About

Daragh Byrne is an Irish poet who lives on Gadigal land (Sydney). His work has been published in journals, newspapers and anthologies in Australia, Ireland and the UK, including Poetry Wales, Poetry Birmingham, Banshee, Cyphers, Southword, The Stony Thursday Book, The Four Faced Liar, Crannóg, Wild Court and Westerly (see full list of publications here).

His manuscript The News has been Highly Commended in the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award three years running (2023–2025), and a finalist in the Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition (2026). He has been longlisted for the Peter Porter Poetry Prize (2026), shortlisted for the Bridport Prize (2023), won 3rd Prize in the Poetry London Competition (2022) and was runner up in the Allingham Poetry Prize (2021) (see full list of awards here).

He is a founding editor of The Marrow, a journal of international poetry. He makes his living writing software.

Daragh first became interested in poetry at secondary school in Ireland. He began writing at the time, submitting to local newspapers. Like many, put it aside in favour of a career in science and software engineering - partly at the advice of an English teacher, who suggested it might be better to study Physics while young; that there might be time to return to literature after a few years had passed. This turned out to be prophetic, and in 2019, Daragh began writing seriously, submitting to journals and competitions, and for several years ran The Sydney Poetry Lounge, a long-running open mic night.