Poet, playwright, fiction writer. She was born in Croom, Co Limerick, educated at St Mary’s, Limerick and National University of Ireland Cork and Maynooth.
Widely represented in anthologies such as: Ireland’s Women: Writings Past and Present (Eds. Katie Donovan, Norman Jeffares, Brendan Kennelly, 1994), Irish Poetry: Other Voices (Ed. Gabriel FitzMaurice, 1993), The White Page/An Bhilleog Bhan (Ed. Joan McBreen, 1999). She is also represented in the Field Day Anthology : Irish Women’s Writings and Traditions, 2002, in which is stated, “Clairr O’Connor shows a steadfast commitment to women’s writing and an interest in extreme existential conditions.”
Poetry: When You Need Them was published by Salmon, 1989. Medbh McGuckian said of it, “Each bright and fluid poem attains “the white of pearls” by soothing the raw, rough, reasonless edges in woman’s experience”.
Her second collection, Breast, was published by Astrolabe in 2004. Peter Sirr said, “Hard, clear-eyed, brave, these poems are uncompromising in their confrontation with physical pain and their fierce embrace of love and memory.”
Novels: Belonging (Attic, 1991, nominated for Irish Times/Aer Lingus Award), Love in Another Room (Marino, 1995, shortlisted for Book of the Year Award, Listowel, 1996).
Short stories in various collections and literary magazines, including Wildish Things: An Anthology of New Irish Women’s Writing (Ed. Ailbhe Smith, 1989) and Virgins and Hyacynths (Ed. Caroline Walsh, 1993). Phoenix Irish Short Stories (Ed. David Marcus,1996).
Stage plays: The Annulment, 1989 and Bodies, 1991.
Radio plays --among which, Getting Ahead, Costing the Coffins, Alma, Artemesia -- have been broadcast on B.B.C. Radio 4, R.T.E. and Radio Warsaw.
She gave the Michael Hartnett Memorial Lecture at Eigse Michael Harnett on Memory and Imagination, September 2006.
Recent poetry has appeared in: An Sionnach,Vol. 2, No. 1 & 2 (U.S.A.) Many Mountains Moving, Vol. V11, No.1 (U.S.A.), Poetry Ireland Review No. 88. Forthcoming: Cork Literary Review 2007, Clifden Arts Anthology 2007, Salmon Anthology 2007. She is working on her third poetry collection.