About

Milena Williamson is from Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. She is a PhD candidate, writing and studying poetry at The Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University Belfast. The creative component of her PhD is an archival exploration of her father's journals, photographs and reports from 1966-1967, during which time he was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. The critical component of her PhD is entitled: 'Ciaran Carson's War Correspondences: Intertextual Fusion in Breaking News'. She is interested in -- and her practice is informed by -- contemporary American poetry, contemporary Irish poetry, documentary poetics and feminist poetics. In 2021, she received an Eric Gregory Award and her debut pamphlet is forthcoming.

​

Milena has a complete poetry manuscript about Bridget Cleary, which is ready to be published. In 2018, she received an award for this project from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and in 2020, she was awarded mentoring from Words Ireland. These poems have appeared in Blackbox Manifold, The Honest Ulsterman, Banshee and more. You can read her feature 'Bridget Cleary and a poetry journey' online in The Irish Times.
 

​

​