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Nuala Ní Dhomhnaíll featured on passport
Ireland revealed its new passport design on Monday, and people are talking. The majority of the media hype revolves around the borderless map of Ireland on page three. The map’s subtle disregard of Ireland’s political north-south divide in favour of the topographical depiction of the island as a whole is meant to emphasize citizenship over territoriality, a spokesman…
Continue ReadingEndings and Beginnings
This past week, Harry Clifton gave his final lecture as Ireland Professor of Poetry, marking the end of his three year appointment to the post. Soon, Clifton will step down to make way for the newly-announced Paula Meehan, who will be the sixth poet to take the position. Clifton spent one year at Queen’s University…
Continue ReadingBanned Books Week
It’s Banned Books Week, an annual celebration of the freedom to read, sponsored by the American Library Association. From September 22nd-28th, people are encouraged to read previously banned or challenged books. Since 1982, more than 11,300 books have been challenged, or attacked and almost removed due to content. One of our books, The Midnight Court translated by…
Continue ReadingHappy Belated Birthday Conor O’Callaghan
“I toast my new age. I drink its tongue-roll, its wheel-whirr, on the road to Montecarlo. Quarantaquattro, quarantaquattro, quarantaquattro …” Conor O’Callaghan turned 45 on September 20th. All of us here at Wake Forest University Press toast Conor as he embarks on quarantecinque. The quote above is from The Pearl Works, a collection of 52…
Continue ReadingDream Language
” …you swim from core state to fugue state in undirected milky water to a black-filled circle, which is your fully fledged city dwindled into a village” — from “Broken Pot Used as Writing Material” Here at WFU Press we’re busy with the final…
Continue ReadingSpeaking Out for the Small Press
Publishing is a constantly changing industry. Every day, new ideas rise out of companies, expertly crafted to improve customer experience, to make book buying simpler. New technology is pushed to the forefront and heralded as the future of publishing; soon, as it is prophecized over and over, all publishers will be using ebooks and turning…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week, plus Paula Meehan’s Appointment as Ireland Professor of Poetry
The View from Under the Table was the best view and the table itself kept the sky from falling. The world was fringed with red velvet tassels; whatever play ran in that room the tablecloth was curtains for. I was the audience. Listen to me laughing. Listen to me weeping. I was a child. What…
Continue ReadingConor O’Callaghan’s The Sun King: Shockingly Vulnerable and Painfully Tender
In his newest book, The Sun King, Conor O’Callaghan invites readers into the shockingly vulnerable and sometimes bitter consciousness of a speaker who offers an unedited confession of his most intimate experiences.
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Milk” by Moya Cannon
Milk Could he have known that any stranger’s baby crying out loud in a street can start the flow? A stain that spreads on fustian or denim. This is kindness which in all our human time has refused to learn propriety, which still knows nothing but the depth of kinship, the depth of thirst. –Moya…
Continue ReadingRealizing a Destiny in Full: On the Death of a Friend
“When asked to pronounce on Seamus’s death, a phrase coalesced in my mind: he did his work.” This, according to poet John Montague in his Sept. 7 memorial in the Irish Times, is the most succinct way to describe the late Seamus Heaney. But his description, which seems so far removed from the beauty and…
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