Joining us as a special guest of the Policromia International Poetry Festival, Laoighseach Ní Choistealbha is a poet whose work resonates deeply with themes of identity, embodiment, and the transformative power of art.
Raised in Laggan, East Donegal and now living in the Connemara Gaeltacht, Laoighseach writes exclusively in Irish, weaving together folklore, mythology, and contemporary themes and concerns.
Laoighseach was educated at St. Patrick’s School, Murlog, and at the Royal and Prior Comprehensive School in Raphoe. It was in secondary school that she first developed an interest in the Irish language, where her teacher wrote “Laoighseach Ní Choistealbha” as the Irish translation of “Lucy Costello” on her class notebook.
She has been living in Galway since 2012, where she first moved to pursue a degree in Arts (Irish, Creative Writing, and History), and she has not left the county since. After spending ten years in the city, moving around different areas she now resides in Carna, Connemara.
She holds an MA in Modern Irish, and she is currently working on her PhD research. Her research focuses on contemporary Irish-language poetry and theories of ecocriticism, and she hopes to complete it in 2025. The work of the poet Biddy Jenkinson is her special interest.
Her poems have been published in various journals over the years (Éigse Éireann, An Capall Dorcha, Comhar, Aneas, etc.). She won her first prize for an Irish-language poem in 2013 in a local competition in Ballybofey, the Frances Browne Poetry Competition. The most recent prize she received was the Foras na Gaeilge award from the Writers’ Week in Listowel for the poem “I dTeach na Teanga” (“In the House of the Language”). This poem was written in honor of her ancestors in Donegal who were recorded as Irish speakers in the 1911 census. The language was not passed down to the generations that followed. Through her academic and poetic work, this poet wishes to reclaim the lost heritage of her ancestors.
“Solas Geimhridh agus Dánta Eile” (Winter Light and Other Poems) is her first poetry collection (Barzaz, 2023), and her second collection, “Mainistir na Feola” (Monastery of the meat) is forthcoming with Barzaz (2025).
On top of her writing, she’s also part of the team behind the Republic of Conscience research project. The goal of said project is to collect and analyse the representations of International human rights issues and crises in modern Irish poetry.
This research project includes poems written in Irish or in English as well as poems translated into Irish or English in the 20th and 21st century. A significant output is the searchable database with details of relevant poems collected to date. Republic of Conscience is funded by the Irish Research Council Laureate Award scheme. The project is hosted at the National University of Ireland, Galway (2018 to 2022).
