Michael Kelleher

Mike is a son of working-class Irish immigrants who took two-three jobs to buy his uniform to attend Grammar School where he was spectacularly unsuccessful. A trade union scholarship as an adult enabled him to go to University where he went on to gain a PhD from the University of Bath. He started writing poetry in his 70s and has published in anthologies and in These Pages Sing. He is hard of hearing and is inspired by this lived experience, membership of the Irish diaspora and his love of Wales where has lived for over thirty years. Mike is delighted to have been selected for the 2025-26 Representing Wales programme managed by Literature Wales