Blog
Snow, Joyce and Voicemails: A Closer Look at Conor O’Callaghan’s “Three Six Five Zero”
Today’s snow-blanketed Wake Forest University campus. How does Conor O’Callaghan seamlessly connect a snowy North Carolinian landscape, James Joyce and voicemails? Ripe with isolation, introspection, recovery and renewal, O’Callaghan’s latest collection, The Sun King, whispers secrets and sings the emergence of light born of the soul’s darkest moments. Technology flashes in and out of The Sun King, yet O’Callaghan’s…
Continue ReadingMedbh McGuckian speaks about The High Caul Cap: “the cap is an end and a beginning”
In today’s Irish Echo, Peter McDermott interviews Medbh McGuckian on identity, inspiration, Seamus Heaney, and why she reads books upside down. McDermott’s article offers a glimpse into the poet’s thoughts behind her most recent book, The High Caul Cap, which WFUP published this past autumn. Here’s a link to the interview: McGuckian speaks candidly, revealing that the crux of the volume…
Continue ReadingPoetry By Heart
Earlier this week, the Poetry Book Society (UK) announced that Sinéad Morrissey is the winner of the TS Eliot Poetry Prize. We published Morrissey in our first Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry and The New North: Contemporary Poetry from Northern Ireland. The Independent asks Morrissey if she is in favor of students in school learning poetry by…
Continue ReadingWhat’s Irish for “Merry Christmas to You”?
(Celtic Knot Christmas Wreath from the very impressive Nacho Grandma’s Quilts. Check out the other Celtic Knot designs while you’re there.) Nollaig shona duit! (Say “null-ig hun-nuh dit.”) “Nollaig” (which also means “Christmas” in Scottish Gaelic) derives from the Latin “natalica” for “birthday” and can sometimes be used as a personal name, like “Noel.” We hope…
Continue ReadingBEST OF 2013: WFU Press Style
It’s that time of year again. Christmas trees are going up, people are frantically searching for just the right present, holiday plans are being made and, of course, The Best Of lists are being released all month. Maybe you watched that video about the best of Youtube in 2013 or heard Miley Cyrus was named…
Continue ReadingThe Sun King Review
Conor O’Callaghan’s forthcoming The Sun King was recently reviewed by Billy Ramsell in The Stinging Fly. Ramsell describes O’Callaghan’s style as “an almost Shakespearean tendency to render reality not only by means of literary devices but in terms of those very tropes and conceits. Again and again in this his superbly reflexive fourth collection parts of…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Away” by Vona Groarke
Though the majority of the Irish poetry we publish is actually about Ireland, we are not without some poems that feature our own backyard. This week’s Poem of the Week is set in North Carolina. Vona Groarke, in her acclaimed collection Spindrift, wrote of the time she spent as Poet-in-Residence here at Wake Forest University. This…
Continue ReadingThese words are made for walking
A daily dose of poetry is just what the Wake Forest campus needs. Our interns have been busy chalking lines of poetry all over campus. Students stopped, read, and asked, “What is this for?”
Continue ReadingPoetryFest
Over the weekend, the Irish Arts Center in New York City hosted its 5th annual PoetryFest. Contemporary Irish poets including our own Conor O’Callaghan, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, and Colette Bryce (from the Wake Forest Series 3) all read poetry at this event. We are delighted to be publishing O’Callaghan’s new book, The Sun King, later this year.
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “On Not Experiencing the Ultraviolet Catastrophe” by Maurice Riordan
On Not Experiencing the Ultraviolet Catastrophe Unlike my childhood neighbour Jacksy Hickey Who, rain or shine, wore a black gabardine, Reasoning what was good to keep heat in Was good enough, by definition, to keep it out, We, when we reach the heart of the cornfield, Know better: we shed each other’s clothes. Oh, you…
Continue Reading