Medbh McGuckian
Poem of the Week: “Santo Spirito Lands on Mars” by Medbh McGuckian
Looking at the picture seems almost a form of trespass:
it would never have shown itself as it did,
this finely chiselled scene, a red, cobbled road,
rust-red tiles that shiver in ordinary sunrays.
Poem of the Week: “The Girl Who Turned into a Sunflower” by Medbh McGuckian
Her Muse means water, the moisture on the banks,
which can be awakened by a drop of oil.
Poem of the Week: “The Reading Fever” by Medbh McGuckian
Medbh McGuckian’s latest volume, Blaris Moor, was released this week in the US. The volume’s title refers to a traditional ballad that memorializes the trial and execution in 1797 of four militia men condemned by the authorities as members of the United Irishmen. McGuckian’s subjects may be set in the past, but the themes of moral balance in…
Continue Reading“Where language fades into cries or whispers”: An Interview with Medbh McGuckian
Medbh McGuckian’s new selected, The Unfixed Horizon, contains over 130 poems from 13 collections. In honor of its publication, McGuckian talked to WFU Press interns Alex Muller and Shannon Magee about the concoction of angels, controlling the flow of time, and the virtue of poetry’s gentle intellect.
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “The Sofa” by Medbh McGuckian
It’s been nearly two decades since we published the last selection of Medbh McGuckian’s work, and in that time she has written eight more volumes. Needless to say, it was time to re-visit this poet’s remarkable ouevre. Over the last several months as we prepared The Unfixed Horizon: New Selected Poems, it’s been a true…
Continue ReadingThe secret is out… Announcing our latest book, The Shack.
Today’s the day! It’s finally here! We’ve been waiting so long to tell you about our newest book, The Shack: Irish Poets in the Foothills and Mountains of the Blue Ridge, that it’s hard to believe we can finally talk about it. In The Shack, contemporary Irish poets reflect on their time in the foothills and mountains…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “The Finder has Become the Seeker” by Medbh McGuckian
We are looking forward to spring coming just around the corner, though a thick layer of new snow is just starting to melt outside. The play of language in today’s poem, Medbh McGuckian’s “The Finder has Become the Seeker,” offers images of resurrection, extraction and emergence that ultimately gives the reader a feeling of hope. The Finder has…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Closed Bells” by Medbh McGuckian
As we transition into winter, Medbh McGuckian’s frosty poem Closed Bells reminds us of the fast-dropping temperatures. Her fleshed out, frostbitten images offer the characteristic “wordlessness” for which McGuckian is best known and create a dream world suspended in the mid-season chill. Closed Bells Frost hollows small areas of leaf in gardenless margins. Wounded by the thought of nests expanding, they inspire devotion…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “What Does ‘Early’ Mean?” by Medbh McGuckian
What Does ‘Early’ Mean? Happy house across the road My eighteen-inch deep study of you Is like a chair carried out into the garden, And back again because the grass is wet. Yet I think winter has ended Privately in you, and lies in half-asleep, Of her last sleep, at the foot Of one of…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Hotel” by Medbh McGuckian
Hotel I think the detectable difference between winter and summer is a damsel who requires saving, a heroine half- asleep and measurably able to hear but hard to see, like the spaces between the birds when I turn back to the sky for another empty feeling I would bestow on her a name with a hundred…
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 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 ReadingPoem of the Week: “Open Rose” by Medbh McGuckian
Open Rose The moon is my second face, her long cycle Still locked away. I feel rain Like a tied-on dress, I clutch it Like a book to my body. His head is there when I work, It signs my letters with a question-mark; His hands reach for me like rationed air. Day by day…
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 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 ReadingPoem of the Week: “The Realm of Nothing Whatever” by Medbh McGuckian
The Realm of Nothing Whatever The difference between things that are really the same is called Three in the Morning. The pigeon’s bath and the tiger’s regard, the dawn air and the night air, bird-stretchings and bear-hangings and pillowed corpse on corpse. The broken tile sunk in the wide house with the desolate side windows…
Continue ReadingOnce a Student, Always a Student: Medbh McGuckian’s Love of Learning
Our poet Medbh McGuckian was born Maeve McCaughan in Belfast in 1950, the third of six children. McGuckian attributes her mother, whom she describes as very artistic, for sparking her initial interest in poetry. McGuckian began writing poetry as a child and continued through her adolescence, eventually enrolling at Queens University, Belfast to study English….
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Spells for the Embalmers” by Medbh McGuckian
Spells for the Embalmers I believe that you left the heart in place, fringed with locks of gold wire. That the blue tissue of the hands was separately wrapped in beaded net. That the unprepared harmony of palm wine and cedar oil pealed at the same moment. And a flimsy, waxed sail that grew more…
Continue ReadingA Lil’ Bit of Lit. Crit.
As promised last week, we at the Press would like to take a moment to dive a little deeper into Boston College’s recent review of Medbh McGuckian’s My Love Has Fared Inland. As previously mentioned, it was nice to see BC’s reviewer, Heather Bryant Jordan, point out the same elements of movement in My Love…
Continue ReadingInterns’ Corner: So Many New Reviews!!
Here at the press, we’re really ecstatic about the multitude of reviews our poets have been featured in recently. As if Harry Clifton’s review of last week’s featured poet, Thomas Kinsella, wasn’t coincidental enough, this afternoon, we received our issue Boston College’s Irish Literary Supplement and found a few more surprises. Not only did the supplement include a new review of…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Time-Words” by Medbh McGuckian
Published the year I was born, Medbh McGuckian’s Marconi’s Cottage is full of mysterious and intriguing poems. Her use of metaphors and similes makes the following a beautiful piece of writing and an inspiring work of art. Time-Words I am a debt, soon I will be added, As words wither away with the things they describe, As…
Continue ReadingArts and Culture: Cover Art for McGuckian’s My Love Has Fared Inland
According to a review by Borbala Farago in The Irish University Review, Medbh McGuckian’s My Love Has Fared Inland takes up “familiar themes of creativity and spirituality” and the poems “trace an introspective trajectory” including themes of “death, writing, nature, and love.” Due to the diverse content of the book, it was important for Wake Forest University…
Continue ReadingA Lil’ Bit of Lit. Crit.
The Antioch Review provided a lovely insight into both the cover art and the poetry of Medbh McGuckian’s My Love Has Fared Inland. Describing the cover, Smith writes: “Just look at this, the reader might say, with the critics who have emphasized the painter’s practice within McGuckian’s poems: ‘A gray trembling flame left the ceilings…
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