Enda Coyle-Greene’s work has been published widely in Ireland and elsewhere. Her three collections of poetry are: Snow Negatives (2007) winner of the 2006 Patrick Kavanagh Award, Map of the Last (2013) and Indigo, Electric, Baby (2020) all from the Dedalus Press. Her work has also been broadcast on radio and filmed. Two of her poems were commissioned for permanent display in Skerries, Co. Dublin, where she lives, and at University Hospital Limerick. She holds an MA (Dist.) from the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University, Belfast and is co-founder and artistic director of Fingal Poetry Festival.
Words on Editing Rhyme Rag
I’m wary of making hasty judgements on most things, including poems, and so I read all of the poems submitted for Rhyme Rag several times before I arrived at my final choices. A poem can offer depths and surprises not always visible on a first encounter, and I felt that it was only fair to allow these poems to do just that. In an age when technology snags our attention at every turn and machines are supposed to be the easy answer to everything, I was more aware than ever of the singular human concentration and effort that went into every word put down on every page. The standard of poems submitted was so high that choosing just sixteen poems was incredibly difficult. As someone who caught the creative bug while at school, and was always especially fascinated by poetry, writing has always been there for me. I hope it will be the same for all of these young poets who trusted me with their work.
It has been an honour and a pleasure to edit this year’s Rhyme Rag.