Blog
Éigse Festival Honors Michael Hartnett
This year’s Éigse Michael Hartnett Literary and Arts festival is coming up soon—April 25 through April 27. This will be the 13th annual event, which began in 2000 after Michael Hartnett’s death the previous year. Held in Newcastle West, County Limerick, various events over the course of the weekend will take place in schools, pubs,…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “The Heated Minutes” by Louis MacNeice
Time ticks routinely: there are always sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour, and twenty-four hours in a day. The speaker in “The Heated Minutes” from our upcoming Louis MacNeice: Collected Poems describes how time feels hot, taut, and dull: the heat of anxiety, the dullness of loneliness, and the tautness of a…
Continue ReadingHappy World Poetry Day!!
Today, all of us a Wake Forest University Press hope you’re enjoying World Poetry Day!! Our internet community has been helping us celebrate in many ways. First, we’re excited to see that The Poetry Project for poetry and art from Ireland has recently added a new project inspired by Paula Meehan’s “My Father Perceived as…
Continue ReadingMichael Longley to Read at Cúirt International Festival of Literature
WFUP’s esteemed poet, Michael Longley, will be reading selections of his work on the opening night of the Cúirt International Festival of Literature. Longley’s most recent publication A Hundred Doors won the 2011 Irish Times Poetry Now Award, and he is also the recipient of the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, the Hawthornden Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize,…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “A Language” by Brendan Kennelly
A Language I had a language once. I was at home there. Someone murdered it Buried it somewhere. I use different words now Without skill, truly as I can. A man without a language Is half a man, if he’s lucky. Sometimes the lost words flare from their grave Why do I think then of…
Continue ReadingPoetry Magazine Honors Dennis O’Driscoll
The February issue of Poetry magazine, commemorates Dennis O’Driscoll, who passed away in December. The inside cover features the first stanza of his poem “Tomorrow.” Tomorrow Tomorrow I will start to be happy. The morning will light up like a celebratory cigar. Sunbeams sprawling on the lawn will set dew sparkling like a cut-glass tumbler of…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Again” by Kerry Hardie
This poem by Kerry Hardie is from The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry. The best part of winter is knowing that spring must come “again,” and the bad weather and cold temperatures must come to an end. Today on March 1st, we say, “Here’s to Spring!” Again Spring comes roundly, as the round calls…
Continue ReadingA Lil Bit of Lit Crit: Richard Murphy
In an issue of the Harvard Review, critic Floyd Skloot wrote about poet Richard Murphy and how his poems at his mid-career are consistently among his best.
Continue ReadingIt Runs In the Family
It’s rare enough to have one famous artist in the family, rarer still to have two. The parents of Thomas and John Kinsella – lauded Irish poet and composer, respectively – must have been doing something right. The Kinsella boys, who grew up in the Dublin suburb of Inchicore to a family employed in the…
Continue ReadingIt’s Poetry Month!
April is the month to celebrate poetry! And while we here at the Press rejoice it every day, we encourage our readers to take part with us in the celebration of National Poetry Month, established in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets. Now is the time to start that spring cleaning by dusting off…
Continue Reading