Moya Cannon was born in Dunfanaghy, County Donegal in 1956 and lives in Galway. Her first collection, Oar, won the inaugural Brendan Behan Award and, in 2001, she was the recipient of the Laurence O Shaughnessy Award (University of St. Thomas, Minnesota). A number of her poems have been set to music by Jane O Leary, Philip Martin and Ellen Cranitch, and she has worked with traditional Irish musicians in the context of performance and of translating Gaelic songs. Cannon's book, Hands, came out from Carcanet Press in 2011. And her fifth collection of poetry, Keats Lives, will appear in September, 2015.