Conor Mitchell is a multi award-winning opera/music-theatre composer, librettist, and stage director. His music blends the worlds of stage design with contemporary visual arts and engages audiences through socially relevant, politically charged subjects. A double Ivor Novello nominee and double Fringe First winner, he is the recipient of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Major Individual Artists Award and a life fellow of the Arts Foundation for composition, he is also the only non-American to hold 'best score' at the New York Musical Theatre Festival.

As Artistic Director of The Belfast Ensemble, his opera Abomination: a DUP Opera was listed in the Top Ten Classical Works of 2019 and won 'Best Opera Production' at the 2020 Irish Times Theatre Awards. He was composer in residence at Wexford Opera Festival where he premiered a new work in 2022.

This event is part of the Seamus Heaney Poetry Summer School's public programme.