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Michael Longley to Read at Cúirt International Festival of Literature
…, will be reading selections of his work on the opening night of the Cúirt International Festival of Literature. Longley’s most recent publication A Hundred Doors won the 2011 Irish Times Poetry Now Award, and he is also the recipient of the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, the Hawthornden Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize, among others. He is known for using classic references to draw attention to contemporary issues and for the heavy emotion his poem…
Continue ReadingMichael Longley Wins Feltrinelli International Poetry Prize
…el Longley was recently announced as the recipient of the 2022 Feltrinelli International Poetry Prize. Among the major European honors for poetry, the Feltrinelli Prize is awarded every five years by the Italian Accademia dei Lincei and includes a €250,000 monetary grant. Past winners include W. H. Auden, Eugenio Montale, and John Ashbery. The Accademia dei Lincei praised Longley for “the extraordinary relevance of his themes and their cultural im…
Continue ReadingContact
…ke Forest University Press in scholarly works, magazine articles, anthologies, and digital or electronic applications, please write to us via mail or e-mail (contact info above) with the details of your publication and requested materials for use….
Continue ReadingFrank Sewell on Editing and Translating Máirtín Ó Direáin: An Interview
…sche, Berdyaev, and Spengler) which “made [his] thoughts dance…” He was an internationalist in his reading and openness to influence. See, for example, the poem “Solas” (“Light”): “I never rejected light / From anywhere when it came; / But I ask the foreign light / Not to drown out my own.” So, for all those reasons, it seems appropriate that critics should compare his work with that of others, including perhaps a Czech author writing in the shado…
Continue ReadingBone and Marrow/Cnámh agus Smior: An Anthology of Irish Poetry from Medieval to Modern
…ure, its traumatic past, and turbulent present. View the Table of Contents INTERNATIONAL CUSTOMERS: In order to avoid international shipping fees, please order the book directly through our international distributor, Eurospan. The book can be ordered on their website by clicking here. Any questions about international availability should be directed to eurospan@turpin-distribution.com. Praise for Bone and Marrow “Once or twice in a generation, a b…
Continue ReadingU2: Brendan Kennelly’s Number One Fans
Like many Irish people, the poet Brendan Kennelly is a fan of the band U2. However, Kennelly has a leg up on his fellow U2 fans: the band is a fan of him. Kennelly is often called “the people’s poet” for his open, accessible style, (Dublin’s Sunday Tribune). Kennelly’s epic poem, The Book of Judas, was published in 1991; that same year, U2 released its seventh album, Atchung Baby. Their album—in particular, the song “Until the End of the World”—e…
Continue ReadingMichael Longley
…2015, the PEN Pinter Prize in 2017, and the inaugural Yakamochi Medal, an international poetry prize awarded by Toyama Prefecture Japan, in 2018. He served as the Ireland Professor of Poetry from 2007–2010. In an interview with The Wayfarer, Michael Longley once defined poetry: “Poetry is like a flick of the wrist. . . . You have to be insouciant. It’s like anything else. Have you ever made a group of people laugh? Writing a good poem is like tha…
Continue Reading“A Deep Ocean One Can Plunge Into”: An Interview with Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
…poem shows—because the experience I’m writing about is a European one, the international reach of the religious orders was my first introduction to Irish people’s migration. Nobody in my family, as far back as I know, ever emigrated to America, but my aunts spent the second World War in Scotland, France, and later Belgium. So for me the title suggested a place of origin, yes, but also a place from which very diverse experiences, from Ireland to Po…
Continue ReadingVona Groarke
…uding the Hennessy Award, the Brendan Behan Memorial Prize, the Stroketown International Poetry Award, and the Stand Magazine Poetry Prize, and she was the runner-up in The Times Literary Supplement Poetry Competition in 2003. Her most recent publication, X, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her poems have recently appeared in Yale Review, The New Yorker, Kenyon Review, Boston Review, The Guardian, The Times, and Poetry Review. She lives i…
Continue ReadingBook Club
…at any time. Your membership will automatically renew each year unless you contact us to cancel (though we hope you don’t!). If you have any further questions, email us at wfupress@wfu.edu and we’ll happily provide more details. How to Join It’s easy to join! Please call us to set up your membership. We require some basic information and payment details, and after you’ve joined, we’ll automatically begin sending our new books to you. If you’d like…
Continue ReadingJohn McAuliffe in Conversation with Conor O’Callaghan
…he Hundred Towns” and a lot else in Next Door. A couple of other points of contact with Mahon whose tone and phrasing are still a model to me: I must have had his London poems in view as well in “The Hundred Towns”—I’m thinking of his Kensington poems, more than the brilliant and more recent Coleridge Biographia poem or the Jean Rhys poem which conjures up a more literary London; and Seamus Heaney thinks about the pull of metropolitan fashion in t…
Continue ReadingOrdering Information
…the address below, and include the following information: Course name and number Semester to be taught Name of the professor(s) teaching the course Projected enrollment Confirmation that your college bookstore has ordered a minimum of 10 units for use as a required text (name of the bookstore and date of the order) All exam and desk copy requests should be sent on institutional letterhead to: WFU Press P.O. Box 7333 Winston-Salem, NC 27109 Phone:…
Continue ReadingSubmissions Policy
…poets, including Irish-American poets. We are amazed and heartened by the number of manuscripts and queries we receive each year, and we always enjoy hearing from Irish poets; this helps us keep our finger on the poetic pulse of Ireland. However, because of our limited staff and resources, we regret that we are not always able to offer individual responses and critiques, though we do respectfully read the work of any Irish poet that comes our way…
Continue ReadingHarry Clifton
…ates. He was the poet-in-residence at the Frost Place in New Hampshire, an International Fellow at the University of Iowa, and a representative for Ireland at the International Writing Program in Iowa. He has held many teaching positions at universities, including Bremen and Bordeaux in France, and Trinity College and University College, Dublin, in Ireland. In 2008, Clifton received the Irish Times Poetry Now Award, the most prestigious poetry pri…
Continue ReadingBone and Marrow Book Tour
…om Belfast to Galway, with stops at universities, bookshops, and the Cúirt International Festival of Literature. See the full itinerary below and stay tuned for other events in the US! We will keep this page updated as new events are added. Want to host a book launch event? Please send us an email at wfupress@wfu.edu. Royal Irish Academy Dublin | Wednesday, March 30, 4:30 pm Roundtable discussion as part of the Renaissance Society of America Annua…
Continue ReadingWFU Irish Festival 2007
…the Department of English, with assistance from WFU Press, WFU Center for International Studies, Dean Debbie Best, the E.E. Folk Fund, and Shelton Vineyards. SATURDAY, MARCH 17th–St. Paddy’s Day Itself! 11a.m.-3 p.m. WFU IRISH FESTIVAL COMMUNITY DAY on the Wake Forest U. Campus! Rain or shine. Davis Field if shine; Scales Fine Arts Center if rain. 4 hours of pure Irish fun–and THIS year, Irish-Appalachian fun, as well. AND IT’S ALL FREE! Featurin…
Continue Reading“Better for the Mess”: Samuel K. Fisher on the Making of Bone and Marrow
…ual notes, and introductory material. It also brings together a team of 24 international scholars, each working in their own chronological and thematic areas of expertise, lead by Samuel K. Fisher (Catholic University) and Brian Ó Conchubhair (Notre Dame University). To celebrate the book’s release, WFU Press sat down with Sam Fisher to reflect on the book’s production and editorial decisions, the goals of translation, and the lasting legacy of th…
Continue ReadingIt’s Festival Season: A Celebration of Irish Arts and Culture
…ness Cobh Blues Festival: September 19th-September 21st in Co. Cork Galway International Oyster and Seafood Festival: September 25th-September 28th in Co. Galway If any of our readers are looking to celebrate their Celtic heritage back home in the U.S., a number of upcoming events are occurring around the country. Two of the largest include Bethlehem, Pennsylvania’s Celtic Classic Highland Games taking place September 26th-28th and the Austin Celt…
Continue ReadingThe Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry Volume I
…I is a representative anthology meant to introduce to a broader audience a number of Irish poets, some young, some in their prime, who have not appeared widely before in North America. From the burgeoning economic realities of the “Celtic Tiger” to the burden of religious and political realignment, from urban scenes to historical landscapes, these poets sensitively record the effects of writing in a society that has shifted dramatically in the las…
Continue Reading“Malingering at the Heart of Things”: Review of Harry Clifton’s Portobello Sonnets
…ant” outlined by Michael O’Loughlin in a recent Irish Times article: “Rule number 1 reads, ‘Don’t come back,’ while rule number 10 reads, ‘Above all: don’t come back.’ As O’Loughlin reminds us, the treatment of returning Irish emigrants is one of the outstanding ironies of contemporary Ireland.” Keatinge traces the theme of exile and return throughout Clifton’s work, which he writes has been “widely admired for its searching poetic explorations of…
Continue ReadingAmerican Students in Ireland: Perspectives from WFU Press
…surprised to find that, whilst looking out the window of my taxi from the airport, I felt as though I could easily be in America. The U.S. corporate coffee monster that is Starbucks greets early morning commuters on just about every street corner. The oddly familiar Eddie Rocket’s City Diner offers American food at nearly all hours of the day, and accomplishes a business feat that is nearly as genius as their Oreo milkshakes by cutely avoiding pa…
Continue ReadingThe Poet and “Protection of Innocence”: An Interview with Harry Clifton
…o your general comments on art? The poem “Horace” probably encapsulates my reservations not so much about art or poetry itself, as the art-world or literary world it has to inhabit—traditionally, as far back as the classic age, a world of courtiers, wits and intelligences who thrive, if not always through flattery or sought-for preferment, then very often through strategic silence (e.g., the silence of Irish poets and writers who live on campus in…
Continue ReadingAbout Us
…e interested in a WFU Press poet visiting your institution or city, please contact us. At Wake Forest University Press, we give customers the special attention that only a small, independent publisher can provide. We have no sales reps out “in the field,” we have no vast acres of anonymous titles. We do have a friendly staff who are very familiar with our books and authors, and who are eager to help you with your order, whether you’re a wholesaler…
Continue ReadingWake Forest University Press Gets a New Home
…our staff, interns, warehousing needs, and small events. (And we have windows!) Our address has changed, but our mission remains: to be the premier publisher of Irish poetry in North America. Be sure to update our contact information in your address book, and stop in to say hello if you’re in the area. 2518 Reynolda Rd. Winston-Salem, NC 27106 Phone: (336) 758-5448 NEW fax: (336) 842-3853 Email: wfupress@wfu.edu…
Continue Reading“Looser, Freer, and a Bit Wilder”: An Interview with Conor O’Callaghan
…one point I passed him in the street and stuff, but there was certainly no contact for whatever reason. So, he was kind of, to be honest, largely a forgotten presence in our lives. And I remember finding this tremendously frustrating at his funeral, that we were there, all of us, at his funeral, but because of the weird relationship that we had with our father, none of us were talking about him. It’s as if nobody could remember anything. It’s as i…
Continue ReadingSubmissions
…merican poets. If you are a native of Ireland and wish to submit a poetry manuscript, please email a representative sampling of your poetry and your biographical information to wfupress@wfu.edu. Alternatively, you may mail a hard copy of your work, biographical and contact information to Wake Forest University Press, PO Box 7333, Winston-Salem, NC 27109. Should you want the return of your submission, please include a self-addressed envelope with a…
Continue ReadingExam Copies
…enrollment. Prepayment is required. To pay with a check, simply mail in your request with payment. To pay with credit card (VISA/ MasterCard/Amex/Discover), you will need to mail, fax, or email your examination request, and we will contact you by telephone for your credit card information. Please mail, fax, or email requests for examination copies on institutional letter head to: WFU Press PO Box 7333 Winston-Salem, NC 27109 fax: 336 758.5636 ema…
Continue ReadingReview Copies
…iew Copies If you are a book reviewer, blogger, bookstore buyer, or acquisitions librarian, you may be able to receive an early online review copy (in PDF form) of Wake Forest University Press publications. To request a copy, please contact us at wfupress@wfu.edu with your credentials. Reviewers and bloggers should provide three samples of published reviews. Review copies are sent out at the discretion of the publisher. Thank you for considering W…
Continue ReadingThomas Kinsella
…emporary Irish poets, Kinsella is credited with bringing the techniques of international modernism to Irish verse. He published his first collection, The Starlight Eye (1952), with Dolmen Press, helping to set the type himself. He has also translated extensively from Irish, most notably the Old Irish epic An Táin Bó Cuailgne, published as An Táin (1969) and An Duanaire—Poems of the Dispossessed (1981). In 1972, he founded the Peppercanister Press…
Continue ReadingLouis MacNeice Poetry Evening
…ined together for readings at Ulster Hall in Belfast. MacNeice also has an international appeal, as demonstrated by the participation of Bermudian poet Paul Maddern (as noted in Bernews: Bermuda Poet to Participate in MacNeice Tribute). To learn more about Louis MacNeice, please visit the Literary Belfast profile of this important poet. If you can’t afford a trip to Belfast to celebrate in person, join Wake Forest Press in marking the anniversary…
Continue ReadingGuinn Batten on Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s new COLLECTED POEMS
…the sharp edges of difference. Ní Chuilleanáin may be, after all, the most international of Irish poets after Yeats, as she puts us in proximity to strangeness and to strangers, producing effects that can be visionary while remaining, in every sense, worldly. The sequence “Site of Ambush” is particularly welcome in this collection, and should be seen as a powerfully mythic, radically feminine, and distinctively republican counter-statement to set…
Continue ReadingÉigse Festival Honors Michael Hartnett
…ing creative people of different genres. The event will showcase Irish and international poets and writers, in addition to dancers, musicians, singers, and storytellers. The event will be a beautiful tribute to Michael Hartnett and his work, but will also serve to promote the Irish culture that he loved. Here, one of Hartnett’s poems about his contemporaries: The Poet as Mastercraftsman for Thomas Kinsella Eras do not end when great poets die, for…
Continue ReadingEiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
…Reindeer (2002); Selected Poems (2009); The Sun-fish (2010), which won the International Griffin Poetry Prize; and The Legend of the Walled-Up Wife (2012), translations from the Romanian poetry of Ileana Mălăncioiu. With Medbh McGuckian, Ní Chuilleanáin also co-translated the poems of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill in The Water Horse (2001). Her newest collection The Mother House (2020) is due to be released in April 2020. *Author photo by Niall Hartnett Pra…
Continue ReadingFrank Ormsby
…instead to the broader global community. . . his poetry makes the domestic international and the global local. Ultimately, his poems ‘add small stones to the cairns of love and sorrow’ that is the human condition worldwide.” – Adrienne Leavy, Reading Ireland In his speech on the Lawrence M. O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry in 2022, Jim Rogers said, “We honor Frank Ormsby’s generosity of spirit; the craft of his poetry; his deep humanity; his resolut…
Continue ReadingPoem 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! The Trees I dreamed we were cutting down the trees Of childhood: at the back of our garden The grey ash from which we dropped into The playing fields, two flowering currants’ Summer hum, the cherry tree that after Many…
Continue ReadingSelected Poems | Louis MacNeice
…ngley and Paul Muldoon, because of his lyrically nuanced considerations of international as well as national issues. Born and raised in Northern Ireland, and educated in England where he resided for much of his adult life, MacNeice answered a need in these poets for a perspective that made the local have larger political significance. He also offered an angry critique of Ireland and Irish history that was tempered by familial love and affection. M…
Continue ReadingCollected Poems | Denis Devlin
…define his purposes. All three writers found their best readers in mixed, international circles; Devlin was embraced in America by Robert Penn Warren and Allen Tate, who favorably compared his long poem Lough Derg to Steven’s Sunday Morning, Eliot’s Gerontian, and Crane’s The Broken Tower. Yet to describe Devlin only as a European, late modernists ignore the fact that he was nevertheless distinctively Irish. He was Ireland’s first ambassador to R…
Continue ReadingAn interview with Harry Clifton: Returning to Portobello “was like rebuilding an identity from the ground up”
…return expressed in the opening sonnet. How do ideas of the local and the international, the parochial and the cosmopolitan, play out in Portobello Sonnets? Portobello, the area of Dublin I live in, is both local and cosmopolitan, a microcosm perhaps of what Ireland is becoming. Ethnicity, intermarriage, the human richness of the place itself—I hoped some of that texture would become apparent in the sequence, as well as my own crises and resoluti…
Continue ReadingWomen’s Poetry in France 1965–1995
…fy their place, not only in this bilingual volume but also in the realm of international poetry. In French and English; selected and translated by Michael Bishop. Includes poetry by Andrée Chedid, Heather Dohollau, Françoise Hàn, Joyce Mansour, Claire Laffay, Marguerite Duras, Janine Mitaud, Hélène Cadou, Claudine Helft, Silvia Baron Supervielle, Marie-Claire Bancquart, Vénus Khoury-Ghata, Anne Teyssiéras, Denise Le Dantec, Claude de Burine, Louis…
Continue ReadingThe Sun-fish
…ent thinning the curtain, / Real, like the tricks of light.” Winner of the International Griffin Poetry Prize Praise for The Sun-fish “This beguiling poet opens many doors onto multiple worlds. From the outset . . . we are in a shifting realm, both real and otherworldly. The effect of her impressionistic style is like watching a photograph as it develops. The Sun-fish contains approaches to family and political history, thwarted pilgrimages in whi…
Continue ReadingThe Stairwell
…icated artistry: to make them, somehow, the same thing. Winner of the 2015 International Griffin Poetry Prize Kindle version available on Amazon.com EPUB version available on iBooks EPUB version available on Nook Listen to the 2015 Griffin Poetry Prize judges’ citation: Reviews “A masterly realization of the light touch he brings to serious subjects, as if sentences were his way of breathing.” – Griffin Poetry Prize Shortlist Judges’ Citation “The…
Continue ReadingCiaran Carson, 1948–2019
…h deep sorrow, what we have lost. With others in Ciaran’s wide and diverse international audience of readers who have felt the power, but also the intimacy, and now also the endurance, of the craft of this inimitable and (if there ever were or will be such a creature) creative genius, we are remembering all those rooms where, as in the small back room of the pub imagined in his magnificent “Hamlet,” which concluded Belfast Confetti thirty years ag…
Continue ReadingInternships
Wake Forest University Press offers a limited number of internships to students, both for class credit and for career preparation. WFU Press interns are exposed to the full spectrum of operations within a nonprofit press: book production, editing, marketing, publicity, website management, customer service, reader engagement, and event planning. We accept applications on a rolling basis, though most of our hiring is done in March/April for interns…
Continue ReadingSelected Poems | Patrick Kavanagh
…n using outside Pettigo. When I first visited Dublin, again in the mid-1950s, the streets were notable less for their automobile traffic than the huge number of horse-drawn brewery drays delivering Guinness to an eager public….
Continue ReadingConor O’Callaghan
…Book of Irish Poetry, Volume III. Conor O’Callaghan is the recipient of a number of awards, including the Patrick Kavanagh Award for his first collection of poetry, the Rooney Prize Special Award, and the Times Educational Fellowship. He was 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 acc…
Continue ReadingArts & Culture
…to introduce current Irish poets to a wider audience and emphasize the changing and dynamic view of Ireland through words and art. Fortuitously, it appears Scott takes some liberties with the original concept of the tangram by forfeiting the seven pieces for five that conveniently matches with the number of poets in the volume: Seán Lysaght, Moya Cannon, Thomas McCarthy, John F. Deane, and Máire Mhac an tSaoi. The five distinctive voices coming t…
Continue ReadingArts and Culture: Cover Art for McGuckian’s My Love Has Fared Inland
…d a contest in which students could submit personal photographs depicting and representing their own introspective trajectories to be chosen for the cover—a chance at immortality, in other words. The Press chose a number of entries that emphasize the experimental, imagistic quality of the poetry. The interplay between the cover and the poems provides a tangible touchstone for McGuckian’s often esoteric language….
Continue ReadingJohn Montague
…, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has received honorary doctorates from a number of universities, including the Sorbonne. In 2010, he was made a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, France’s highest civil award. He is the author of numerous poetry collections, short stories, and essays, and has edited major anthologies. Wake Forest is the publisher of his last ten volumes, and a new selection of his poetry, A Spell to Bless the Silence (2018). Monta…
Continue ReadingInterview with Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
…very much want to preserve the original author’s attitude. I’ve written a number of poems about translation, especially “Gloss/Clós/Glas”, and about language. Q. In her preface to the first volume of The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry, Peggy O’Brien emphasizes the contributions that you and other contemporary Irish women poets have made to the poetry movement in Ireland. Do you feel the acceptance of the woman voice in Irish poetry has…
Continue ReadingA Very Kinetic National Poetry Month
…atanzano and other current faculty who have published poetry, as well as a number of alumni and past faculty. To fully render Wake Forest’s poetic history, we also displayed books written by current and former WFU poets ranging from faculty to staff to alumni. Among the books on display were collections written by former professors Maya Angelou and A.R. Ammons, alumna L.C. Williams, and WFU Press poet Caitríona O’Reilly. The books in the display c…
Continue Reading“I came to nursing late and with almost no warning”: An Interview with Sara Berkeley
…ls, whether it’s driving to work or flying across the globe. In “Morning Number One,” you write “Let me be done with the business of doing / and the work of love, let me go down / to the lake with a pen, some champagne…” What inspires you to pick up the pen most often and write a poem? I think that sadness has inspired more poetry for me than joy in the past, but I find that balance shifting now and I feel that the poems in this collection are a…
Continue ReadingMáire Mhac an tSaoi
…Madrid, in Africa and America, and at the United Nations. She also spent a number of years working with lexicographer Tomás de Bhaldraithe on his English-Irish dictionary. In 1962 she married Conor Cruise O’Brien, the Irish writer, historian, and politician. She lived for many years on the summit of Howth Head outside Dublin, until moving to live with her daughter in Co. Meath. She passed away in October of 2021. In her literary career, Máire Mhac…
Continue Reading“It felt like a breaking of some taboo I’d placed myself under”: Caitríona O’Reilly on writing Geis
…most dominant trend, to my mind, is diversity. We are a disparate bunch. A number of us have completed doctorates (I’m thinking of poets of my generation such as Justin Quinn, Sinéad Morrissey, and so on), so there is perhaps a more conscious academic bent there in some of the work. There is of course an acute consciousness of the prominence of poets such as the brilliant generation of Northern Irish poets: Montague, Mahon, Longley, Muldoon, and o…
Continue ReadingSome of the Things I’ve Seen
In her newest collection, Sara Berkeley follows a number of sightlines: watching the landscape from the window of a plane, contemplating the effects of climate change, witnessing human vulnerability and resilience as a hospice nurse during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Her gaze traces the coastlines of the Pacific Ocean and moves with a coyote through the California desert to the Palio horse race in Sienna, a return to Ireland, and a migra…
Continue ReadingThe Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry Volumes I-IV
…troduction to contemporary Irish poetry.” – Wisconsin Bookwatch “Given the number of twentieth-century Irish poets who are household names (Yeats, Kavanagh, MacNeice, Heaney), it’s a wonder that later generations aren’t tongue-tied or at least deterred. … I have the work of living poets in front of me to say it isn’t so.” – Sewanee Review “Traditional music or postmodernism, there is a breadth of subject-matter and style on show throughout this ge…
Continue ReadingFrom “The Butterfly Notebook” to The Magpie and the Child: An Interview with Catriona Clutterbuck
…y, reflecting the calendar seasons after Emily passed away, with each poem numbered, dated, and titled. In a version dated July 2017, there were 280 mostly short poems in “The Butterfly Notebook” (of which about eighty would remain in the Threnodies as now published). By that point, I’d also included a couple of pieces—“prequel” poems—I’d written years before, about Emily as a baby and young child, including what is now the opening title poem of T…
Continue ReadingJohn McAuliffe
…l, County Kerry. He studied English and Law at NUI Galway, and taught at a number of universities in Ireland, the UK, and the US, including Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and Villanova, where he held the Heimbold Chair in Irish Studies. He now lives in Manchester, where he is Professor of Poetry at the University of Manchester and Associate Publisher at the independent poetry press Carcanet. John has published five previous books with…
Continue ReadingA Montague Retrospective
…In Dublin 1995 – Collected Poems “John Montague’s poetry is notable for a number of reasons, not the least for his ability to convey political and personal crisis with deep feeling, clarity and elegance. He has not only produced a confessional poetry of the highest order, but he is also the writer who has articulated best the tragedy, and the context, of the Troubles. At the same time, Montague has never lost sight of the importance of craft in p…
Continue ReadingSelected and New Poems | Michael Hartnett
…in Irish poetry, previously unavailable in North America. Beginning with a number of his precocious lyrics, written in Hartnett’s teens, the volume continues through exquisite love poems and early elegies, some pastoral poems and, later, farewells to pastoral. Hartnett’s celebrated declaration to write in Irish introduces a series of translations and announces the more public arguments of subsequent poems in English. The book concludes with five e…
Continue ReadingThe Winter Sleep of Captain Lemass
…his middle-age more plentifully across the page, so to speak, there are a number of poems in this book that will be read as long as any poems are read anywhere.” – Colm Tóibín, The Irish Times “The influence of war in Ireland has been perpetual, and Clifton, who has traveled and lived extensively outside of his country, examines his homeland through the lens of one who left but returned to make sense of it ‘in the name of the lost, the disinherit…
Continue Reading“The Importance of Breathing”: An Interview with Conor O’Callaghan
…done by old school handsetting. The guy who was doing it had to reduce the number of couplets per page towards the end because there weren’t enough Os for more than a couple of tweets. I took great heart from that: I was writing poems that emptied the O jar, and felt sure that I was going in the right direction! NF: There seems to be an Italian influence that underscores “The Pearl Works”. You mention that some of the entries were posted from San…
Continue ReadingAn Interview with Frank Ormsby on THE DARKNESS OF SNOW
…unnamed speaker in “Crows Again” as a kind of anti-muse. She appears in a number of other (unpublished) poems complaining much more aggressively about the amount of snow in my poems and my obsession with gates and my fondness for the middle of fields. It gets to the point where I decide that I cannot show her my “rain poems” and indicate that I am looking for a new muse! I think of her as a comic sub-plot. “Crows Again” is the only one in this gr…
Continue ReadingBEST OF 2013: WFU Press Style
…un King, which comes out later this month. We look forward to publishing a number of upcoming books, including volumes by Harry Clifton, whose book The Holding Centre comes out in January, Maire Mhac an tSaoi, and Caitríona O’Reilly. May We Have Your Attention, Wake Forest? Another highlight of our 2013 year has been our increased efforts to market to Wake Forest University. Oftentimes, students aren’t always aware of what the Press does (and some…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Don’t You” by Alan Gillis
…river twisting through the dusty land? For though you thought you were my number one, this girl did not want a gun for hire, no bright-spark who was just dancing in the dark. 2 You were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, when I met you, and I believed in miracles: every step you took, I was watching you. I asked for your name, tipped you again and again and you said, Don’t—don’t you want me to fetch you a drink that would turn your pink mou…
Continue ReadingSelected Poems | Jacques Dupin
…along with Tel Quel, the most important literary journal in France. For a number of years Dupin directed publication for the Galerie Maeght in Paris. Sharing affinities and landscapes with Reverdy, Char, and Ponge, Dupin has developed, nevertheless, a poetry so distinctive and innovative to the American ear and eye that it could, especially with this selection, tincture the reading and writing of poetry in the United States. Eschewing theory, he…
Continue ReadingEdge
…rd; Selected Poems: 1965–1990, which received the Poet’s Prize; and Winter Numbers, which was awarded both the Lambda Literary Award in Poetry and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Reviews “These 37 lyrics (exquisitely translated by Marilyn Hacker) . . . with their bristling intensity, clipped phrasing, and brilliant flashes of imagery are apt to remind many readers of Dickinson, whose work Malroux has translated. . . . Malroux revels in all facet…
Continue ReadingDesk Copies
…s title as a required text in a course, please provide the course name and number when the course will be taught the name of the professor(s) teaching the course projected enrollment confirmation that your college bookstore has ordered a minimum of 10 units for use as a required text the name of your college bookstore the date of the order (if available) A complimentary desk copy will be provided to a professor when 10 or more new books are ordere…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “On Not Experiencing the Ultraviolet Catastrophe” by Maurice Riordan
…kilns Only baked Black Country clays to lucent jasper With the help of an unknown hand: the constant h Blocking frequencies in the ultraviolet range And which, according to our century’s laws, Is true even to the cosmic radiation coming At us, year on year, from the origins of time. A modest number, with its dairy herd of noughts After the point, it almost is–but isn’t–zero. By its mercy, we lie in the face of heaven. You may lie beside me flesh t…
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