New Releases

“I came to nursing late and with almost no warning”: An Interview with Sara Berkeley

Sara Berkeley’s newest collection, Some of the Things I’ve Seen, is available this month from Wake Forest University Press. Originally published as The Last Cold Day in Ireland by The Gallery Press, this book chronicles Berkeley’s move across the United States during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as her work as a hospice nurse, a career she…

“Better for the Mess”: Samuel K. Fisher on the Making of Bone and Marrow

After years of planning and production, Wake Forest University Press has published one of its most ambitious titles yet: Bone and Marrow/Cnámh agus Smior: An Anthology of Irish Poetry from Medieval to Modern. Fully bilingual, this anthology presents 15 centuries of Irish-language poetry across its 900+ pages, including many new translations, contextual notes, and introductory…

Poem of the Week: The Horses of Meaning by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Let their hooves print the next bit of the story:
release them, roughmaned
from the dark stable where
they rolled their dark eyes, shifted and stamped—

let them out, and follow the sound, a regular clattering
on the cobbles of the yard, a pouring round the corner
into the big field, a booming canter.

Guinn Batten on Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s new COLLECTED POEMS

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin may be the contemporary Irish poet most relevant today, as we continue to enlarge the shifting contours and diverse embodiments of Irish legacies and identities, and the poet who most rewards our keen and sustained attention. Indeed, she may also be of her contemporaries the least indebted to Yeats, or to any…

Poem of the Week: “The Exact Moment I Became a Poet” by Paula Meehan

was in 1963 when Miss Shannon
rapping the duster on the easel’s peg
half-obscured by a cloud of chalk

From “The Butterfly Notebook” to The Magpie and the Child: An Interview with Catriona Clutterbuck

Catriona Clutterbuck’s debut collection, The Magpie and the Child, is out this month, and the book was a long time in the making. Bernard O’Donoghue, fellow Irish poet and academic, interviewed Clutterbuck about moving forward through the act of making poems, the two-way traffic of absence and presence, and the process of transforming manuscript to book…

Poem of the Week: “Rib” by Catriona Clutterbuck

When God took a rib out of man
and made it up into woman,
he left the cage of man’s heart unfinished,
missing one bar, undone.

Poem of the Week: “The Interior” by Alan Gillis

There is a bed.
There is a bedside cabinet,
a clock. There are no adjectives.
Whiteness is painted on two walls,
on two walls there is wallpaper
with boats on waves.

Poem of the Week: “Birthday Party” by Michael Longley

I turned eighty at Carrigskeewaun
With grandchildren at the table
And in the townland around us
Wheatears and dapper stonechats

Frank Sewell on Editing and Translating Máirtín Ó Direáin: An Interview

This month, Máirtín Ó Direáin’s Selected Poems/Rogha Dánta was released in the US, the first time his work has been published outside of Ireland. We wanted to know more about Ó Direáin’s place in Irish-language poetry, as well as editor Frank Sewell’s process in selecting and translating these poems. Brian Ó Conchubhair, Associate Professor of Irish Language and Literature at the University of Notre Dame, led a fascinating conversation with Sewell, the transcription of which we’ve included here.

Poem of the Week: “Mo Cheirdse/My Craft” by Máirtín Ó Direáin

It’s all patience—my craft.
I’m like a fisherman
Waiting for a trout.

“A Deep Ocean One Can Plunge Into”: An Interview with Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s newest book The Mother House was published in the US this April, and it has been gaining praise across the board, including being chosen for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award. Despite finishing out the semester at home, WFU Press intern Emelyn Hatch conducted an interview with the poet via email to dig deeper into this shining collection.

Publication Day for FROM THERE TO HERE

Starting with his 1976 publication of THE NEW ESTATE and finishing with the call-and-response translation work in FROM ELSEWHERE (2014), Carson guides us through his imaginative landscape in a new selection that includes poems from thirteen volumes written over nearly forty years. 

The Poet and “Protection of Innocence”: An Interview with Harry Clifton

To celebrate the release of Herod’s Dispensations, WFU Press interviewed poet Harry Clifton about the creation of his newest collection. Herod’s Dispensations unites a variety of themes and places, with Clifton drawing inspiration from experiences both in Ireland and China. Here, he discusses the evolution of the collection from its original focus on “art, children and death,” and touches on the elements that bring these poems together.

Poem of the Week: “Horace” by Harry Clifton

Sick of that bloody poet, everywhere
Smart casual, urbane and circumspect,
Choosing his words with a little too much care
To be real anymore…

A Montague Retrospective

In 1975 Wake Forest University Press began its Irish poetry program by co-publishing John Montague’s A Slow Dance with the Dolmen Press. Montague was a foundational poet for WFU Press, and we were lucky to have worked with him for more than forty years. In honor of the posthumous publication of A Spell to Bless the Silence, we offer this retrospective look at Montague’s books published in North America by WFU Press.

Introducing: Herod’s Dispensations by Harry Clifton, coming spring 2019

WFU Press is proud to announce the publication of Harry Clifton’s newest collection of poetry, Herod’s Dispensations. This collection, which meditates on the loss and protection of innocence, encompasses journeys from Dublin through northern China.

Enter the Goodreads giveaway for Live Streaming!

We’re giving away copies of Conor O’Callaghan’s newest book, Live Streaming, on Goodreads now through Oct. 28! Don’t miss your chance; enter the Goodreads giveaway below.

Poem of the Week: “The Narrator” by Conor O’Callaghan

during the break in chapter,
gets up to stretch beneath a skylight
and hears seagulls, small girls running.

Radio Signals: An interview with Leontia Flynn

Leontia Flynn’s The Radio is out this month, so WFU Press interns gathered to ask the poet more about her newest collection. Written in three sections, The Radio explores the boundaries of home and family life from Flynn’s experience caring for her infant child, to coping with her father’s death, to remembering the influence of…

Poem of the Week: “Poem in Praise of Hysterical Men and Women” by Leontia Flynn

The world is born of hysterical men and women.
Our teeth are shiny as accidental stars.
The hot, brilliant workings of our firmaments
of protons, atoms, axons, dendrites…

Leontia Flynn wins Irish Times Poetry Now Award

This morning it was announced that Leontia Flynn has won the Irish Times Poetry Now Award for her newest volume, The Radio. From the Irish Times announcement: In making their choice, the judges noted “the variance and voracious excellence of new Irish poetry, in books which experimented with long poems, prose poems, biography and translation….

New Selection of John Montague’s Poetry To Be Published this Fall

WFU Press is glad to announce the publication of a new selection of John Montague’s work. A Spell to Bless the Silence: Selected Poems includes work from fourteen volumes written over more than fifty years. Undertaken by Montague and his wife, Elizabeth Wassell, prior to the poet’s death in December 2016, this new selection represents “not only…

Poem of the Week: “Roger Hilton, November ’64” by David Wheatley

‘We either touch or do not touch’
across the tides that circulate
from Cornish sound to silver north;

“What Voice? Whose Voice?” An Interview with David Wheatley on The President of Planet Earth

The President of Planet Earth is Wheatley’s fifth collection, and his talent for a wide range of poetic styles and voices is on full display. Here we have prose poems, concrete poems, sestinas and sonnets, alongside more experimental forms. Wheatley draws inspiration from Russian Futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov, Samuel Beckett, and Ian Hamilton Finlay, among others. The result is a fascinating and subversively comedic trek across land and time. In this interview, Wheatley tells us more about his daring new collection and the voices therein.

An Interview with Frank Ormsby on THE DARKNESS OF SNOW

WFU Press interns gathered to ask the poet Frank Ormsby more about his collection, The Darkness of Snow. Written in five parts, the poems explore vast territory from Ormsby’s childhood in Fermanagh, to life with Parkinson’s, to the difficulty of bearing witness in the face of atrocity. Here, the poet discusses poetic friendships, recurring themes in his poetry, and the anti-muse.

Publication day for ANGEL HILL by Michael Longley

Cataract

My eyeball’s frozen. I lie
At the bottom of a well.
Leaves decorate the ice.

Introducing The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume IV

We are happy to announce that we’ll be publishing the next volume of The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry in March. This series brings lesser-known Irish voices to an American audience. In this fourth volume, editor David Wheatley, himself an established poet and critic, has selected poetry by Trevor Joyce, Aidan Mathews, Peter McDonald, Ailbhe Darcy,…

An interview with Harry Clifton: Returning to Portobello “was like rebuilding an identity from the ground up”

Harry Clifton has lived in places throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia, but his newest volume, Portobello Sonnets, focuses back on the district in Dublin where he currently lives, having returned after sixteen years in continental Europe. In this interview, he talks about how his work has evolved over time and place, and what ultimately brought him home. WFU Press:…

Introducing: The Boys of Bluehill

Wake Forest University Press is proud to announce the arrival of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s Boys of Bluehill. In her newest collection, Ní Chuilleanáin addresses the themes of music, religion, art, and language to create a beautiful union between revelatory imagery and an acute poetic sensibility. Of her work, Seamus Heaney remarked: “There is something second-sighted about Eiléan Ní Chulleanáin’s work….

The 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…

It’s publication day for The Stairwell

We are delighted to announce that The Stairwell by Michael Longley is now available on our website! For the Poem of the Week, we offer here the title poem.   The Stairwell  For Lucy McDiarmid I have been thinking about the music for my funeral— Liszt’s transcription of that Schumann song, for instance, ‘Dedication’ — inwardness meets the…

The Stairwell cover release

We are delighted to share a teaser image of the cover from our upcoming release, Michael Longley’s tenth collection, The Stairwell. The cover’s aesthetic evokes a Greek vase, featuring an earthy color scheme, scroll work and, most prominently, an illustration by the poet’s daughter, Sarah Longley.  The illustration is a copy of a similar image from…

The “perfect acoustic” of The Stairwell

Few moments are more exciting at the Press than when we are getting started on a new book. This fall, we’ll publish Michael Longley’s tenth collection, The Stairwell, and preparations are well underway. We’ve done a first read, gathered the cover image and copy, and sent files off to the designer. The title of the book comes from the…

The Miraculous Máire Mhac an tSaoi

Wake Forest Press will publish The Miraculous Parish, a bilingual volume of Máire Mhac an tSaoi’s poetry this May. An activist and visionary, Mhac an tSaoi has paved the way for such female literary giants as Eavan Boland, Medbh McGuckian, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. The Miraculous Parish solidifies her reputation as the…

Poem of the Week: “An fuath”/”Hatred” by Máire Mhac an tSaoi

Hatred demands patience and deadened senses,
Hatred waits for its chance;
Hatred keeps a steady finger on the trigger
And won’t pull it till it sees the whites of the eyes
Like egg-whites-whites in its sights!

Hold On! The Holding Centre is here!

Harry Clifton’s newest volume, The Holding Centre: Selected Poems 1974-2004, has arrived!     This book presents a thirty-year poetic trajectory for Clifton, a writer who has lived and worked between the secular and the religious, Eros and history, Ireland and elsewhere. Get your copy now! … You are not the first, you will not…

But who is Captain Lemass?

Currently at the press, we are looking forward to releasing Harry Clifton’s new book The Winter Sleep of Captain Lemass. When first hearing this title, the name Captain Lemass seems so lyrical that many assume it must be a fictional name.  However, some researched revealed that Clifton is actually referring to Captain Noel Lemass, the…

Reading Between the Pixels: What Cover Art Really Means

They say that you can’t judge a book by its cover, but in the case of poet John Montague’s new book Speech Lessons, the cover is quite revealing.  The image on the cover comes from a painting titled Adam and Eve by German painter Hans Baldung, the artist of the crucifixion painting upon which Montague meditates in…

Harry Clifton: An Irishman Abroad

Though poet Harry Clifton is a native Dubliner and currently lives in Ireland, he has spent much of his adult life on the move.  Clifton grew up in Ireland and attended University College Dublin, but left the country when he was twenty-five to teach at a teacher training college in Post-Civil War Nigeria.  From there…

Travel

Lara Marlowe, author and Washington correspondent to The Irish Times, stated in an interview with the Irish Echo that you’re Irish if “you delight in language, enjoy good company and never lose touch with the sadness that runs through all things.” Although Marlowe is American, she maintains a  residence in Ireland and is a world-traveled journalist. In the interview, Marlowe…

News Updates

Hello everyone! Some updates on the wonderful world of Irish poetry in North America: We have received Brendan Kennelly’s newest book, The Essential Brendan Kennelly, today! Very exciting news. The Women’s Anthology tour is well underway. The ladies have since been in Chicago, Pittsburgh, and New York, with great crowds at each place. Thank you everyone…

A Hundred Doors

Michael Longley’s new book A Hundred Doors is already getting rave reviews! Check out this great article in The Guardian about his latest book. And here’s a sneak peak at one of the poems: A Hundred Doors God! I’m lighting candles again, still the sentimental atheist, family Names a kind of prayer or poem, my…

Judging a Book by its Cover: Vona Groarke’s Spindrift

While an old adage suggests that you can’t judge a book by its cover, in the modern publishing world, that’s often all you have to go by. The ever-expanding digital marketplace uses cover art as an ambassador for the intangible, providing a thumbnail image of the physical book. Similarly, in old-fashioned bookstores, cover art is,…