Macdara Woods was born in Dublin in 1942 and has published a number of collections with the Dedalus Press including his Selected Poems (1996) and The Nightingale Water and Knowledge in the Blood (2002). His work has been translated widely, into some 12 languages, and has has been set to music and perfomed by artists such as Anúna and Bonita Hill. A member of Aosdána, the Irish Arts Council's affiliation which recognises outstanding contributions to the arts in Ireland, Woods is also one of the founder editors of the long-running literary journal Cyphers, along with poets Pearse Hutchinson, Leland Bardwell, and his wife the poet Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. His latest collection of poems is The Cotard Dimension (2011) while Collected Poems appeared in September 2012.
Of Collected Poems, Mary Shine Thompson in The Irish Times writers: "This courageous book, which distills nearly five decades of verse, has no truck with poetic fashions… Poems are enigmatic, perplexing, mysterious, sometimes inscrutable, but richly rewarding... [Woods'] taut vigilance hovers over personal and familial histories and the ever-present subject of poetry... Collected Poems celebrates Woods' profound committment to his independent art. In it, the tumblers of his locks fall into place."
