Mary Dorcey

Mary Dorcey (born October 1950) is an Irish author and poet, feminist, and LGBT+ activist. Her work is known for centring feminist and queer themes, specifically lesbian love and lesbian eroticism.

She has published ten books, including seven poetry collections, a collection of short stories, a novel, and one novella. Her latest book, a poetry collection entitled Life Holds Its Breath, was published in 2022 by Salmon Poetry.

She has won five major awards for literature from the Arts Council of Ireland in 1990, 1995, 1999, 2005, and 2008. In 2010, following nominations by the poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and novelist Eugene McCabe, Dorcey was elected to the Irish Academy of Writers and Artists, Aosdána.

Her poems are taught on both the Irish Junior Certificate English curriculum and on the British O Level English curriculum.

Biography

Dorcey was born in County Dublin, Ireland. She has lived and worked in the United States, England, France, Spain, and Japan, and now resides in County Wicklow.

Dorcey was the first Irish woman to address gay and lesbian lives in poetry and fiction. She joined the Irish Women's Liberation Movement in 1972 and was a founding member of Irish Women United, Women for Radical Change, and The Movement for Sexual Liberation. She came out in 1974. Her first collection of poetry, Kindling, was published in London, in 1987 by the feminist publishing house Onlywomen Press. She has since published six additional poetry collections, a novel, a novella, and a collection of short stories.

Critical response

Dorcey's writing is noted as the first work of Irish literature to portray romantic and erotic relationships between women. Examples include A Noise from the Woodshed (1989), and Biography of Desire (1997). Her themes include the cathartic role of the outsider, political injustice, and the nature of the erotic power to subvert and transfigure.

Her work has been performed on radio and television, and her stories have been dramatized for radio (BBC) and for stage productions in Ireland, Britain, and Australia: In the Pink (The Raving Beauties) and Sunny Side Plucked. Her stories have been dramatized for radio and stage productions in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Australia. In March 2023, her poem "Summer" was broadcast on the London Underground to mark St Patrick's Day.

She is currently a research associate at Trinity College Dublin, where she conducted contemporary English literature seminars and led a creative writing workshop during her ten years as a writer in residence at the Centre for Gender and Women's Studies. Dorcey also taught Creative Writing courses at the University College Dublin's School for Justice.