About Cherry Smyth

Cherry Smyth is an Irish poet and writer, born in Ballymoney, County Antrim and raised in Portstewart. She has written one novel, four collections of poetry, a poetry pamphlet as well as a book, essays and reviews on contemporary visual arts. She has also published short fiction.

Her latest collection, One Mountain: Sold, Arlen House Press, 2025, outlines the ecological threat to a mountain in County Tyrone by an American gold mining company. Previous poetry collections Famished, 2019 and Test, Orange, 2012 are available from Pindrop Press. Copies of One Wanted Thing, 2006 and When the Lights Go Up, 2001, Lagan Press, are available from the author.

Cherry Smyth's debut novel Hold Still was published Holland Park Press in 2013 (copies available from the author).

Cherry Smyth's anthology of women prisoners' writing A Strong Voice in a Small Space, Cherry Picking Press, 2002, won the Raymond Williams Community Publishing Award in 2003.

She also writes for visual art magazines: Art Monthly, Modern Painters and Art Review. She has written essays on Jane and Louise Wilson, Orla Barry, Salla Tykka, Elizabeth Magill and Dirk Braeckman, Mikhail Karikis, among others.

Cherry Smyth was guest editor of Magma poetry magazine, 2012, and poetry editor of Brand Literary Magazine, 2006-2011. She co-curated Limber: Spatial Painting Practices at the Herbert Read Gallery, Canterbury, 2013.

Her influences include Li Po, Wislawa Szymborksa, Clarice Lispector, Hélène Cixous, Anne Carson and Claudia Rankine.