Vona Groarke's Shale (1994) announced a richly gifted poet. Selected Poems draws on that first collection and five books since which, between them, have received several awards: two have been Recommendations of the Poetry Book Society. Noted as 'adroit, precise and intellectually daring' (Warwick Review), her poems are also haunting and candidly sensual. In a talk at the Irish Arts Center in New York Nick Laird extolled a voice 'always modulated beautifully, assured and daring, often wry, (that) in the end keeps faith with the world'. Her work has been recognized as one of Irish poetry's 'most consistently satisfying voices' (Agenda) and 'among the best Irish poets writing today' (Poetry Ireland Review). Selected Poems presents more than twenty years' work by one of the finest poets of her generation.

One of Ireland's leading poets Vona Groarke was born in the Irish Midlands in 1964. Collections with The Gallery Press include Shale (1994), Other People's Houses (1999), Flight (2002, winner of the Michael Hartnett Award), Juniper Street (2006), Spindrift (2009) and X (2014). In 2016 she published a personal essay, Four Sides Full, a fusion of ideas, history and memoir. In 2008 her version of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill's eighteenth-century Irish poem was published as Lament for Art O'Leary. A member of Aosdána (the Irish Association to honour artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the arts in Ireland), Vona Groarke teaches in the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester.