Bio

2024 -2025 saw Susan successfully launch Out, About & In Touch - Creative Wellbeing & Mental Health workshops highlighting the benefits of group synergy, writing , doodling, art-making, design thinking, flow and other research findings in relation to creativity and wellbeing. She is the author of three collections of poetry published by Doire Press, 2011, 2013 & 2018. Susan reads a selection from all three books here, at University of Missouri-St.Louis (Feb, 2022) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vno1MG2pSQE&t=13s . Her poems have appeared, among elsewhere, in: The Cafe Review, Oregan, USA - Gather In, in a Special Irish Edition; Bosom Pals,Ed Marie Cadden Doire Press, 2017) an anthology entirely in aid of Breast Cancer Research in the National UniversityHospital, Galway and When They've Grown Another Me in Poetry Ireland Review , Dec 2018.https://www.poetryireland.ie/publications/poetry-ireland-review/online-archive/view/when-theyve-grow. Online, A Late, Late Afterword was published on the Robert Garnham Professor of Whimsy website (2021), Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis, https://www.spillingcocoa.com/. Here Much to do With Poverty, More About Wealth was published on Culture Matters (Jan 2025) https://www.culturematters.org.uk/here-much-to-do-with-poverty-but-more-with-wealth/. In January 2018 her poems were Commended in the Gregory O'Donoghue Poetry Competition.

She has been an invited reader of her poems at local readings in Galway, Cork and Dublin and at festivals, including the Belfast Book Festival, Cuirt International Festival of Literature and Clifden Arts Festival and her poems have been read on radio.

Susan completed her degree in social science and qualified as a professional social worker in Trinity College, Dublin 1975. She was a psychotherapist, trainer, facilitator and occasional consultant to organisations for over thirty years until her retirement in 2012. Drawing together her writing with her earlier skills she has written interviews and facilitated conversations mediated by poetry. She has also published creative non-fiction.

Her workshop Having a New Conversation: About Dreaming was listed on the The Cuirt International Festival of Literature Programme (2015) and she facilitates similar workshops on a variety of themes, discussed through the medium of poetry, regularly and occasionally in local community settings.

While a founding editor of Skylight 47 Susan interviewed: then Ireland Professor of Poetry, Harry Clifton; Kay Ryan, the Pullitzer prize-winning poet and former US Poet Laureate, invited to Ireland by Dromineer Literature Festival - and Dani Gill, who talks about curating The Cuirt International Literature Festival.https://skylight47poetry.wordpress.com/previous-issues/. Susan's interview of Maeve O'Sullivan, appeared in The Honest Ulsterman February, 2018.http://humag.co/features/around-the-world-in-poetry-haiku-and-haibun

Sunday, 17 May 2026

Reviews of Creative Wellbeing Workshops & Invitation to join the Mailing List for next Events

The most recent series of Tuesday afternoon Creative Wellbeing & Mental Health Workshops came to an end on May 12th, 2026

Those present on the last sessions offer the following reviews to enable others interested to hear how it has been to participate. Many were continuing participants having attended at least one earlier workshop also.

Having read the reviews, if you would like to hear about future workshops you can add your name to the mailing list. You can also scroll down to other related posts or click on the Blog archive posts for each year on the left. 

Email your request with any queries you'd like answered, 

to: creativewellbeingsl@gmail.com


REVIEWS/Testimonials


Great opportunity to lose yourself in new creative adventures, having fun and new things to learn each week.

                                                                                                                     Grainne...


The creative wellbeing sessions were life enhancing and enjoyable for me. The activities we engaged in were playful and allowed us to share some of our lives and our vulnerabilities more quickly and easily than is often the case in ordinary social life. The sessions opened up the possibilitity of looking at and experiencing my ordinary daily life with a lively creative edge.

I am very grateful.                                                                                          Catherine S...


Creative Wellness

  • Time out of the everyday
  • Stretch into creative space
  • Space to explore the possibilities of ways of being creative
  • Interrogate the poem                        
                                                                                           Mary A...


  • Encouraged to take risks with self-expression
  • Value the non judgemental space to play with words, colours and shapes
  • Undemanding yet motivating
                                                                                            Eilis C...


For me, this group and sessions have cracked open a creative world previously unknown to me.

Susan's guidance, encouragement and wisdom has facilitated the unfolding of this brave new me.

Each session has been a huge gift - thank-you.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Bernie...





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