Maurie Riordan was born in 1953 in Lisgoold, Co. Cork. His first collection, A Word from the Loki (Faber & Faber, 1995), was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. Subsequent collections, all published by Faber & Faber, include: Floods (2000), a Book of the Year in both the Sunday Times and Irish Times; The Holy Land (2007), which won the Michael Hartnett Award; and The Water Stealer, shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2013. His latest collection, The Shoulder Tap (2021), was shortlisted for the Poetry Pigott Prize in association with Listowel Writers’ Week; his Selected Poems, chosen by Jack Underwood, was published in 2025. He lives in London, where he has taught at Imperial College and Goldsmiths College. Riordan was Editor of The Poetry Review from 2013 to 2017 and is Emeritus Professor of Poetry at Sheffield Hallam University.