Launched in 2022, the Heaney-Miłosz Residency aims to support emerging writers from Ireland with space and time to focus on their writing.
Lyons was selected from amongst 27 applicants, officials said.
She will spend up to six weeks in the former apartment of Poland’s Nobel Prize-winning poet Czesław Miłosz in Kraków later this year.
The Heaney-Miłosz Residency programme is run by The Estate of Seamus Heaney, together with the Kraków Festival Office and the Embassy of Ireland in Poland, reporters were told.
Heaney's ties with Poland
Seamus Heaney, also a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, had close links with Poland.
His daughter and son, Catherine and Chris Heaney, who represent The Estate of Seamus Heaney, said at the launch of the residency: “Poland, and the city of Kraków in particular, held a critically important place in our father’s imagination and affections, particularly as the home of his friend and mentor Czesław Miłosz.”
They added: “The opportunity to celebrate their friendship and, at the same time, provide an emerging Irish writer with the creative space to pursue their own work, is something that our father would have been extremely proud of."
Alice Lyons
Chris Heaney welcomed the choice of Alice Lyons for the Heaney-Miłosz Residency, saying that her long-lasting and deep relationship with Poland and Polish culture has exerted a tangible impact on her creative work.
His words were echoed by those of the Irish Ambassador to Poland, Patrick Haughey, who told the media: ”I am delighted with the choice of Alice Lyons. The Heaney-Miłosz Residency is a real tribute to the friendship between Czesław Miłosz and Seamus Heaney, and will contribute to the strengthening of the already close bonds between Irish and Polish literature, poetry and culture”.
Born in the United States, Alice Lyons has lived in Ireland since 1998. She has published three volumes of poetry.
Lyons also made a film (together with Orla Mc Hardy) entitled The Polish Language, which pays homage to the revitalisation of the art of poetry in Poland in the second half of the 20th century.
She visited Poland many times and her poems have been translated into Polish.
Lyons teaches creative writing and literature at the Atlantic Technological University Sligo in Ireland.
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