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Emma Must

 Poet

Home: Welcome
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Emma Must is a poet living in Belfast.

Her first full-length poetry collection, The Ballad of Yellow Wednesday, was published by Valley Press on 8 December 2022, and launched that evening at No Alibis Bookstore, Belfast. The collection reflects on her involvement in the anti-road protests at Twyford Down near Winchester in the early 1990s. 

(See Hampshire Chronicle, 25 January 2023; Resurgence & Ecologist, Jan/Feb 2023; Honest Ulsterman, February 2023; Irish Times, 9 March 2023)

Formerly a full-time environmental campaigner, in 2021 Emma completed a PhD in English (Creative Writing) at Queen’s University Belfast, focusing on ecopoetry and ecocriticism.


Her poem ‘Toll’ won the Environmental Defenders Prize in the 2019 Ginkgo Prize for Ecopoetry and is included in Out of Time: Poetry from the Climate Emergency, edited by Kate Simpson (Valley Press, 2021). Emma's debut poetry pamphlet, Notes on the Use of the Austrian Scythe (2015), won the Templar Portfolio Award.

Royalties from each sale of The Ballad of Yellow Wednesday will be donated to Transport Action Network and the A36/A350 Corridor Alliance.

Home: About

Summer 2023

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Belfast Book Festival

Thursday 15 June 2023, 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast

Greens, Tolls, Weeds: Zaffar Kunial, Jess McKinney & Emma Must

Alert to pressures of the climate crisis and contested grounds, but also the radical potential in gestures of naming, this year’s festival joins together three poets - Zaffar Kunial, Jess McKinney and Emma Must - whose recent publications crisscross endangered biomes with humane paths, unbinding landscape in voluptuously detailed poetry.

Book tickets here

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Seamus Heaney HomePlace, Bellaghy

Saturday 26 August 2023,

2.00pm - 5.30pm

'A Note That Pays You Back': Ten Poets Read and Reflect


To commemorate the tenth anniversary of the death of Seamus Heaney

with Alice Lyons, Niall Campbell, Emma Must, Martin Dyar & Zaffar Kunial (event continues on Sunday)


Book tickets here


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Spring 2023

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Solastalgia - Stories of accidental environmental activism in Northern Ireland. Solastalgia names the powerful emotions people feel when encountering and experiencing environmental damage, pollution and destruction. Join Sue-Ann Harding and Colin Shaw, accidental environmental activists living in Belfast, as they hold conversations with ordinary people, who, stirred by emotions, become activists, fighting for environmental respect, regard, protection and conservation. For anyone who has ever felt upset at the loss of even a small patch of nature, confounded by obscure government planning decisions or frustrated and furious at the corporate disregard for our fragile natural world, these stories of struggle offer solidarity. Produced by Stephen Mullen. Music by Sue-Ann Harding


Episode 6: Wolf Moon Part 1

In this episode, we talk with Emma Must, poet, Belfast resident and, in another time and place, an accidental activist. We begin by discovering our common appreciations of the city of Belfast, including Emma’s encounter with the tree-felling and vegetation removal along the River Lagan towpath. “Wolf Moon”, the poem she wrote in response to that devastation, is read here for the first time.


Episode 7: Wolf Moon Part 2

This episode continues the story of poet Emma Must and her part in the extensive and influential environmental activist campaign that worked tirelessly and imaginatively to prevent the carving of a motorway through the beautiful, mythical Twyford Down. We pick up the story in the summer of 1993, when a civil injunction is served against her and 76 others by the Ministry of Transport. We talk about what happened next and the consequences of breaking the civil injunction. Emma also reads from her recent poetry collection, The Ballad of Yellow Wednesday, including the statement she wrote for her court appearance in July 1993, before she was imprisoned.

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Cork World Book Fest

Wednesday 19 April, 8.00pm

The City Library, Grand Parade, Cork | Free

For the Love of the World: Eco Writing with Emma Must, Eoghan Daltun and Grace Wells, presented by Keith Payne


Things being so urgent, when you

open a book its leaves should take you

back to the forest they came from …

(‘Vestige’)

writes Grace Wells, as in tune with the environment around her as are each of these authors. Each as savage and passionate in their concern for the world we inhabit, and that perhaps, with their work and words, we might just make a better place for all living things.

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Cúirt International Festival of Literature 

Thursday 20 April, 4.30pm
Nuns Island Theatre, Galway

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Cúirt International Festival of Literature 

Saturday, 22 April 2023, 1.00pm
Town Hall Theatre, Galway

A Changing Climate: Writing, Activism and the Environment

Manchán Magan, Eoghan Daltun, Emma Must in conversation with Ceara Carney

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FORAGE

Leaves

Poetry Jukebox curation

with Maria McManus 

and Institute for Global Food Security 

at Queen's University Belfast

SUBMISSIONS CLOSED  22 January 2023

Ever since William Blake desired ‘To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower’, poets have been shedding light on things by looking closely at small natural objects.


This edition of Poetry Jukebox will be curated by poets Emma Must & Maria McManus. They welcome poems (one per poet) that connect with the theme of ‘Forage’: poems about leaves, flowers, berries, stones, moss; poems which pay detailed attention to the natural world around us.

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March 2023

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Free workshop, starting & finishing at 2 Royal Avenue, Belfast

Friday 24 March 2023, 11:00 – 13:00

Learn a new way to explore your city!

Join us for a walk round Belfast city centre, followed by a creative writing session to capture what you see, hear and experience in words.


You’ll be guided, step by step, by local poet Emma Must.


No prior experience needed and completely free to take part. Please wear comfortable shoes and bring a notebook and pen.

Open to all over 18, part of Belfast Festival of Learning.

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January/February 2023

Resurgence and Ecologist magazine 

Issue 336
Jan/Feb 2023

includes 'The Colour of its Voice', an article by Emma about writing her debut poetry collection, The Ballad of Yellow Wednesday (Valley Press, December 2022)

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Winter 2022

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The Book of Life:

Poems to Tide You Over 

edited by Grace Wells 

published by Dedalus Press

11 November 2022

 includes Emma's poem 'After Ophelia'

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Autumn 2022

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Vital Signs 

Poems of Illness and Healing

edited by Martin Dyar

published by Poetry Ireland

12 October 2022

Poems by Eavan Boland, Raymond Carver, Imtiaz Dharker, Vona Groarke, Seamus Heaney, Miroslav Holub, Patrick Kavanagh, Paula Meehan, Paul Muldoon, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and many others, including Emma's poem 'Sirens'.

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Spring / Summer 2022

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Banshee

Issue #13 

Spring/Summer 2022

Includes a new poem from Emma's forthcoming sequence
'The Finds'

What Northern Ireland Means to Me

edited by Allan Leonard and Julia Paul 

Published April 2022

Shared Future News

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Winter 2021 / 2022

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Under the Radar 

Issue 28

January 2022

Includes a new poem 'Bourne'.

What Northern Ireland Means to Me

Shared Future News

Podcast

8 January 2022

Presented by Julia Paul. Photos by Allan Leonard.

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The North

Issue 67

January 2022

Includes a new poem 'Scales'.

Trumpet

Issue 10

December 2021

Edited by Mícheál McCann. The issue features poets and poetry in Northern Ireland, 2021. Includes a new poem 'Gongoozling'.

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Hold Open the Door

Museum of Literature Ireland

Podcast

December 2021

Poets Bebe Ashley, Emma Must and Sinéad Morrissey in conversation. Presented by Professor Margaret Kelleher of UCD. Hold Open the Door is a commemorative anthology from the Ireland Chair of Poetry and UCD Press, published in 2020. 

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Out of Time: Poetry from the Climate Emergency

2021

'Toll', winner of the Environmental Defenders Prize in the 2019 Ginkgo Prize, is included in Out of Time: Poetry from the Climate Emergency, edited by Kate Simpson (Valley Press, July 2021). 

- an Autumn 2021 Poetry Book Society Special Commendation

- one of 'The best poetry books of 2021', Guardian, 6 December 2021

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Notebook and Pen

Contact

Thanks for submitting!

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Emma acknowledges the kind assistance and support of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

Author photos by Jonathan Ryder

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