Poem of the Week
Poem of the Week: “Pitch & Putt” by Conor O’Callaghan
Pitch & Putt Its is the realm of men and boys joined in boredom, the way of life that sees one day on a par with the next and school breaks dragged out too long. Theirs is the hour killed slowly, the turn for home in diminishing threes and twos, the provisional etiquette of shared…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “The Call Has Been Answered” by Ileana Mălăncioiu
The Call Has Been Answered The call has been answered, this sun Has risen over the green field. The soul unfolding as a snail Slides out of his enclosing shield He dawdles across the long empty Space it seems he drowns In light he flourishes over the white wave Two melting jellied horns He feels…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Be Someone” by Rita Ann Higgins
In honor of National Poetry Month, WFU will be posting a poem a day for the entire month of April. Today’s poem is “Be Someone” by Rita Ann Higgins, a working class Irish poet and playwright. Be Someone For Christ’s sake, learn to type and have something to fall back on. Be someone, make something of…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Scar” by Moya Cannon
Scar Why does it affect and comfort me the little scar where, years ago, you cut your lip shaving when half drunk and in a hurry to play drums in public. We step now to rhythms we don’t own or understand, and, with blind, dog-like diligence, we hunt for scars in tender places. –Moya Cannon,…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Nomad Heart” by Paula Meehan
It’s our favorite month of the year: April! … also known as National Poetry Month. Our campus stalls have already been graced with “potty poetry,” and we will continue celebrating online by posting even more poetry than usual. To start with, here is an enlightening poem about changing times and weary souls. Nomad Heart for Kevin…
Continue ReadingMacNeice poem inspires Scottish song
Louis MacNeice is one of the inspirations for the Scottish group, Battlefield Band. MacNeice’s poem, “Bagpipe Music,” provides the lyrics for the song on the group’s newest album Room Enough for All, which has been nominated for an Independent Music Award in the category of “World Traditional Song.” You can read the poem just below, buy MacNeice’s Collected Poems here, and…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Finit” by Máire Mhac an tSaoi
Finit Le seans a chuala uathu scéala an chleamhnais Is b’ait liom srian le héadroime na gaoithe— Do bhís chomh hanamúil léi, chomh domheabhartha, Chomh fiáin léi, is chomh haonraic, mar ba chuimhin liom. Féach feasta go bhfuil dála cháich i ndán duit, Cruatan is coitinne, séasúr go céile, Ag éalú i ndearúd le hiompú…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Starspill” by John Montague
There are few spectacles more enigmatic and awe-inspiring than the night sky. It can be hard to believe that the shimmering blots sprinkled into the abyss are light-years upon light-years out of our reach. John Montague’s poem “Starspill” captures the mystery of the glimmering cosmos drifting above our earth. Starspill That secret laughter which, on…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “To Posterity” by Louis MacNeice
To Posterity When books have all seized up like the books in graveyards And reading and even speaking have been replaced By other, less difficult, media, we wonder if you Will find in flowers and fruit the same colour and taste They held for us for whom they were framed in words, And will your…
Continue ReadingPoem 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!
Poem of the Week: “Away” by Vona Groarke
Though the majority of the Irish poetry we publish is actually about Ireland, we are not without some poems that feature our own backyard. This week’s Poem of the Week is set in North Carolina. Vona Groarke, in her acclaimed collection Spindrift, wrote of the time she spent as Poet-in-Residence here at Wake Forest University. This…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “On Not Experiencing the Ultraviolet Catastrophe” by Maurice Riordan
On Not Experiencing the Ultraviolet Catastrophe Unlike my childhood neighbour Jacksy Hickey Who, rain or shine, wore a black gabardine, Reasoning what was good to keep heat in Was good enough, by definition, to keep it out, We, when we reach the heart of the cornfield, Know better: we shed each other’s clothes. Oh, you…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Sleep” by Katie Donovan
This week’s Poem of the Week comes from one of our favorite anthologies of poetry, The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry. As we near the end of the semester, with all its hustle and bustle, Katie Donovan’s poem “Sleep” feels particularly striking. The poem has a peaceful, relaxing tone, and artfully reminds us to…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Samhain” by John Montague
Samhain Sing a song for the mistress of the bones the player on the black keys the darker harmonies light jig of shoe buckles on a coffin lid ∞ Harsh glint of the wrecker’s lantern on a jagged cliff across the ceaseless glitter of the spume: a seagull’s creak. The damp-haired…
Continue ReadingInnocence Lost: “Boy-Soldier” by Michael Longley
“Child Soldier in the Ivory Coast, Africa” by Gilbert Ground Michael Longley’s recent poem “Boy-Soldier” was inspired by Irish author Tom McAlindon’s account of the death of WWI teenage soldier, Bobbie Kernaghan of Belfast. The images of young soldiers killed in war, of their tender necks pierced and their armor clattering to the ground link this…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Demotic Nocturne” by Ciaran Carson
The Destruction Of Sodom And Gomorrah, a painting by John Martin (1789-1854) In the spirit of Halloween we offer Ciaran Carson’s “Demotic Nocturne”, a tantalizing and chilling nighttime adventure that takes the reader on a technicolor journey that “disperses all the boundaries of hearth and home.” “Demotic Nocturne” appears in Carson’s collection In the Light Of, translated from Rimbaud’s Illuminations. Demotic Nocturne (Nocturne vulgaire) A breath…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “The Lap of Plenty” by Harry Clifton
This week’s Poem of the Week comes from Harry Clifton’s upcoming collection, The Holding Centre. Available in December, The Holding Centre features a fantastic selection of Clifton’s previously published work, but also includes a section with new, unpublished poems. As a sneak peek, this week we give you “The Lap of Plenty.” THE LAP OF PLENTY Leave…
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 ReadingPoem of the Week, plus Paula Meehan’s Appointment as Ireland Professor of Poetry
The View from Under the Table was the best view and the table itself kept the sky from falling. The world was fringed with red velvet tassels; whatever play ran in that room the tablecloth was curtains for. I was the audience. Listen to me laughing. Listen to me weeping. I was a child. What…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Milk” by Moya Cannon
Milk Could he have known that any stranger’s baby crying out loud in a street can start the flow? A stain that spreads on fustian or denim. This is kindness which in all our human time has refused to learn propriety, which still knows nothing but the depth of kinship, the depth of thirst. –Moya…
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 ReadingKennelly to Collaborate with Daughter on Authorized Biography
Evincing a bit of the good-humored aplomb for which he’s long enjoyed a reputation as a people’s poet among his Irish readership, Brendan Kennelly quipped that he’d “have to throw myself around in the sea in Ballybunion to shock my childhood memories back.” Kennelly and daughter Doodle will reportedly begin work on the biography next…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Landscape by Bus” by Justin Quinn
Landscape by Bus Look out the window—half A landscape, half its trees. Switch focus. Reflections of The rest float by on these. At sixty miles an hour The world’s being folded back Into a suitcase. Where Oh where will I unpack? –Justin Quinn, from The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume III (2013)
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Going Places” by John McAuliffe
Do you have a memory of a childhood trip? “Going Places” by John McAuliffe from the Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume III is a tribute to such journeys. As we get older, it is sometimes comforting to remember the times when we got to sit in the backseat and imagine “giant invisible horses”, instead…
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 ReadingPoem of the Week: “Love Song” by Sinéad Morrissey
Love Song I see light everywhere Over the bus driver the woman With her trolley in the street I see dusk I hear the clock at four I hear the silence in cupboards Birdsong Backwater dawn I taste drier than flour I smell the roots of trees Before I see their arms Shrieking On the…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Belfast Confetti” by Ciaran Carson
With Ciaran Carson reading in Boston and Athens, GA this week, we thought it might be fun to share one of our Carson favorites, “Belfast Confetti.” Belfast Confetti Suddenly as the riot squad moved in, it was raining exclamation marks, Nuts, bolts, nails, car-keys. A fount of broken type. And the explosion Itself—an asterisk on…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Introductions” by Moya Cannon
Introductions Some of what we love we stumble upon— a purse of gold thrown on the road, a poem, a friend, a great song. And more discloses itself to us— a well among green hazels, a nut thicket— when we are worn out searching for something quite different. And more comes to us, carried as…
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 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 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 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 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 ReadingPoem of the Week: “Ceist na Teangan / The Language Issue” by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
This week has been a pretty exciting one for everyone involved in publishing and literary studies here at Wake Forest. After two years of planning, the University is finally hosting its “Words Awake!” celebration of Wake Forest writers! The three day event will focus on recognizing the achievements of Wake Forest writers past and present while also…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Pollen” by Moya Cannon
We felt this poem about pollen by Moya Cannon was incredibly appropriate this week as the season changes from winter to spring. You can read more of her poetry in our anthology The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume II. Pollen And this dust survives through the death of ages. It sleeps in deep…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Oscar” by Ciaran Carson
Ever wish you could experience winning an Oscar? In light of last weekend’s Academy Awards, today we present you that opportunity, courtesy of one of our most popular poets, Ciaran Carson. Oscar I held the figurine aloft, revelling in my actor’s gravestone smile; I boldly faced an orchestra of flash, as paparazzi packed the aisle. I thanked everyone: all…
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 ReadingPoem of the Week: “Artists’ Letters” by Thomas Kinsella
While you’ve probably heard enough about love for this week, today, The Press has one more poem we’d like to share with you. This poem is bit of a throwback for us. It’s from our 1986 reprint of Thomas Kinsella’s Peppercanister Poems: 1972–1978, and it is dedicated to our truest love, the written word.
Continue ReadingValentine’s Day
In honor of St. Valentine’s Day, we at WFU Press have selected three different poems that cover the different spectrums of that confusing but beautiful thing known as love. Michael Longley’s poem “The Scissors Ceremony” depicts the heartwarming image of an old couple that are still very much in love. In contrast, John Montague reminds…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Augury” by Caitríona O’Reilly
This week’s poem is by Caitríona O’Reilly, whose poems are featured in our recent anthology, The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry. Last fall, the Wake Forest community was offered the opportunity to listen to O’Reilly, along with Rita Ann Higgins, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, and Leontia Flynn, as the Women’s Anthology tour kicked off…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Bee Orchid” by Michael Longley
The weather in Winston-Salem today is beautiful. It’s warm and breezy, and one can in indulge in tricking him- or herself into believing that spring has come early on this fine day. Hoping to encourage this weather to stay (please!), we’ve chosen a poem from Michael Longley’s A Hundred Doors, wherein the imagery inspires visions…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Silences” by John Montague
This poem is from John Montague’s latest volume, due out in mid-April. It’s dedicated to his wife. Enjoy! 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 unknown altar, a spell to bless the silence. 2 There is a…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Studying the Language” by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
Studying the Language On Sundays I watch the hermits coming out of their holes Into the light. Their cliff is as full as a hive. They crowd together on warm shoulders of rock Where the sun has been shining, their joints crackle. They begin to talk after a while. I listen to their accents, they…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Pipistrelle” by Harry Clifton
Pipistrelle At no point, in the whole of that northern night, Was there total eclipse of light, Only a yellow streak, low down in the sky Against which little squeaks, subliminal cries Would dash themselves, so to speak— The pipistrelles. Hours later, dawn would break To the sound of illegitimate shots In the field nearby….
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “To Be Said” by Vona Groarke
To Be Said Let’s walk the shoreline with it all to be said and nothing between us but salt. Let the waves trip on the part of your name I don’t dare. Let the shingle cup your footfall and the sea-wind straddle the breath you don’t use. We’ll hold our tongues. Let you say nothing,…
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