Joseph Woods

Joseph Woods is a poet, journalist and editor. He was Director of Poetry Ireland from 2001 to 2013, and during his tenure edited numerous works, including the anthology Our Shared Japan.

Woods is an award-winning author of four poetry collections. His debut, Sailing to Hokkaido, won the prestigious Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award and, and together with his second, Bearings, was published together in a single volume by Dedalus entitled Cargo in 2010.  Ocean Letters (2011), was translated into Hungarian and was awarded the Irodalmi Jelen Prize. Monsoon Diary, his latest collection, was published in 2018 and inspired partly by his time spent in Myanmar.

He is a recipient of the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship.

Widely travelled, Joseph moved to Myanmar in the lead up to the democratic elections and now lives in Harare, Zimbabwe with his family.

Joe is working on a biography of Maurice Collis, a contemporary of Orwell and a much published author of fiction and non-fiction based in and inspired by Burma. Collis, though largely forgotten in the West, had such a revered and respected reputation he was as famous as William Dalrymple is today.