Matthew Rice was born in Belfast. Poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Asheville Poetry Review, The Dark Horse, The Tangerine, and in the anthologies The Best New British and Irish Poets 2017 (Eyewear), and Hold Open the Door: The Ireland Chair of Poetry Commemorative Anthology (UCD Press / University of Chicago Press). He was awarded runner-up for the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing 2017, and was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series the same year.He was the recipient of a SIAP award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland for 2017/18, and also received an IERP Award in 2020.He is currently studying on the MA in Poetry at The Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University, Belfast. His debut collection of poems, The Last Weather Observer, was published in 2021, with Summer Palace Press.
