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Snow, Joyce and Voicemails: A Closer Look at Conor O’Callaghan’s “Three Six Five Zero”
…asts will turn me cold. I heard out every message, pressed delete. I’d happily forget my voice, the mail, its code. We spoke at last that evening. Then it snowed. The Sun King is a cathartic eruption of wit and grief, a collision of light and darkness that is easily O’Callaghan’s finest volume yet. Order your copy here. “Exhilaratingly contemporary … O’Callaghan’s best book to date.” John McAuliffe, The Irish Times “The most sonically alive of p…
Continue Reading“Looser, Freer, and a Bit Wilder”: An Interview with Conor O’Callaghan
…ica, and for months we’ve been anxiously awaiting this exciting release. O’Callaghan has been busy giving readings for the book, most recently here in the US, where he went coast to coast visiting five states in five days before returning home to England. WFU Press intern Maddie Baxter caught him via Skype at the tail-end of this trip to ask him a few questions about the book, his process, and the personal nature of this extraordinary new collecti…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “A Glass of Water” by Conor O’Callaghan
…ange the familiar into the unfamiliar. In this poem, “A Glass of Water,” O’Callaghan transforms the simple act of hydration into a meditation on desire, distance, and time. The water here never fulfills its biological purpose, it instead distorts the colors and objects nearby. The beauty of this poem, O’Callaghan proves, is not in the act of drinking the water, but rather the feelings and insights that arise in the process of bringing it to your l…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “The Narrator” by Conor O’Callaghan
…siting his previous poetry. In the metafictive volume of poems, Fiction, O’Callaghan considers the act of creation and his own search for voice. “The Narrator” takes its place in this collection as a poem that explores the interaction between reader and narrator. Reminiscent of an audiobook narrator whose voice is turned on and off at the pleasure of the listener, “The Narrator” makes the reader consider their own inflection of voice and how it af…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week, with congrats to Conor O’Callaghan
…r more about The Sun King, check out this excellent interview with Conor O’Callaghan. Congratulations, Conor! The Sun King 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. Le roi soleil. It s…
Continue ReadingJohn McAuliffe in Conversation with Conor O’Callaghan
…olette Bryce, Justin Quinn, Maurice Riordan, and Gerard Fanning. Conor O’Callaghan (photo by Niall Hartnett) Conor O’Callaghan: What is the earliest poem in this selection? Can you remember when and where it was written, and in what spirit? What do you recall of Ireland and its poetry at the moment of composition, and of how you defined your creative ambitions starting out? John McAuliffe: I don’t remember writing “Going Places” but I remember p…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Mid to Upper Seventies” by Conor O’Callaghan
…es 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 the front to change the AC setting. His father is asleep on the floor before the hearth of a gas fire that has gathered cobwebs since March. Val Doonican, muted, is rocking on TV. The year is now. The house i…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Pitch & Putt” by Conor O’Callaghan
…edom to be hopeless and still come back. Theirs the blather of the last twoball accepting flukes for what they are, the greenkeeper collecting flags and shadows in their wake. –Conor O’Callaghan, from Seatown And Earlier Poems (2000) For more on Conor O’Callaghan, check out the Reader’s Companion for his new book, The Sun King….
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “The Swimming Pool” by Conor O’Callaghan
…ys lounging by the pool may prove difficult. In today’s selection, Conor O’Callaghan seamlessly integrates the image of a swimmer with the act of writing in this pensive poem from his collection Seatown and Earlier Poems. The Swimming Pool 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. As long…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Crush” by Conor O’Callaghan
In “Crush,” Conor O’Callaghan draws upon the moon and the sun to explore absence versus wholeness, unspoken versus spoken, and stillness versus movement. The juxtaposition of the two highlights the pull of each on our daily sentiments. Crush MOON 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. It fills. It thins to whole night…
Continue ReadingConor O’Callaghan
Poet Conor O’Callaghan may best be known to fans of Wake Forest Press for his books of poetry such as Fiction and Seatown and Earlier Poems. He will also be editing our Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume III, which will be released next year. However, did you know that he also wrote a memoir about the Roy Keane football scandal? Red Mist: Roy Keane and the Irish World Cup Blues is a memoir that explores the reaction of O’Callaghan and his…
Continue ReadingConor O’Callaghan
…shortlisted for the Forward Prize in 1994. In addition to poetry, Conor O’Callaghan’s interests extend to writing on sport, especially soccer and cricket. In 1996, Irish national radio aired O’Callaghan’s acclaimed radio documentary on cricket in Ireland, The Season. His prose memoir entitled Red Mist: Roy Keane and the Football Civil War deals with the public uproar surrounding Ireland’s involvement in the 2002 World Cup and made the bestseller…
Continue ReadingAn Interview with Conor O’Callaghan
… Following the publication of Conor O’Callaghan’s The Sun King, WFUP intern Nicole Fitzpatrick interviewed the poet about form, breathing, tweeting, swimming, and–above all–poetry. Click on link below for the interview. The Sun King and The Pearl Works interview…
Continue ReadingHappy Belated Birthday Conor O’Callaghan
…o Montecarlo. Quarantaquattro, quarantaquattro, quarantaquattro …” Conor O’Callaghan turned 45 on September 20th. All of us here at Wake Forest University Press toast Conor as he embarks on quarantecinque. The quote above is from The Pearl Works, a collection of 52 tweets that Conor published for every week of 2012. This project is included in Conor’s new book The Sun King. We are excited to release the American edition later this year. If you’re…
Continue ReadingConor O’Callaghan’s The Sun King: Shockingly Vulnerable and Painfully Tender
…caying domestic space. At times provocative and on the verge of profane, O’Callaghan does not shy away from the seedy aspects of life. In “Lordship” he writes: Once in stagnant water in grey dark in the bath. Twice on the square of two mattresses dragged together, missionary, all fours, dried clots showered away at dawn. O’Callaghan’s unadorned and non-ostentatious language provides a raw, visceral reading experience. Inserting pop culture and tec…
Continue Reading“The Importance of Breathing”: An Interview with Conor O’Callaghan
Nicole Fitzpatrick conducted this interview with Conor O’Callaghan in January 2014. Fitzpatrick is an M.A. English candidate at Wake Forest University and works as an intern at Wake Forest University Press. O’Callaghan lived in Winston-Salem, North Carolina from 2005-2007 during which time he taught at Wake Forest University. Much of The Sun King connects to his time spent in NC. NF: Your evocative descriptions make the reader feel deeply connect…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “September” by Conor O’Callaghan
…n. We shall drag from the lawn the chairs and table that all summer made us comfortable. Though all of that remains to be seen. –Conor O’Callaghan, from Seatown And Earlier Poems (2000)…
Continue ReadingLive Streaming
…onvey the power and pathos of this remarkable piece of work. Throughout, O’Callaghan’s voice is forensic, unreconciled, compulsively entertaining.” – Caitríona O’Reilly, The Irish Times “The Irish poet Conor O’Callaghan ought to have more of a reputation here: few American poets his age … bring to the cozy matter of domesticity so much vigor and readiness.” – Dan Chiasson “Conor O’Callaghan exhibits an almost Shakespearean tendency to render reali…
Continue ReadingSeatown and Earlier Poems
…oems “Seatown is deft, intelligent, a masterpiece of moody atmospherics. O’Callaghan has painstakingly assembled a faultless body of poems that haunt and persist.” – Sinéad Morrissey, PN Review “O’Callaghan’s poetry is marvelously his own. . . . [Its] bewitching obliquity . . . obviates neat conclusions. What is evident from Seatown and its predecessor is that Conor O’Callaghan is a gifted poet.” – Stephen Knight, The Literary Supplement “His conc…
Continue ReadingEnter the Goodreads giveaway for Live Streaming!
…oodreads giveaway below. Goodreads Book Giveaway Live Streaming by Conor O’Callaghan Giveaway ends October 28, 2018. See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter Giveaway Live Streaming is Conor O’Callaghan’s fifth poetry volume and will be published November 1, 2018. Shortlisted for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award, this is a volume of many styles and themes, whether it is the life of a caravan park, an ode to marriage, or a schoolboy empathizing…
Continue ReadingThe Sun King
…rmat. Download the Reader’s Companion here. Read an interview with Conor O’Callaghan about The Sun King, conducted by WFU Press intern Nicole Fitzpatrick. Praise for The Sun King “Exhilaratingly contemporary . . . O’Callaghan’s best book to date.” – John McAuliffe, The Irish Times “The most sonically alive of poets . . . The Sun King beats radiant gold out of the dark shards, the refuse and refusals, of life.” – Maria Johnston, Tower Poetry “Conor…
Continue ReadingThe Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry Volume III
…uinn, John McAuliffe, Maurice Riordan, and Gerard Fanning. Additionally, O’Callaghan includes interviews with each author. From the depressed economy of the 1980s through the Celtic Tiger of the 1990s to the current enforced austerity campaign, Ireland has come “full circle.” The works of these five poets reflect that journey with vital and various voices. O’Callaghan, an Irish poet himself, states: “These poets generally breathed fresh air into p…
Continue ReadingRemembering Gerard Fanning
…ry Vol. III, edited by Fanning’s friend and colleague Conor O’Callaghan. O’Callaghan spoke warmly of his relationship with Fanning and the lasting legacy that his poetry leaves on the literary community: “Gerard was a heck of a poet and real pal. He was the only poet I met for pints in Dublin, and many the pint we had. I saw him only last month, and even then he was pulling out clippings from the Irish Times of new poems by his hero, Derek Mahon….
Continue ReadingThe Sun King Review
…ecently reviewed by Billy Ramsell in The Stinging Fly. Ramsell describes O’Callaghan’s style as “an almost Shakespearean tendency to render reality not only by means of literary devices but in terms of those very tropes and conceits. Again and again in this his superbly reflexive fourth collection parts of the world are compared to linguistic concepts, to word-play and language-stuff, to punctuation, metaphor and translation.” He directs attention…
Continue ReadingBEST OF 2013: WFU Press Style
…Maurice Riordan, and Gerard Fanning, was launched in Paris. Editor Conor O’Callaghan stated that “these poets breathed fresh air into poetry” and that they were creating their “own tradition” in their works. October marked the release of Medbh McGuckian’s The High Caul Cap, with language invoking the state of dreaming, of moving rapidly from one image to the next. Our newest publication is Conor O’Callaghan’s The Sun King, which comes out later th…
Continue ReadingBroadside: The Pearl Works
…7″ x 10-3/4″ Broadside of an excerpt from Conor O’Callaghan’s poem, “The Pearl Works,” from The Sun King Laser-printed on quality linen paper. Designed by Sophie Leveque. This broadside was created on the occasion of Conor O’Callaghan’s reading at the University of Notre Dame on April 1, 2016. Poem used with kind permission of the author and Wake Forest University Press…
Continue ReadingPoem 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 first puff of wind. Yesterday a big sycamore came across First and Hawthorne and is there yet. The papers say…
Continue ReadingPoetryFest
…Over the weekend, the Irish Arts Center in New York City hosted its 5th annual PoetryFest. Contemporary Irish poets including our own Conor O’Callaghan, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, and Colette Bryce (from the Wake Forest Series 3) all read poetry at this event. We are delighted to be publishing O’Callaghan’s new book, The Sun King, later this year….
Continue ReadingFiction
…n perfecting the craft (in “darkness . . . littered with mockingbirds”). O’Callaghan highlights the self-referential process of creativity with great skill, and assures us of his maturation as a poet, one who is not only among the best of his generation, but increasingly among the best living. It is not surprising, then, that the art of poetry is central to Fiction. Art is not his only domain, however; there are also love poems, travelogues, poems…
Continue ReadingThe Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume III, Launches in Paris
…luded readings by the anthology’s featured poets, an appearance by Conor O’Callaghan, Volume III editor and author of the forthcoming book The Sun King, as well as a lecture on the state and future of Irish poetry by Wake Forest Press director Professor Jefferson Holdridge. We at the press remain very excited about this book and the wealth of talent it contains. Here’s a photo from the post-launch supper outing, with Conor O’Callaghan, Professor H…
Continue ReadingScapegoat and Other Poems
…ullabaloo’ of twenty-first-century life. Gillis is the dark star of contemporary Irish poetry, and a major talent.” – Conor O’Callaghan, Poetry Magazine…
Continue ReadingJohn McAuliffe
…ed in The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry Volume III, edited by Conor O’Callaghan. He also works as a reviewer, editor, and translator. He wrote a monthly poetry column for the Irish Times from 2013–2020, and now co-edits the leading UK poetry journal PN Review. His versions of the Bosnian poet Igor Klikovac, Stockholm Syndrome (Smith Doorstop), was a Poetry Book Society Winter Pamphlet Choice in 2019, and his work as an anthologist includes Ca…
Continue ReadingThe Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry Volumes I-IV
…nn, John McAuliffe, Maurice Riordan, and Gerard Fanning. Edited by Conor O’Callaghan. Volume II (2010): Poetry by Seán Lysaght, Moya Cannon, Thomas McCarthy, John F. Deane, and Máire Mhac an tSaoi. Edited by Jefferson Holdridge. Volume I (2005): Poetry by Harry Clifton, Dennis O’Driscoll, David Wheatley, Sinéad Morrissey, and Caitríona O’Reilly. Edited by Jefferson Holdridge. Praise for The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry “Wake Forest … has alw…
Continue ReadingLeontia Flynn wins Irish Times Poetry Now Award
…annual literary award is given to the best single volume of poetry by an Irish poet and comes with a cash prize of €2,000. The award will be presented at the Mountains-to-Sea dlr Book festival in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin today. Other poets on the shortlist were Conor O’Callaghan for Live Streaming, David Wheatley for The President of Planet Earth, Tara Bergin for The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx, and Mark Roper for Bindweed. The Radio will be publ…
Continue ReadingThe Shack: Irish Poets in the Foothills and Mountains of the Blue Ridge
…d Elizabeth Wassell, Vona Groarke, Ciaran Carson, Medbh McGuckian, Conor O’Callaghan, Michael Longley, and Derek Mahon. With lush watercolors by Kenneth Frazelle and an eighteenth-century painting of Old Salem by Christian Daniel Welfare. A handmade, limited-edition broadside of the title poem “The Shack” by Michael Longley was created on the occasion of the launch of this book. Reviews “. . . Wake Forest University Press has produced a collection…
Continue ReadingPoetry in Pop Culture: “poems change people’s understanding of what’s going on in the world”
…accessible to prospective readers, I think that is one step in the right direction. So keep an ear out, because who knows when you might hear Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s or Conor O’Callaghan’s words roll off your favorite star’s tongue. Just for fun: The Favorite Poets of Pop Culture Characters Posted by Nicole…
Continue ReadingAlan Gillis
…the dark star of contemporary Irish poetry, and a major talent.” – Conor O’Callaghan, Poetry Magazine Alan Gillis is an Irish poet from Belfast who now lives in Scotland, where he teaches English at The University of Edinburgh. He has published four poetry collections with The Gallery Press: Scapegoat (2014), Here Comes the Night (2010), Hawks and Doves (2007), and Somebody, Somewhere (2004), which won the Strong Award for Best First Collection in…
Continue Reading“Bigger isn’t always better: Confessions from Wake Forest University Press interns on working at a small university press”
…ver see. Most recently, I have been assigned to lead the charge on Conor O’Callaghan’s newest book, The Sun King. Not only have I had the privilege to serve as a primary reader on the manuscript, but I have been able to communicate directly with Conor about questions and design choices. How many interns can say they get to chat with a world-renowned poet on the regular? (10 points for WFUP!) Another thing I love about working at such a small press…
Continue ReadingThe WFU Press Holiday Sale & Gift-Giving Guide
…ible hardcover editions of works by Thomas Kinsella, Vona Groarke, Conor O‘Callaghan, and Ciaran Carson. Each clothbound edition has a signature-embossed cover and a classic vellum jacket. Signed editions are available, too! 10. For the rebel: Michael Hartnett and Medbh McGuckian are both celebrated Irish poets who broke tradition in different ways. Hartnett is known for his highly political decision in 1975 to thenceforth only write in the Irish…
Continue ReadingThe Readiness
…the dark star of contemporary Irish poetry, and a major talent.” –Conor O’Callaghan, Poetry Magazine “Gillis gives contemporary poetry a much-needed shot in the arm; poetic language is vivified, made stimulating and vital, in poems that leave the reader hanging on for dear life over every expertly-executed turn.” –Maria Johnston, Poetry Ireland Review “Gillis’s … ability to take a hammer to polite pieties does not involve sacrificing the ability…
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