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Louis MacNeice: Collected Poems NY Times Book Review
In his New York Times Sunday Book Review of Louis MacNeice’s Collected Poems, entitled “Free Range”, David Orr praises the palimpsestic nature of MacNeice’s final volume. There is a haunting quality, perhaps to do with MacNeice’s talent for refrain, which provides a chilling echo that permeates the soul and leaves the reader with lingering questions…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “On Cutting One’s Finger While Reaching for Jasmine” by Medbh McGuckian
(photo from flowersreview.blogspot.com ) On Cutting One’s Finger While Reaching for Jasmine She talked about the aboutness of life, the eternal false illumination of the leftover nights, her lavender- skirted self who paced around the tousled bedroom, the otherwise good you. She incessantly made Os, Os of all sizes, Os inside one another, always drawn backwards in…
Continue ReadingFingers Crossed for Harry Clifton!
We’re delighted that Harry Clifton has been nominated for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award for 2013. Clifton is nominated for The Winter Sleep of Captain Lemass; he previously won this most prestigious award in 2008 for Secular Eden. Winners will be announced on Sept 7. Stay tuned for the results! –Megan Latta
Continue ReadingRemarks on Carson’s “The Fetch,” from For All We Know, Part Two
The Fetch I woke. You were lying beside me in the double bed, prone, your long dark hair fanned out over the downy pillow. I’d been dreaming we stood on a beach an ocean away watching the waves purl into their troughs and tumble over. Knit one, purl two, you said. Something in your voice…
Continue ReadingReading Carson’s “The Fetch,” from For All We Know, Part One
The Fetch To see one’s own doppelganger is an omen of death. The doppelganger casts no reflection in a mirror. Shelley saw himself swimming towards himself before he drowned. Lincoln met his fetch at the stage door before he was shot. It puts me in mind of prisoners interrogated, of one telling his story so…
Continue ReadingThe Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume III, Launches in Paris
The Paris launch earlier this month included readings by the anthology’s featured poets, an appearance by Conor O’Callaghan, Volume III editor and author of the forthcoming book The Sun King, as well as a lecture on the state and future of Irish poetry by Wake Forest Press director Professor Jefferson Holdridge. We at the press…
Continue ReadingKennelly to Collaborate with Daughter on Authorized Biography
Evincing a bit of the good-humored aplomb for which he’s long enjoyed a reputation as a people’s poet among his Irish readership, Brendan Kennelly quipped that he’d “have to throw myself around in the sea in Ballybunion to shock my childhood memories back.” Kennelly and daughter Doodle will reportedly begin work on the biography next…
Continue ReadingOur New Website Is Live
At long last, and after much blood, sweat, and data-entry, we’ve finally launched our new website! Check it out at http://wfupress.wfu.edu/, where you’ll find an updated product catalogue, a streamlined order and payment system, a general aesthetic facelift, and links to our Facebook and Twitter pages.
Continue Reading“Belfast Confetti,” Writers Workshops, and Modern Security
“The subversive half-brick, conveniently hand-sized, is an essential ingredient of the ammunition known as ‘Belfast confetti’, and has been tried and trusted by a generation of rioters.”–Ciaran Carson, “Brick” What happens when the “real world” gets in the way of creativity? Glenn Patterson happened to be leading a workshop for the Fermanaugh Writers in Enniskellen–while…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Landscape by Bus” by Justin Quinn
Landscape by Bus Look out the window—half A landscape, half its trees. Switch focus. Reflections of The rest float by on these. At sixty miles an hour The world’s being folded back Into a suitcase. Where Oh where will I unpack? –Justin Quinn, from The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume III (2013)
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