edited Red, an anthology of new writing published by Waterstones. As a journalist she has worked as a senior editor for Newsweek and the Sunday Times. With roots in Coventry and Connemara, she lives near Bodmin Moor in Cornwall.