Angela Graham won First Prize for Poetry in the inaugural Linen Hall Ulster-Scots Writing Competition 2021 for her poem ‘A Heerd tha Sodjer on tha Radio’. She was recently interviewed about her Ulster-Scots poetry as part of a new documentary dedicated to Ulster's celebrated ‘weaver poets’.

These working-class writers from the late 18th and early 19th centuries wrote in their native tongue, Ulster-Scots. The 8-part series, created for Northern Visions TV, the local PSB channel (Freeview and Virgin networks) for Northern Ireland, profiles the ‘weaver poets‘, before moving onto three programmes which each feature a writer working in Ulster-Scots today.

Seren has published two books by Angela, both of which feature work in Ulster-Scots. Her winning poem appears in her poetry collection Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere which has been described as “hugely experimental… as praxis, the project seems politically perfect… genuinely thought-provoking...” by the London Grip. Her short story collection A City Burning, which was longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize, features a story called ‘Coasteering’ where one of the characters speaks in Ulster-Scots. 

Angela has recently been given a mentorship from the Irish Writers’ Centre for her novel-in-progress. Written in Irish, English and Ulster-Scots, it is about language and land in Northern Ireland. 

Find out more about the series A Mighty Mallet: A Story of the Weaver Poets on the Northern Visions website. Episode 6 with Angela Graham can be viewed here.