Kathy D’Arcy is an autistic poet, academic and feminist activist from Cork in Ireland, who migrated to Iceland in 2020.

Poetry:

Her poetry collections are Encounter (Lapwing 2010) and The Wild Pupil (Bradshaw 2012).

Her poetry has featured in Irish literature journals, festivals and media, as well as on Ireland’s flagship arts radio programme Arena.

In Iceland she has been published in the Ós Pressan journal and has performed her work at various reading events and academic conferences.

Her poetry website is www.kathydarcy.com 

Academia:

Kathy completed a Creative Writing PhD, for which she received an Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholarship, in 2019.

Her academic publications include chapters in Irish Literature, Feminist Perspectives (Carysfort Press, edited by Coughlan and O’Toole, 2008) and Austerity and Irish Women’s Writing and Culture, 1980–2020 (Routledge Press, edited by Flynn and Murphy, 2022). 

In 2023 Kathy was awarded an Icelandic Research Fund Postdoctoral Scholarship for her project AnFinn, which will investigate the creation of neurodiversity-optimised creative collaborative spaces. 

Activism:

As a feminist activist for many years, Kathy led the Cork branch of the ‘Together for Yes’ campaign to legalise abortion in Ireland by repealing the 8th amendment to the Irish Constitution.

She created the 2018 edited collection Autonomy to raise funds and awareness for that campaign.

From 2017 she participated in the Fired! Campaign which raised awareness of forgotten Irish women poets.

In 2020 she founded the #WakeUpIrishPoetry and SAOI movements, all of which seek to challenge inequalities and sexual exploitation in Irish poetry.  

Other Roles:

Kathy has also worked as a doctor, a community, family and youth support worker, a creative writing teacher, an editor, a community health advocate, and in other areas: like many late-diagnosed autistic people, she gained an unusually diverse range of skills and experiences in the search for a work environment she could tolerate.