Living Water

A collection of work by the poet Bernie Crawford that charts childhood, adulthood and the journey to becoming an adoptive mother.

Bernie Crawford, originally from County Limerick, lives near the sea in County Galway. She has taught at second level in Galway and in Lesotho. Always an advocate for women's rights, she completed an MA in Women Studies at York University after which she worked on the Irish Bilateral Aid programme in Zambia and Tanzania in the 1990's. She returned to Galway and teaching in the early noughties with her two young daughters.

Her poetry has been published in Irish and international journals and anthologies including Banshee, The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, the North magazine, The Stony Thursday Book and Mslexia. She was the winner of New Irish Writing

in the Irish Times in January 2020, the 2019 North West Words competition and 2017 Poetry Ireland/Trocaire competition. She was placed second in the 2018 Blue Nib Summer Chapbook Contest and a selection of her poetry was published in the Blue Nib's third chapbook. In 2019 she was awarded a bursary by Galway County Council to work towards a debut collection.

She is a co-editor of the popular poetry magazine Skylight 47. She co-founded a Poetry Reading Group in Oranmore Library which meets every month and she facilitates creative writing classes with the Oranmore Active Retirement Group.