John McAuliffe
Poem of the Week: “A Sign” by John McAuliffe
“A Sign” by Jonn McAuliffe fits well in the poetic tradition of mushrooms—Emily Dickinson and Slyvia Plath also wrote poems about them, and so have Paul Muldoon and David Wheatley. Somewhat surprisingly, however, “A Sign” begins with an un-poetic assertion, “Nothing fanciful in their welling up from the black earth.” Almost in spite of itself, the…
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: “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 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…
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