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Poem of the Week: “Going Feral” by Harry Clifton
“Going Feral” by Harry Clifton transposes the myth of Romulus and Remus or (Julia Fullerton-Batten’s 2015 photography series) and plays with the line between human and animal, the classical and the contemporary. Beginning “In a tenement room,” it speaks to the desperation of poverty in an urban sprawl (“the forest of cities”) and the alienation…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Leaf-Eater” by Thomas Kinsella
Though the titular kenning seems to promise a grand or heroic subject, Thomas Kinsella’s “Leaf-Eater” instead examines the inhabitant of a single leaf in the heart of a garden. Readers’ attention is directed to the minute form of a hungry grub, caught lucklessly searching around itself in “blind space” until it is compelled to “eat…
Continue ReadingJohn McAuliffe Reading Tour
Following the publication of the US edition of his Selected Poems (2022), John McAuliffe will travel to the US for an east coast reading tour during the first two weeks of April 2023. The tour will begin at Wake Forest University before heading up to NYU’s Glucksman Ireland House and Boston University. The tour will…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Kincade Fire” by Sara Berkeley
Sara Berkeley is highly attuned to the modern impacts of climate change, noting with precision the human causes. Yet she never strays too far towards deep melancholy; there is a golden edge of hope held around all of her poems, shown in “Kincade Fire” with aplomb. Driving home the importance of humanity and kindness is…
Continue Reading“I came to nursing late and with almost no warning”: An Interview with Sara Berkeley
Sara Berkeley’s newest collection, Some of the Things I’ve Seen, is available this month from Wake Forest University Press. Originally published as The Last Cold Day in Ireland by The Gallery Press, this book chronicles Berkeley’s move across the United States during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as her work as a hospice nurse, a career she…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “St. Patrick’s Day” by John McAuliffe
“St. Patrick’s Day” by John McAuliffe details a luncheon and steers well away from the typical imagery of the holiday, meditating instead on wealth, privilege, and place—“our travels, from all over, to this corner of London.” The poem moves the way small talk moves, easy and slightly dissociative as it slips between details of the…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Missing” by John McAuliffe
In “Missing,” John McAuliffe tackles the passing of time by painting the scenes of forgotten landscapes now reclaimed by nature. As the poem progresses, the theme shifts towards death and the return of all things to the Earth, before finishing on a more somber and mysterious tone hinting us back towards the title. Missing A…
Continue ReadingJohn McAuliffe in Conversation with Conor O’Callaghan
In honor of John McAuliffe’s Selected Poems, we’re revisiting his 2013 interview with Conor O’Callaghan in The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry III. In the interview, John McAuliffe discusses writing some of his earliest poems, relocating with his family to Manchester, what it means to write an “Irish poem,” and his relationship to American…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Heatwave” by Michael Longley
In The Slain Birds, Michael Longley doesn’t shy away from images and words of the pandemic and isolation. Infused with the minutiae of daily life and epistemological musings, this poem “Heatwave” brings to light bloody war scenes and clean, cool water—an acceptance of the elasticity when the mind and body seemingly move in opposite directions….
Continue ReadingMichael Longley Wins Feltrinelli International Poetry Prize
Michael Longley was recently announced as the recipient of the 2022 Feltrinelli International Poetry Prize. Among the major European honors for poetry, the Feltrinelli Prize is awarded every five years by the Italian Accademia dei Lincei and includes a €250,000 monetary grant. Past winners include W. H. Auden, Eugenio Montale, and John Ashbery. The Accademia…
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