Poem of the Week

Poem of the Week: “Tortoise Poem” by Leontia Flynn

With one of our favorite opening stanzas in recent years, “Tortoise Poem” by Leontia Flynn presents a terrarium as world. Whether the solitary tortoise represents the cultivation of a rich inner life or the increasing isolation caused by the contemporary digital age is up to the reader, however. “Tortoise Poem” belongs to a series of…

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…

Poem of the Week: “In Her Silent Cloister” by Leontia Flynn

“In Her Silent Cloister” by Leontia Flynn imagines the 12th-Century nun, writer, and philosopher Héloïse du Paraclet, possibly alluding in the final stanza to her correspondence and affair with the theologian Peter Abelard. Written from Flynn’s experience as a new mother, this poem explores a common theme in the collection Taking Liberties, asking where inner…

Poems to Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day

With over fifty years of Irish poetry in the WFU Press catalog, you could argue that any poem we’ve published is perfect for celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. But here are several of our favorites that respond to the holiday directly and indirectly, from Frank Ormsby listing “Forty Shades of Green” to Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh describing the “taste…

Poem of the Week: “Windharp” by John Montague

Windharp for Patrick Collins The sounds of Ireland, that restless whispering you never get away from, seeping out of low bushes and grass, heatherbells and fern, wrinkling bog pools, scraping tree branches, light hunting cloud, sound hounding sight, a hand ceaselessly combing and stroking the landscape, till the valley gleams like the pile upon a…

Poem of the Week: “Seasons of the Lemon House” by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

In her poem “Seasons of the Lemon House,” Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin explores the deep connection between the natural world, human experience, and language. The ebb and flow of light and darkness, warmth and frost, mirror the rhythms that shape our lives. With a keen eye for the interplay of interior, natural, and spiritual landscapes, Ní…

Poem of the Week: “Mischief at the Globe” by Gerard Fanning

In “Mischief at the Globe,” Gerard Fanning explores themes of mortality, the passage of time, and the ephemeral nature of human life through theatrical and natural imagery. The poem reflects on the vulnerability of the body—symbolized by a freckle—while simultaneously observing the flow of life outside the confines of the theatre. By weaving the world…

Poem of the Week: “The Elsewhere Empire” by Medbh McGuckian

Medbh McGuckian’s “The Elsewhere Empire,” from her new collection The Thankless Paths to Freedom (2024), explores the emotional and physical spaces that loss often occupies. She writes, “there is no after the war, the rain of an earlier day, / the balmy elsewhere of winglets past the flowers // in their rifles.” When a loved one…

Poem of the Week: “The Shannon Reader” by Martin Dyar

  Creative genius is often characterized by “eureka!” moments of inspiration, but in “The Shannon Reader,” Martin Dyar explores the ritualistic side of the poetic process. His structure is repetitive—never straying from two-line stanzas of about equal length—just like the author in the poem’s sacred writing ritual. Her labor is not immediately fruitful, but with…

Poem of the Week: “The May Baby” by Martin Dyar

  In his poem “The May Baby,” Martin Dyar draws upon vivid natural imagery to create an ode to springtime. Dyar paints the portrait of the “May girl,” who seamlessly blends into this background of honey, doves, blossoms, and herons. “The May Baby” is infused with hope, drawing upon themes of connection and community across…

Poem of the Week: “Jigsaw” by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

In her poem “Jigsaw,” Doireann Ní Ghríofa draws the reader into the physical and psychological complexities of motherhood. Using bodily descriptions and an emphasis on personal experience, Ní Ghríofa contrasts the feelings of uncertainty and anticipation that accompany sensing a baby wriggling in the womb with the settledness and comfort of a mother knowing her…

Poem of the Week: “Ten Day Window” by Medbh Mcguckian

  In her poem “Ten Day Window,” Medbh McGuckian creates a dream-like landscape, transporting the reader through the imagery of gardens, theaters, and ballrooms. McGuckian’s poem is deeply introspective, reckoning with themes of identity and public appearance while using fragmented moments to piece together an understanding of self. “Ten Day Window” is a part of…

Poem of the Week: “Lunulae” by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Have you ever noticed the half-moon shapes at the base of your fingernails? Those are called “lunulae.” Doireann Ní Ghríofa is fascinated by these crescents—little astronomical wonders we carry with us wherever we go. Ní Ghríofa encourages her reader to find comfort in minute yet beautiful things in the face of our present social and…

Poem of the Week: “Those Days” by Gerard Fanning

“Those Days,” a poem from Gerard Fanning’s final, unpublished collection, Slip Road, contemplates a fading vision, “I used to stand on my porch / and see as far as three days’ walk / but those days are long out of reach.” Vision, in the poem, is conditioned by the inevitable passage of time; and soon…

Poem of the Week: For Gomez by Stephen Sexton

Happy Halloween from WFU Press! Today, we’re sharing “For Gomez” from Stephen Sexton’s second collection, Cheryl’s Destinies. The poems in this book are perfect for the holiday—from fortune tellers and tarot cards to werewolves and The Smashing Pumpkins. “For Gomez” is, as Sexton notes, “in affectionate memory” of actor Raúl Julia (1940–94), famous for his…

Poem of the Week: “Ash Keys” by Michael Longley

The title of Michael Longley’s New Selected Poems comes from his poem “Ash Keys,” originally published in his fourth collection, The Echo Gate (1979). As Longley explains in a feature in The Irish Times, his wife, the critic Edna Longley, suggested using the poem title for the collection “because she likes that poem, and she thinks of…

Poem of the Week: “Alteration” by David Wheatley

“Alteration,” a poem from David Wheatley’s collection Child Ballad, begins with a meditation on the transience of the self and of time, “the clock hands… / the self-subtracting hours they gave and took.” Written in memory of the poet Derek Mahon (1941–2020), the poem imagines an osprey flying over a “snow-fringed field” as a metaphor…

Poem of the Week: “Terror” by Stephen Sexton

In his poem “Terror,” Stephen Sexton transports readers back in time and leads them through a fantastical environment complete with constellations, werewolves, knights, swords, and daggers. Following a family of three hiding from the moon-lit nighttime and its accompanying creatures, Sexton poses commentary on fear, historical legends, and what parents choose to share with their…

Poem of the Week: “Yoshi’s House” by Stephen Sexton

“Yoshi’s House” is the first poem in Stephen Sexton’s debut collection If All the World and Love Were Young. While the title of the collection comes from the Sir Walter Raleigh poem “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd,” each poem in the book is titled after a different level of Super Mario World (1990). Yoshi’s…

Poem of the Week: “Going Feral” by Harry Clifton

“Going Feral” by Harry Clifton transposes the myth of Romulus and Remus or (Julia Fullerton-Batten’s 2015 photography series) and plays with the line between human and animal, the classical and the contemporary. Beginning “In a tenement room,” it speaks to the desperation of poverty in an urban sprawl (“the forest of cities”) and the alienation…

Poem of the Week: “Leaf-Eater” by Thomas Kinsella

Though the titular kenning seems to promise a grand or heroic subject, Thomas Kinsella’s “Leaf-Eater” instead examines the inhabitant of a single leaf in the heart of a garden. Readers’ attention is directed to the minute form of a hungry grub, caught lucklessly searching around itself in “blind space” until it is compelled to “eat…

Poem of the Week: “Kincade Fire” by Sara Berkeley

Sara Berkeley is highly attuned to the modern impacts of climate change, noting with precision the human causes. Yet she never strays too far towards deep melancholy; there is a golden edge of hope held around all of her poems, as in “Kincade Fire.” Driving home the importance of humanity and kindness is essential to…

Poem 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…

Poem of the Week: “Missing” by John McAuliffe

In “Missing,” John McAuliffe tackles the passing of time by painting the scenes of forgotten landscapes now reclaimed by nature. As the poem progresses, the theme shifts towards death and the return of all things to the Earth, before finishing on a more somber and mysterious tone hinting us back towards the title. Missing A…

Poem of the Week: “Heatwave” by Michael Longley

In The Slain Birds, Michael Longley doesn’t shy away from images and words of the pandemic and isolation. Infused with the minutiae of daily life and epistemological musings, this poem “Heatwave” brings to light bloody war scenes and clean, cool water—an acceptance of the elasticity when the mind and body seemingly move in opposite directions….

Poem of the Week: “Apple Blossom” by Louis MacNeice

Louis MacNeice’s “Apple Blossom” evokes a feeling of eternal optimism, of continuous appreciation of the world and all of its wonders. Where the “first apple” from the Garden of Eden, the cause of Adam and Eve’s fall, could easily be perceived as a symbol of hardship, MacNeice transforms it into a symbol of renewal and…

Poem of the Week: “Street-Talk/Comhrá ar shráid” by Máire Mhac an tSaoi

On the flagged street
That day we happened to meet
You spoke to me so kindly
Asking courteously how I was,
That the air softened around me,
The dull impoverished city air,
With a little breeze you brought
From the west, from that place
By the sea where I first knew you…

Poem of the Week: “Another Monk and His Cat” by Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh

The final poem in Bone and Marrow/Cnámh agus Smior, “Another Monk and His Cat/Manach Eile agus a Chat” by Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, rounds out the anthology by harkening back to its opening poem, “I and White Pangur.” The latter is “[p]erhaps the most famous poem from medieval Ireland,” and Ní Ghearbhuigh’s contemporary interpretation of the subject…

Poem of the Week: “Accept instruction, foolish youth” by Ádhamh Ó Fialáin

The writer of this poem from the late Middle Ages seems to criticize his young lord, but in fact praises him, concluding that even the lord’s wrongdoing pales in comparison to his greatness. That shift of logic reflects the intricacy of 14th-century politics, indicating a complicated and perhaps mysterious hierarchy. As Michelle O Riordan writes…

Poem of the Week: “As for the Quince” by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

  “As for the Quince” is an Irish-language poem written by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill (the original title “An Crann”) then translated by Paul Muldoon into English. In the weeks when spring first dares to remind us that Nature’s sometimes subtle rhythms impact our entire wellbeing, this poem is a timely reflection of growth and loss….

Poem of the Week: “Border Lake” by John Montague

The farther North you travel, the colder it gets.
Take that border county of which no one speaks.
Look at the straggly length of its capital town:
the bleakness after a fair, cattle beaten home.

Poem of the Week: Extract from “Trials of the Written” by Andrée Chedid

One would like, first, to conciliate dawn, render firm the soil of gentleness, before colliding with the smooth bark of the page, before entering the unsheltered flatlands.

Poem of the Week: “Alzheimer’s Villanelle” by Leontia Flynn

‘I wish he’s had a heart attack instead’,
Jonathan Franzen wrote about his father,
of the slow, quick-slow disease that left him dead.

Poem of the Week: “O Rome” by Thomas Kinsella

O Rome thou art, at coffee break, O Rome
Thou also art a town of staring clerks,
Staring the azure window at mid-morning,
Commemorating something in a daze.

Poem of the Week: “Lazarus Risen” by Peter Sirr

Lumbering out into the hectic light
like some dishevelled beast, I found myself
notorious, and would have turned back
but that cool and candid gaze unstitched
my shroud till it fell in shreds about me
and I walked among my weeping, bewildered kin.

Poem of the Week: “The mornings you turn into a grub” by Ailbhe Darcy

it begins with the heart.
You lie listening to the thunder
of bin men hoisting garbage larvae
from outside every house. Your housemate
showers, bangs things, jangles keys, moves
away at a trot.

Poem of the Week: “Dans l’étendue/In the distance” by Philippe Jaccottet

In the distance
nothing but shimmering peaks

Nothing but ardent glances
interweaving

Blackbirds and doves

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: “Matt Kiernan” by Gerard Fanning

He tries to explain
How a gift emerges
Singing from the shadows, 

How holding the reamer like a baton
Conducts receding melodies…

Poem of the Week: “The Previous Owner” by Seán Lysaght

The locals talk when they see the agent’s sign
‘FOR SALE’, translating life into hearsay,
how he never really tamed the garden,
all that travelling, all those weeks away.

Poem of the Week: “Boy Bathing” by Denis Devlin

On the edge of the springboard
A boy poses, columned light
Poised.
Seagulls crying wrinkles
The brown parchment cliffs.

Poem of the Week: “Newton’s Apple” by Harry Clifton

You return, bewildered,
To a world where everyone is always young
And you alone have aged.

Poem of the Week: “Awaiting Burial” by Sinéad Morrissey

Being born was as painful as this—
The crusade of the heart to bloom in mist,

The pull of blood
On everything the body had

To pump in a new direction…

Poem of the Week: “Sea Holly” by Richard Murphy

Thrives upon sand where no other plant can live
Close to high water mark on haggard shores,
And crops up briefly in summer wearing stiff
Armour embossed with mauve and sapphire flowers.

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.

Poem of the Week: “For Piero Di Cosimo” by David Wheatley

Canvas is expensive and one who wastes
canvas on paintings not of the Bishop
of Bobo or the Countess of Caca
is an irresponsible person and you
are that person…

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

Poem of the Week: “That Actor Kiss” by Michael Hartnett

I kissed my father as he lay in bed
in the ward. Nurses walked on soles of sleep
and old men argued with themselves all day.
The seven decades locked inside his head
congealed into a timeless leaking heap,
the painter lost his sense of all but grey.

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: “Other People’s Lives” by Vona Groarke

That letter you promised me writes itself
in a sheaf of streets with their bar hubbub:
bottles poured onto a midden in a lane, the odd jazz riff,
a clasp of laughter, some half-shouted name.

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: “December” by Brendan Kennelly

It’s December, presents are lunatics—
spoons, napkins, knives, writing-paper,
classy jars of delicious jam.

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

Poem of the Week: “Jean” by Colette Bryce

Because last night and because today,
you fix a drink to steady the shakes.

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

It rises, nameless and requited, from the feather of a goose
in grass to the anglepoise’s reflection in the window
still shining after its switch has been pushed to O.

Poem of the Week: “The Globe in Carolina” by Derek Mahon

The earth spins to my fingertips and
Pauses beneath my outstretched hand;
White water seethes against the green
Capes where the continents begin.
Warm breezes move the pines and stir
The hot dust of the piedmont where
Night glides inland from town to town.
I love to see that sun go down.

Poem of the Week: “Tionlacan/Accompaniment” by Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh

I can’t say
if it was the quiet
or lonesomeness
that woke me that morning

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.

Poem of the Week: “Planter” by Moyra Donaldson

My brother is a lean white shadow in the early morning light,
unspoken things
have kept him thin, despite his wife’s attempts to fatten him on love.

Poem of the Week: “Don’t You” by Alan Gillis

I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar,
that much is true. But even then I knew I’d find
myself behind the wheel of a large automobile,
or in a beautiful house…

Poem of the Week: “Polar” by Caitríona O’Reilly

By means of this the photon
is deflected into darkness,
our white-heat leaking from us.

Poem of the Week: “Tightening loosening” by Jacques Dupin

Tightening loosening
on the restored tracks

without entirely freeing herself as woman 
from the vague bestiary that besets her…

Poem of the Week: “Direction” by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Searching about again to find my father
I must take a step backwards, for in the time
since I last saw him he has moved and changed 
more than in all of his life—

In Memory of Eavan Boland

This is for you, goddess that you are.
This is a record for us both, this is a chronicle.
There should be more of them, they should be lyrical
and factual, and true, they should be written down
and spoken out on rainy afternoons, instead of which
they fall away…

Poem of the Week: “The Pleasures of the Door” by Francis Ponge

Kings never touch doors. 

      They’re not familiar with this happiness: to push, gently or roughly before you one of these great, friendly panels, to turn towards it to put it back in place—to hold a door in your arms. 

Poem of the Week: “Timbre” by Moya Cannon

A word does not head out alone.
It is carried about the way something essential,
a blade, say, or a bowl,
is brought from here to there when there is work to be done.

Poem of the Week: “The Black Kettle” by Frank Ormsby

Now that the new stove is in place and throwing its heat
the full length of the kitchen,
we have replaced the black kettle.

Poem of the Week: “John Constable, Study of Clouds, 1822,” by Ciaran Carson

‘The sound of water escaping from mill dams, etc., willows, old rotten planks,
Slimy posts and brickwork, I love such things, said Constable.…

Poem of the Week: “Feabhra/February” by Máire Mhac an tSaoi

The weather softened in the last few days.
I took the air for raiment.
Sweet, Jesus, honey sweet the season!
Rocks melt. Nor ice nor reason hold.

Poem of the Week: “The Smell of Blood” by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

I wake up, and my hands are sticky
With the smell of blood. 
And though there’s not a smudge nor blot
In eyeshot, nor any soul 

Poem of the Week: “No More Sea” by Louis MacNeice

Dove-melting mountains, ridges gashed with water,
Itinerant clouds whose rubrics never alter,
Give, without oath, their testimony of silence
To islanders whose hearts themselves are islands;

Poem of the Week: “The Sick Bird” by John Montague

The holidays, more than any other time of year, draw our cultural attention to family, rituals and the cyclical nature of life. This poem by John Montague appears in a group titled “Prayers for My Daughters” and focuses on generational knowledge. Though small, the moments that connect us to our past are valuable. Like the…

Poem of the Week: “A Few Helpful Hints” by Peter Sirr

Tell them what you like. Tell them
the world is flat and when you get to the edge you fall
into the usual darkness, hell if you like
but anywhere will do…

Poem of the Week: “Poem in Homage to Built Things in Three Dimensions” by Leontia Flynn

Sunlight, yellow, on an upright gable
standing by waste-ground, a bright autumn sky
behind it and a foreground of low rubble,
transforms place into geometry—

Poem of the Week: “It’s easy to talk, and writing words on the page” by Philippe Jaccottet

It’s easy to talk, and writing words on the page
doesn’t involve much risk as a general rule:
You might as well be knitting late at night
in a warm room, in a soft, treacherous light…

Poem of the Week: “Noon at St. Michael’s” by Derek Mahon

Nurses and nuns—
their sails whiter than those
of the yachts in the bay, they come and go
on winged feet, most of them, or in ‘sensible’ shoes.

Poem of the Week: “Turn Again” by Ciaran Carson

There is a map of the city which shows the bridge that was never built.
A map which shows the bridge that collapsed; the streets that never existed.

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: “Durée d’Octobre / In October” by Claire Malroux

October its brilliance
In its arms
        the condemned leaves
        the obsession
with dying beautifully

Poem of the Week: “Amber” by Eavan Boland

It never mattered that there was once a vast grieving:

trees on their hillsides, in their groves, weeping—
a plastic gold dropping

through seasons and centuries to the ground—

Poem of the Week: “The Design” by Thomas Kinsella

Goodness is required.
It is part of the design.
Badness is understood.
It is a lapse, and part of the design.

Poem of the Week: “Snowdrops” by Paula Meehan

So long trying to paint them, failing
to paint their shadows on the concrete path.

They are less a white than a bleaching out of green.

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…

Poem of the Week: “Six Months” by Vona Groarke

APRIL

My daughter buys
her first perfume.
It’s called ‘One Summer’.

Poem of the Week: “Sleepwalking” by David Wheatley

I want to feel it again: what I felt
when I woke once standing in the kitchen
after walking downstairs in my sleep.
The school bags had all been lined up
and the lunches packed in clingfilm…

Poem of the Week: “Winter Beachhead” by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

This is the starkest hour of the shore
when it’s purged and cleansed as a Sabbath door.
There’s a brim of lather when the tide’s in
as the waves go on with their day’s washing.

Poem of the Week: “The Ice Wager” by Harry Clifton

Snowscape. Shod in tailor’s irons,
Red-hot, with my poundage of weights,
I test the ice of our latest year.

Poem of the Week: “To Cease” by John Montague

To cease
to be human.

To be
a rock down
which rain pours…

Poem of the Week: “A Glass of Water” by Conor O’Callaghan

I pour a glass of water for myself.
I watch what greys it gathers from the room.
It’s not to drink. I want the wanting of
a glass and water sleep can come between.

Poem of the Week: “Laertes” by Michael Longley

When he found Laertes alone on the tidy terrace, hoeing
Around a vine, disreputable in his gardening duds,
Patched and grubby, leather gaiters protecting his shins
Against brambles, gloves as well, and, to cap it all,
Sure sign of his deep depression, a goatskin duncher,
Odysseus sobbed in the shade of a pear-tree for his father…

Poem of the Week: “Curtain” by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

I laid myself down and slept on the map of Europe,
It creaked and pulled all night and when I rose
In a wide hall to the light of a thundery afternoon
The dreams had bent my body and fused my bones
And a note buzzed over and again and tuned for the night.

Poem of the Week: Happy National Translation Month

September is National Translation Month, and to celebrate we’re featuring a poem by Máire Mhac an tSaoi, “one of a trinity of poets who revolutionised Irish language poetry in the 1940s and 50s.”

Poem of the Week: “The Poet as Black Sheep” by Michael Hartnett

I have seen him dine
in middle-class surroundings,
his manners refined,
as his family around him
talk about nothing,
one of their favourite theses.

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.

Poem of the Week: “Blue Poles” by Caitríona O’Reilly

Freedom is a prison for the representative savant
addled on bath-tub gin and with retinas inflamed
from too long staring into the Arizona sun
or into red dirt which acknowledges no master
but the attrition of desert winds and melt-water.

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…

Poem of the Week: “Áiféilín” by Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh

A poem in Irish by Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, with a translation by Gabriel Rosenstock, from The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Vol. IV (2017)

Poem of the Week: “Spring” by Alan Gillis

The Irish celebrate St. Brigid’s Day on February 1 to welcome the beginning of spring. Even though we’re not quite there yet in the US, today’s poem by Alan Gillis channels that sense of anticipation for the end of winter. In an interview with the Edinburgh Review, Gillis discusses his experimentation with the pastoral form in…

Poem of the Week: “Seals at High Island” by Richard Murphy

The calamity of seals begins with jaws.
Born in caverns that reverberate
With endless malice of the sea’s tongue
Clacking on shingle, they learn to bark back
In fear and sadness and celebration.

Poem of the Week: “Stargazing for Feminists” by Jean Bleakney

Well proud of the horizon,
undressed to kill, the both of them
—full moon all bosomy white
and Venus, faceted and glittery,
as bold as you like…

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;

Poem of the Week: “Crows Again” by Frank Ormsby

‘Too many crows in your poems,
blocking the light.’ I can find
only four but, there and then, for her,
I declare a moratorium on crows…

Remembering Gerard Fanning

Conor O’Callaghan remembers colleague and friend Gerard Fanning

Poem of the Week: “A l’écoute: Receiver / All Clear” by Ciaran Carson

In the final week of National Translation Month, we’re featuring a unique kind of translation act. In From Elsewhere, Ciaran Carson translates poems by the French poet Jean Follain. However, the volume is different in that Carson pairs these translations with original poems inspired by them: “Translations of the translations,” as he explains in the preface….

Poem of the Week: “Rugă / Prayer” by Ileana Mălăncioiu

In today’s selection for National Translation Month, we are featuring a Romanian poem by Ileana Mălăncioiu, translated by Irish poet Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin in her collection titled Legend of the Walled-Up Wife. As Ní Chuilleanáin writes in the preface to the book, “Mălăncioiu’s writing is valued in Romania as a moral force. A courageous critic of the former…

Poem of the Week: “Poète / Poet” by Vénus Khoury-Ghata

We’ve been posting translations to celebrate National Translation Month, and today we’ve chosen a French poem by Vénus Khoury-Ghata from her collection, Au sud du silence. Khoury-Ghata is a translator herself, most notably from French to Arabic  for the magazine Europe, but this poem was translated into English by Michael Bishop for an anthology of French poetry…

Poem of the Week: “A Postcard Home” by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

Wake Forest Press has published books in translation for a few decades, and we’re proud to celebrate National Translation Month during September by featuring some of these poems over the next few weeks. Of course we offer quite a bit of Irish-language poetry in translation, but many of our poets have also translated from French and other…

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.

Poem of the Week: “Peace” by Ciaran Carson

Back then, you wouldn’t know from one day to the next what might
happen next. Everything was, as it were, provisional…

Poem of the Week: “Kassapa” by Richard Murphy

Perhaps the king, whose name evoked the sun,
Riding his elephant, under a pearl umbrella
Through parched rice-fields on the dry zone plain,

Had seen this rock aspiring from the earth…

Poem of the Week: “The Antikythera Mechanism” by Caitríona O’Reilly

You may have already noticed the odd mechanical look of the Google logo this morning. To our delight, today’s Google Doodle celebrates the 115th anniversary of the discovery of the Antikythera mechanism, the first-known analog computer used by the ancient Greeks as a sort of calendar and predictor of astronomical positions. Caitríona O’Reilly’s poem about this very…

Poem of the Week: “Girl on a Swing” by Thomas Kinsella

The sensation of swinging is that of both freedom and dependency; as you fall through the air, you can feel excited and terrified at once. Like a swing, this sweet little poem shifts, connecting us to the feelings of “panic and delight” that Kinsella so gracefully describes. Girl on a Swing My touch has little force: Her infant body…

Poem of the Week: “Melusine” by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

This week’s poem comes from Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s most recent volume, The Fifty Minute Mermaid, a selection of which was included in The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry. Ní Dhomhnaill’s narrative poem, “Melusine,” is based on folklore most famously captured by the 14th century French writer Jean d’Arras. In the tale, Count Raymondin meets the…

Poem of the Week: “A Half-finished Garden” by Brendan Kennelly

Because her days were making a garden
She haunted that particular beach
Drawing rocks, sticks, shells and stones,
Random-pitched sea-gifts, over the years …

Poem of the Week: A Sonnet by Harry Clifton

This week we celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, a holiday that originally commemorated the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, though is now more commonly a celebration of Irish heritage, especially in the US. Harry Clifton’s latest collection, Portobello Sonnets, is a fitting selection to mark this holiday, as it is a meditation on Dublin as a microcosm of the…

Poem of the Week: “Jesse” by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Jesse As you lie in sleep there grows like a lung inflating A tree out of your navel, enlarging and toppling Into its perfection when the leaves and the fruit are soft as air, Are drenched like capillaries, and as they swell They become transparent and fade away: The true tree of knowledge which is…

Poem of the Week: “Horizons” by John Montague

Photo by Niall Hartnett Today, on what would have been his 88th birthday, we celebrate one of our beloved poets, John Montague, who passed away this December. Born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in County Tyrone, Ireland, Montague’s work is known for themes of adolescence, love, family, and personal connection with Irish history. WFU Press has…

Poem of the Week: “Late Morning” by Peter McDonald

March 1st is the release date for the highly anticipated Volume IV of The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry. This volume brings lesser-known Irish voices to an American audience. Editor David Wheatley, himself an established poet and critic, has selected poetry by Trevor Joyce, Aidan Mathews, Peter McDonald, Ailbhe Darcy and Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh. Each…

Poem of the Week: “She is my love” by Trevor Joyce

This week we are celebrating Valentine’s Day and the forthcoming publication of Volume IV of The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry with Trevor Joyce’s “She is my love.” The first lines of each stanza echo the language of traditional love poems, only to be subverted in the lines that follow. Through his manipulation of the…

Poem of the Week: “Patience” by Justin Quinn

If April is the cruelest month, then February is the most tedious. We’ve moved past the initial rush of the new year, and now we’re in the depth of winter, waiting for spring. At WFU Press, we’re also preparing for the release of Volume IV of The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry. This week’s…

Poem of the Week: “Glaciers” by Sinéad Morrissey

As we approach our publication date for Volume IV of The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, we continue with poetry from previous volumes. This week’s poem by Sinéad Morrissey can be found in Volume I. The simple language reflects the naturalistic and somewhat sinister undertones of the poem, which highlight the connection between humanity, earth,…

Poem of the Week: “Viola D’Amore” by Moya Cannon

This week, we continue to look back through The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry as we prepare to publish Volume IV. Today we’re featuring Moya Cannon from Volume II, whose subtle yet distinct voice demands a reader’s attention. Her poems are largely preoccupied with the sphere of landscapes, and how human desire—sometimes expressed through the invocation of Greek myths—is interwoven into…

Poem of the Week: “Water” by Dennis O’Driscoll

Photo courtesy of Melissa Libutti As we approach the publication date for The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume IV, we’re taking a look back at some of the poets published in previous volumes from this series, which aims to introduce lesser-known Irish poets to an American audience. This week’s poet is Dennis O’Driscoll, whose work…

Poem of the Week: “Snow” by Caitríona O’Reilly

Photo courtesy of Christina Berry The Winter Solstice is upon us as of this week. As temperatures drop, snow will fall and blanket the ground with its hushed whiteness. Every snap of a twig, crunch of ice, and rush in the trees is amplified in the silence of snow. In today’s poem “Snow,” Caitríona O’Reilly’s…

Poem of the Week: “Tonight of Yesterday” by Vona Groarke

Tonight of Yesterday             for Eve The evening slips you into it, has kept a place for you and those wildwood limbs that have already settled on the morning. The words you have for it are flyblown now as the dandelion you’ll whistle tomorrow into a lighter air. But, tonight, your sleep will be as…

Poem of the Week: “How to Live” by Derek Mahon

Don’t waste your time, Leuconoé, living in fear and hope
of the imprevisable future; forget the horoscope.

Poem of the Week: Sonnet 33 by Harry Clifton

Water is there to be looked at, not looked into —
Stay on the surface, where the dragonflies mate,
The girls return your glance, and the weather is great,

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…

Poem of the Week: “Autobiography” by Louis MacNeice

Samhain is upon us, so we’re celebrating by sharing poems with a sinister bent in honor of this Celtic predecessor of Halloween. In this week’s poem, Louis MacNeice explores the darker side of youthful memory. MacNeice reflects on the early loss of his mother, a loss which remains as a sort of specter for the child in the poem, one…

Poem of the Week: “Endymion” by Thomas Kinsella

As we get ready to celebrate Halloween, let’s take a moment to think about where the most frightful holiday of the year comes from—Samhain (pronounced SOW-in). Samhain is a traditional Celtic celebration to remind people that the year is about to get darker, and that harvest season is over: Winter is here! It’s also a…

Poem of the Week: “Photograph” by Frank Ormsby

On October 13, Frank Ormsby visited Wake Forest University to read from his latest collection, Goat’s Milk, as well as new work from forthcoming volumes. Today, we’ve included a clip of Ormsby reading this week’s poem, “Photograph.” Check back next week for more video from the evening. During the reading, Ormsby framed his Catholic upbringing in…

Poem of the Week: from “In Whose Blent Air All Our Compulsions Meet” by Alan Gillis

My love is a mansion with many rooms to see.
I’m asbestos.
My love’s a glittering surface, scrubbed spotlessly.

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

It goes under, the cursor, whenever I place my finger
on the space bar and hold it like this for a minute.
The blue screen shimmers the way a pool’s sunlit
floor moves after the splash of a lone swimmer.

Poem of the Week: “A Visit to Croom, 1745” by Michael Hartnett

The thatch dripped soot,
the sun was silver
because the sky
from ruts of mud to high blaze
was water.

Poem of the Week: “Circe” by Louis MacNeice

“… vitreamque Circen”

Something of glass about her, of dead water,
Chills and holds us,
Far more fatal than painted flesh or the lodestone of live hair

Poem of the Week: “Morte la nuit / When night has died” by Claire Malroux

Today we’ve selected a poem by French poet and translator Claire Malroux, alongside the translation by Marilyn Hacker. As Hacker points out in the preface to this volume, these poems are “on the boundary” in many ways. “Perhaps one crucial boundary, sacrosanct and taboo, on which they stand,” she continues, “is that between languages, and their…

Video Highlights from Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s Reading at Wake Forest

We began this glorious National Poetry Month with a visit from Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, who gave a reading at Wake Forest on April 4, 2016. As we near the end of April, we wanted to share some of the joys of that evening with you. Today we feature one of her poems from The Boys of Bluehill, a…

Poem of the Week: “Coda: Payne’s Grey” by Paula Meehan

Happy spring and happy National Poetry Month! As we begin a month known for its showers, Paula Meehan’s poem “Coda: Payne’s Grey” came to mind. The final poem in her collection, Painting Rain, it celebrates what poetry can capture and preserve, even as everything changes, like trying to capture an image of falling rain. Coda: Payne’s Grey I am trying to…

St. Patrick’s Day Poem of the Week

Forty Shades of Green

A Crown/Dulux/Farrow and Ball Poem

I
Tunsgate Green
Green Ground
Cooking Apple Green
Churlish Green

Poem 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…

Poem of the Week to Celebrate Samhain

It’s the last week of October, which means it’s almost Halloween, the spookiest time of year. Did you know that Halloween originates from the Celtic festival called Samhain? We enjoy getting into the Samhain spirit by reading some of our poets’ eeriest pieces. Here’s a particularly creepy poem of the week from Louis MacNeice. Plant…

Poem of the Week: “Clotho” by Caitríona O’Reilly

It’s publication week for Caitríona O’Reilly’s new volume Geis (available now in print, iBook, and Kindle editions). This week’s featured poem is a sneak peek into this wonderful book. For more on O’Reilly’s inspiration, writing process, and more, check out our Q&A with the poet. Happy reading, poetry lovers! Clotho after Camille Claudel And in the end it was…

Poem of the Week: Happy Birthday, Ciaran Carson!

Today is Ciaran Carson’s birthday, and in celebration of this accomplished poet and traditional musician from Belfast, we are sharing one of his earlier poems, “The Albatross,” from his book First Language as our featured poem this week. This poem is written after the poem “L’Albatros” by the French poet Charles Baudelaire. In it, the speaker compares the…

Poem of the Week: “October” by Harry Clifton

“The big news around here is the fall of leaves
In Harrington Street and Synge Street,
Lying about in pockets, adrift at your feet . . .”

Happy Birthday to Michael Hartnett and Poem of the Week

There will be a talking of lovely things,
there will be cognizance of the seasons,
there will be men who know the flights of birds.

Poem of the Week: “For Sheila” by Máire Mhac an tSaoi

I remember a room on the seaward side—
The squall caught it from the south-west—
And rain a tattoo on the window
Unslackening since the fall of night,

We’re back (and with a Poem of the Week)

This summer, we’ve been busy with a few exciting projects that we’ll be sharing with you in due time. To celebrate being back and the near end of a productive summer, we’re sharing Frank Ormsby’s poetic treatment of American craft beer. Cheers! At the Lazy Boy Saloon and Ale Bar (White Plains, NY) The beers of…

Poem of the Week: “The Trees” by Michael Longley

In honor of Michael Longley’s receipt of the 2015 International Griffin Poetry Prize yesterday, we bring you one of the poems he read in Toronto at the awards presentation. Many congratulations to Mr. Longley for this achievement!

Poem of the Week: “We Change the Map” by Kerry Hardie

Our apologies for the brief hiatus on our blog. We’ve been busy sending off four of our interns who graduated last week. A big thank you to all our interns for the hours of proofing, box schlepping, blogging, designing, phone calling, reading, chalking, and merriment you so kindly gave to WFU Press this year. Post-graduation, we…

“Helen” by Frank Ormsby from GOAT’S MILK

In his introduction, Michael Longley states, “Frank Ormsby belongs to that extraordinary generation of Northern Irish poets which includes Ciaran Carson, Medbh McGuckian, Paul Muldoon and Tom Paulin. He is a poet of the truest measure.”

Poem of the Week: October Thoughts & Throwback

WFU Press’s newest book is here! Ciaran Carson’s From Elsewhere is a beautiful work featuring translations of the French poet Jean Follain juxtaposed alongside Carson’s original work. In his “Apropros,” Carson offers, “…[T]he word fetch…was in my mind throughout the writing of From Elsewhere.” He goes on to say, “A fetch is the act of fetching, bringing from a distance,…

Poem of the Week: John Montague’s “At Last”

We are drawn to John Montague’s poem “At Last” for its tale of reunion and the sense of readjustment to what once was familiar, which the speaker suggests through the images of Ireland and the relationship between the father and son.

Poem of the Week: “High Island” by Richard Murphy

A shoulder of rock
Sticks high up out of the sea,
A fisherman’s mark
For lobster and blue-shark.

Poem 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…

Poem of the Week: “The Horse’s Head” By Brendan Kennelly

‘Hold the horse’s head,’ the farmer said
To the boy loitering outside the pub.
‘If you’re willing to hold the horse’s head
You’ll earn a shilling.’

Poem of the Week:”Pas de Deux”

A poem for Valentine’s Day– Pas de Deux It all began in Take Two, what with us looking at clothes. You’d brushed against me as I stepped aside from the mirror to let you size yourself up against a blue pencil skirt, pinching its waistband to your waist with your arms akimbo. I caught you…

Poem of the Week: “Swallows and Willows”

In Dharmakaya, Paula Meehan creates a beautiful poem, highlighting the parallels between her own Irish voice, and the voice of one of America’s most commemorated female poets–Sylvia Plath. February 11th marks the 52nd anniversary of Plath’s death, and we love the fact that this poem creates a space where the haunting, feminine poetics of two of our favorite writers…

Poem of the Week: “Nouns and Verbs”

One thing we love here at the Press is words—both in Irish and English. Vona Groarke’s “Nouns and Verbs” celebrates the love of choosing just the right word.

Poem of the Week: “January Drought”

As storm clouds roll into Winston-Salem, Conor O’Callaghan writes of a somewhat drier world—yet the haunting sentimentality of his poetic voice still manages to soak us to the bone. January Drought It needn’t be tinder, this juncture of the year, a cigarette flicked from car to brush. The woods’ parchment is given to cracking asunder the…

Poem of the Week: “Christmas Tree”

Christmas Tree for Jacob You are my second grandson, Christmas-born. I put on specs to read your face. Whispering Sweet nothings to your glistening eyelids, Am I outspoken compared with you? You sleep While I carry you to our elderly beech. Your forefinger twitches inside its mitten. Do you feel at home in my aching…

Happy birthday to Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Poem of the Week

Poem of the Week: “Snow” by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

‘I thought of you then,’ she says, ‘flocking
On the edge of the same water —
The yearly walk by the banks–‘
As she stood by the calm water
And the snow kept faltering past,
And past the window where a man’s bare arm
Reaches for clothes and for matches.

Poem of the Week: “The Wood” by Paul Muldoon

As we endure the stresses and chaos of long work days or classes, we crave some peace and quiet—the familiarity of home. We know that wherever we are in the world, we can always come home to the people we love and the home we cherish. Paul Muldoon’s “The Wood” echoes this desire for solace in the comfort of our homes and and reminds us to be grateful for the people, smells, and tastes that accompany our homecoming.

Poem 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…

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…

A final song for Samhain

Halloween is finally here! While children dress in costume and parents don their houses with spooky decorations, we are paying tribute to John Montague and his eerie poem about the Celtic festival that celebrates the arrival of the “darker half” of the year. The auditory and sensory imagery Montague engages sends shivers down our spine, as we welcome…

Poetry for Samhain: “The Andean Flute” by Derek Mahon

He dances to that music in the wood
As if history were no more than a dream.
Who said the banished gods were gone for good?

Celebrating the music of the past with the words of the present

Sculpture of Seán Ó Riada in Cúil Aodha, Ireland As we look forward to Samhain, the Gaelic festival marking the end of the Harvest season and the beginning of the “darker” winter months, we are quick to draw connections to our Western ideas of Halloween: spooky costumes, creepy decorations, grim horror stories, and a crisp fall…

Happy birthday to Ciaran Carson

Author of poetry and prose, translator, professor, and accomplished musician, Ciaran Carson is a man of so many talents that we never need much of an excuse to celebrate him. Many happy returns to you, from all at Wake Forest Press! Year After Year playing the tune over you’ve been cutting out the frills getting to…

Poem of the Week: “Poem for Lara, 10” by Michael Hartnett

There is something powerful in offering a blessing to another person; the Irish are especially aware of that. In “Poem for Lara, 10,” Michael Hartnett uses the beauty of the natural world to bless the beautifully innocent spirit of a young girl. The imagery and the sentiment feel touchingly apt as the seasons begin to change.

Poem of the Week: “The Second Voyage” by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

“Seascape” by John Fraser National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London       It’s easy to compare Odysseus’ voyage to the voyage students undertake in college; whether a senior, junior, sophomore or freshman, those spiteful waves will rock you all year long. We mimic Odysseus as we fight against tests, illness, papers and uncomfortable experiences, and all…

Poem of the Week: “Airports” by Leontia Flynn

It’s Homecoming week at Wake Forest University, so we have selected a poem for today entitled “Airports” which reflects on the liminality of travel. We wish a safe journey to all alumni making their way back toward their alma maters, be it via skyways or highways. Airports Airports are their own peculiar weather. Their lucid hallways…

Poem of the Week: “Elegy for Minor Poets” by Louis MacNeice

“Who often found their way to pleasant meadows
Or maybe once to a peak, who saw the Promised Land,
Who took the correct three strides but tripped their hurdles,
Who had some prompter they barely could understand . . .”

Poem of the Week: “Begin” by Brendan Kennelly

Begin again to the summoning birds
to the sight of the light at the window,
begin to the roar of morning traffic
all along Pembroke Road.

Poem of the Week: “Persephone Suffering from SAD” by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s The Water Horse is a particular gem because of the collaboration of three great female Irish poets; Ní Dhomhnaill’s poems are in Irish, with English translations by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Medbh McGuckian. These poems present other convergences, particularly the mingling of mythology with modern life as in today’s poem.

Poem of the Week: “… a spell to bless the silence.”

John Montague’s most recent volume, Speech Lessons, is full of lyrical poems about childhood, memory, and family. Our selection for today stands out from this subject matter as a poem about poetry itself. Silences for Elizabeth 1 Poetry is a weapon, and should be used, though not in the crudity of violence. It is a prayer before an…

Poem of the Week, with congrats to Conor O’Callaghan

I wanted his sky-blue Ford, its sheetrock, its transmission issues.
I listened to his low-down yodelling skimming sunk studs
and snake rattles like wind chimes round his mantle in the hills
and parables waiting for windows to arrive where some lunchbox
was always asked what sort of lunchbox he took Roy for.

Poem of the Week: “Pier” by Vona Groarke

Only a few weeks remain before students return to campus, and our hottest days seem to be behind us. As we desperately hang on to summer, we offer Vona Groarke’s poem, “Pier,” as a celebration of the freedom and elan that summertime allows. Pier Speak to our muscles of a need for joy.      …

Poem of the Week: “…even a still life is alive…”

“The Ray,” Jean-Baptiste-Simeone Chardin (1728) Nature Morte (Even so it is not so easy to be dead) As those who are not athletic at breakfast day by day Employ and enjoy the sinews of others vicariously, Shielded by the upheld journal from their dream-puncturing wives And finding in the printed word a multiplication of their…

Poem of the Week: “Sleep and Spiders” by Caitríona O’Reilly

We are looking forward to kicking off next year’s publishing calendar with Caitríona O’Reilly’s newest volume. But since it’ll be many months until we can share those poems with you, we chose one of her poems, “Sleep and Spiders,” from The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume I. As the editor of that volume…

Poem of the Week: “Calendar Custom” from The Sun-fish

Calendar Custom What is the right name of that small red flower? It’s everywhere, spilling down over the stones In the sun, every year at just this time. The colour dims for a minute as the line of dust Follows the loud white van uphill, and just now The girls in the bar offer me…

Poem of the Week: “Proposal” by Ciaran Carson

Proposal It happened over an apple. We were in a market, sunshine and August showers flickering through the glazed roof over a barrel of apples, green with a blush of red, the dew still seeming to glisten on them. You picked one up. Try it and see, Miss, said the vendor. You nodded, and bit…

Poem of the Week: “Not Weeding” by Paula Meehan

Nettle, bramble, shepherd’s purse –
refugees from the building site
that was once the back field,

Poem of the Week: “…the rest will take care of itself.”

The River When I was angry, I went to the river– New water on old stones, the patience of pools. Let the will find its own pace Said a voice inside me I was learning to believe, And the rest will take care of itself. The fish were facing upstream, tiny trout Suspended like souls,…

Poem of the Week: “Mid to Upper Seventies” by Conor O’Callaghan

Here in North Carolina, we’re experiencing our first week of temperatures in the 90s, so mid to upper seventies sounds pretty good to us. Conor O’Callaghan’s poem leads us to a comfortable sunny spot. Mid to Upper Seventies He rests The Narrow Road to the Deep North on an arm of the sunroom sofa-bed. He walks to…

“How do you sew the night?”: A poem in memory of Maya Angelou

We at Wake Forest University Press join the rest of the university, and the rest of the world, in celebrating Maya Angelou’s  life and mourning her passing. In her memory, here is a poem that WFUP poet Michael Longley wrote a few years ago after seeing Shaker-designed quilts in New England. The Design Sometimes the quilts…

Poem of the Week: “Tomorrow” by Dennis O’Driscoll

I. 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 champagne. Today will end the worst phase of my life. I will put my shapeless days behind me, fencing off the past, as a…

Poem of the Week: “Away” by Vona Groarke

Away We have our own smallholding: persimmon tree, crawl space, stoop, red earth basement, ceiling fans, a job. Hours I’m not sure where I am, flitting through every amber between Gales and Drumcliffe Road. I paint woodwork the exact azure of a wave’s flipside out the back of Spiddal pier and any given morning pins…

Poem of the Week: “Let it Go” by Brendan Kennelly

This time of year is usually devoted to graduation ceremonies, a celebration of taking the next step, whatever that may be. Here’s to the next step. Congratulations to all of the graduates for the year of 2014. Let it Go Let it go Out of reach, out of sight, Out of the door and the window,…

The End of the Line

The temperature is high, the pollen is present, and graduation is just around the corner. However, with the arrival of springtime blossoms comes the departure of most of our staff. Interns Nicole, Maura, Amanda, Julie and Mike are all graduating, and Candide is retiring from Assistant Director. And while I feel inclined to use the…

Poem of the Week: “Punctuation” by Ciaran Carson

By Michael J. Bennett (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Punctuation This frosty night is jittering with lines and angles, invisible trajectories: Crackly, chalky diagrams in geometry, rubbed out the instant they’re sketched, But lingering in the head. The shots, the echoes, are like whips, and when you flinch, You don’t know where it’s coming from.  This…

Poem of the Week: “Down” by Brendan Kennelly

why does a poem
always
go
down
the page
like
a shooting
star

Poem of the Week: “Spring Song” by Peter Fallon

It was as if
someone only had to say
Abracadabra
to set alight
the chestnut
candelabra.

Poem of the Week: “Bessboro” by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

This is what I inherit—
It was never my own life,
But a house’s name I heard
And others heard as warning

Poem of the Week: “At Dublin Zoo” by Paula Meehan

At Dublin Zoo A four-year-old Seeing elephants For the first time ‘But they’re not blue’ –Paula Meehan, from Painting Rain (2009)

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

September It must be cliché to think, however brief, that light on a wall and our voices out in the open are the pieces we shall look upon in retrospect as a life. There is a danger of circumstance smothering even the smallest talk. If a breeze shakes another colour from the trees we say…

Poem of the Week: “Ship of Death” by Kerry Hardie

After an unexpected Easter Monday hiatus, we have returned with another poem for National Poetry Month. Ship of Death for my mother Watching you, for the first time, turn to prepare your boat, my mother; making it clear you have other business now— the business of your future— I was washed-through with anger. It was…

Poem of the Week: “Getting Up Early” by Brendan Kennelly

Getting Up Early Getting up early promises well; a milkhorse on the road induces thoughts of a sleeping world and a waking God. This hour has something sacred; bells will be ringing soon, but now I am content to watch the day begin to bloom. I would only waste my breath on poor superfluous words;…

Poem of the Week: “Grainne’s Answer to Burke’s Proposal” by Mary O’Malley

Grainne’s Answer to Burke’s Proposal Take me for one year certain hot and cold and strong. What woman will give you as much for that long? A year in a wild place. Take me or leave me as I am. –Mary O’Malley, from The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry (2011)

Poem 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…

Poem 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…