Short biographies of Amsterdam and Dublin poets

Team Amsterdam

Eva Gerlach (b. 1948) was born in Amsterdam but lived from fifth year to eighteen in Suriname. Eva Gerlach is the pseudonym of Margaret Dijkstra. She published her first poetry collection, Verder geen leed ('No Further Distress'), in 1979. In 2000 she received Holland's chief literary award, the P.C. Hooft Prize, for her entire poetic production. She writes for both adults and juveniles. Sources: Koninklijke Bibliotheek and Literair Nederland

Judith Herzberg (b. 1934) was born in Amsterdam. In 1940 she was put in Camp Barneveld. They fled and hid in various places until war ended 1945. She published her first poetry collection, Zeepost, in 1963. In 1984 she received German Joost-of-den Vondel Award (for lifetime achievement). In 1994 she received Constantijn Huygens Prize (for lifetime achievement). In 1997 she received the P.C. Hooft Prize for poetry. Source: Koninklijke Bibliotheek

Anna Enquist (b. 1945) was born in Amsterdam as Christa Boer but grew up in Delft, so she could actually compete for Zuid-Holland as well. She has studied clinical psychology in Leiden and piano at the Conservatory in the Hague. She published her first book of poetry, Soldatenliederen, under the pseudonym Anna Enquist, in 1991. In 1993 she received Lucy B. and CW van der Hoogt price (for Hunting Scenes ). In this year, 2014, she was appointed City poet of Amsterdam. Source: Koninklijke Bibliotheek

Esther Jansma (b. 1958) was born in Amsterdam along with her twin sister. She began with studying philosophy at University of Amsterdam but changed direction and studied archaeology at the same university from 1978. She published her first poetry collection, Stem onder mijn bed ('A voice under my bed'), in 1988. In 1999 she received  VSB Poetry Prize and the Halewijn Literary Prize of the city of Roermond (for lifetime achievement). In 2008 she wrote poems exhibition of archaeological objects (Archaeological Museum, Haarlem). Source: Koninklijke Bibliotheek

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Team Dublin

Simon Ó Faoláin (b. 1973) was born in Dublin and raised in west Kerry. Just like Esther Jansma in Amsterdam team he is trained within Archaelogy, and has written several books in his field and about Celtic culture. 
He won the Colm Cille Prize in the years 2008 and 2010. His first poetry collection, Anam Mhadra (A Dog's Soul), was published in 2008. He writes in Irish and his work is just partially translated. Source: Poetry International Rotterdam

Harry Clifton (b. 1952) was born in Dublin. His first poetry collection, The Walls of Carthage, was published in 1977. 
His collection of poems, Secular Eden: Paris Notebooks 1994-2004 (2007), won the Irish Times Poetry Now Award in 2008. His other honors include the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 1981. Clifton has lived in Europe, Africa, and Asia, working as an aid administrator in Thailand from 1980 to 1988. He teaches at University College Dublin. Source: The Poetry Foundation

Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967) was born in the village of Inniskeen, County Monaghan, Ireland. At the age of thirteen Kavanagh became an apprentice shoemaker. He gave it up 15 months later. 
For the next 20 years, Kavanagh would work on the family farm before moving to Dublin in 1939. Kavanagh's first collection, Ploughman and Other Poems, was published in 1936. 
Kavanagh spent the lean years of the war in Dublin, where his epic poem The Great Hunger was published in 1942. He died in 1967 from an attack of bronchitis. Kavanagh's reputation as a poet is based on the lyrical quality of his work, his mastery of language and form and his ability to transform the ordinary into something of significance. Source: Wikipedia

Eavan Boland (b. 1944) was born in Dublin. The daughter of a diplomat and a painter, Boland spent her girlhood in London and New York, returning to Ireland to attend secondary school and later university at Trinity College in Dublin. Though still a student when she published her first collection, 23 Poems (1962). Over the course of her long career, Eavan Boland has emerged as one of the foremost female voices in Irish literature. But according to herself it started like this "I began to write in an Ireland where the word ‘woman’ and the word ‘poet’ seemed to be in some sort of magnetic opposition to each other". Source: The Poetry Foundation