"This poet is willing to be vulnerable, he is willing to speak of this precise moment in time, yet it is his passion that survives this moment. There is life in these pages--life that is both real and miraculous, life that teaches us wisdom. Indeed. I love this book."

- Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa

"He has a gift for creating a rueful narrative voice that milks both sympathy and laughs from the reader. The writing is always finely crafted; it is coversational but learned, seemingly effortless, and is studded everywhere with the poet's vast and unusual vocabulary. He is a modern poet in the best sense of that word and he deserves many, many readers."

- Nuala O'Connor, Poetry International (San Diego)

"The best of Cotter's writing is solid poetry, intensely imagist, and speaks deeply and sincerely to real and universal human concerns. ....gems, subtle and beautiful chamber plays, rich vignettes scattered throughout the real world."

- World Literature Today

"All the more refreshing, then, to find a poet working within the "village" of contemporary poets but in a voice all his own; one which is unfashionable in the best sense."

- Fiona Sampson, The Irish Times

"Cotter is an adroit and knowing artist.......beautifully paced ironies"

-Thomas McCarthy, Poetry Ireland Review

"Sly and wry and sometimes shiningly transcendent.  Cotter's poems merge myth, magic, and the dark hilarity of daily life."

- Anneli Rufus, East Bay Express

"...something truly special. "

- Ailbhe Darcy, Verbal

"…delightful, wry observations, all determinedly involving our every sense. Cotter is a story teller and a crafter of allegories. It’s clever stuff, a joy to read aloud, rhythmic, melodious... Cotter has the knack of making you care for his eccentric characters, feel their pain and dilemmas, hope for a gentle outcome."

- Melissa Todd, Confluence

Cotter's published work includes several chapbooks, the verse novella The Misogynist’s Blue Nightmare (Raven Arts Press, 1990) and the full collections, Perplexed Skin (Arlen House 2008), Making Music (Three Spires Press 2009), and Sonic White Poise (Dedalus Press 2021). No One Knows - a bilingual selection was published in Macedonia in 2014.

His work has appeared in many anthologies including Separate Islands: Contemporary British and Irish poetry (Quarry, Ontario) Irish Poetry Now (Wolfhound) Jumping off Shadows - Some Contemporary Irish Poets (Cork University Press) The Irish Eros (Gill & Macmillan) The Backyards of Heaven (Newfoundland) Something Beginning with P (O'Brien Press) and in The Great Book of Ireland.
His translations of the Estonian poet Andres Ehin are collected in the book Moosebeetle Swallow (Southword Editions).

He has published poems in journals and newspapers. such as the Financial Times, the London Review of Books, the Irish Times, PN Review, Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales and elsewhere.

Cotter’s own poems have been translated into Chinese, Croatian, Estonian, French, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Macedonian, Norse, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish. He has given readings of his work in Ireland, Canada, China, Croatia, Estonia, France, Germany, India, Italy, Macedonia, Norway, Slovenia, Turkey and the USA.

In 2013 he received the Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry.

Cotter is poetry editor of Southword. He has guest-edited Poetry ( September 2015) . He has edited many anthologies, including Poems from Pandemia (Southword Editions 2020). He founded the Gregory O'Donoghue International Poetry Competition and The Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition.