She earned BA and PhD degrees in Archaeology and English at Trinity College, Dublin,[1] where she was awarded a PhD on American poetry,[2] and was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature for her poetry collection, The Nowhere Birds (2001, Bloodaxe); she has also held the Harper-Wood Studentship from St John's College, Cambridge.

She is the co-author (with David Wheatley) of a chapbook, Three-Legged Dog (Wild Honey Press, 2002); her second collection, The Sea Cabinet, followed in 2006.

She was a contributing editor of the Irish poetry journal Metre; she has collaborated with artist Isabel Nolan and in 2008 was named editor of Poetry Ireland Review.

A third collection, Geis, is published by Bloodaxe and Wake Forest University Press.

She has worked as 'Poet in Residence' at Wake Forest University and is a lecturer in Creative Writing at King's College, London, having been previously an associate lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University.