Search Results
The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry Volumes I-IV
…umes of The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry and save more than 30%! The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry Volumes I-IV. Each volume contains selections of work by five Irish poets, and the introductory essays and interviews by the editors provide context and background. This series gives readers a chance to experience the depth and breadth of the contemporary poetic landscape in Ireland. Details on each volume below: Volume IV (2017): Poetry b…
Continue ReadingIntroducing The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume IV
…are happy to announce that we’ll be publishing the next volume of The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry in March. This series brings lesser-known Irish voices to an American audience. In this fourth volume, editor David Wheatley, himself an established poet and critic, has selected poetry by Trevor Joyce, Aidan Mathews, Peter McDonald, Ailbhe Darcy, and Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh. Each section is introduced with an essay by Wheatley that offers some b…
Continue ReadingThe Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry Volume IV
The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry Volume IV brings lesser-known Irish voices to an American audience. In this fourth volume, editor David Wheatley, himself an established poet and critic, has selected poetry by Trevor Joyce, Aidan Mathews, Peter McDonald, Ailbhe Darcy, and Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh. Each section is introduced with an essay by Wheatley that offers some background, context, and critical illumination. As Wheatley writes in his pref…
Continue ReadingThe Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry Volume II
…ovides a distinctive answer to this question. Like the first volume of The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, the second volume introduces poets of varying ages and regions to a North American audience, showing through the eyes of contemporary poets what Ireland is like and how it is changing. Edited and with a preface by Jefferson Holdridge Reviews “The five may share some thematic similarities concerning landscape, political and religious tensi…
Continue ReadingThe Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry Volume I
…he 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 “Wake Forest . . . has always been a pioneer—almost the pioneer—in introducing new Irish poetry to American readers. It will be interesting to see which poets from Ireland’s stan…
Continue ReadingThe Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry Volume III
The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry Volume III brings lesser-known Irish voices to our American audience. Editor and renowned poet Conor O’Callaghan has selected poetry by Colette Bryce, Justin Quinn, 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…
Continue ReadingA Lil’ Bit of Lit Crit: “Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry”
…has been drafting permissions letters for our upcoming anthology. The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume III features the works of five Irish poets and will come out early next year. This week we will be contacting the publishers of these poets’ various works and requesting their permission to use selected poems in our anthology. As we begin our work on Volume III, we reflect on Volume II through recently published reviews. The current iss…
Continue ReadingThe Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume III, Launches in Paris
…liffe, Maurice Riordan, and Justin Quinn….
Continue Reading“What Voice? Whose Voice?” An Interview with David Wheatley on The President of Planet Earth
…est volume of The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, which you edited for Wake Forest Press recently, you combined poets of more, shall we say, modernist interests (like Trevor Joyce) with poets of a more traditional style. How do you think these two lines of poetic descent speak to each other? Wheatley: Through gritted teeth, often enough; “Great hatred, little room, / Maimed us at the start,” as Yeats once said. Irish poetry has its camps and t…
Continue ReadingBEST OF 2013: WFU Press Style
…of his death, we published Louis MacNeice’s Collected Poems. In July, our Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume III featuring work by Colette Bryce, Justin Quinn, John McAuliffe, 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 C…
Continue ReadingJohn McAuliffe in Conversation with Conor O’Callaghan
…s abridged and edited slightly for clarity. Read the full interview in The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry III, which also contains poems and interviews from Colette 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 a…
Continue Reading“The Importance of Breathing”: An Interview with Conor O’Callaghan
…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 connected to very specific places. In his Irish Times review on June 15, 2013, John McAuliffe writes “The Sun…
Continue ReadingPostponed: Alan Gillis and David Wheatley US readings
…Award. An avid editor and critic, Wheatley edited the fourth volume of The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, and other publications include a short book on pubs, Dark and True and Tender (CB Editions, 2012), and a poetic study of Scottish “avant-gardening,” The Reed Bunting Unseen: A Camouflage Garden for Ian Hamilton Finlay (Wild Honey Press, 2013). Wheatley has written for The Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, Poetry…
Continue ReadingRemembering Gerard Fanning
…n longer than most.” In an interview question posed by O’Callaghan for The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Fanning discussed his attraction to light and water, particularly in the poem “Tate Water”: “…The focus is more that water has no color in itself, but depends on various forms of light, though the putative narrator ties himself up in his own hubris and leaves the conclusion hanging. It could be more for a painter’s eye, but that doesn’t s…
Continue ReadingFrom “The Butterfly Notebook” to The Magpie and the Child: An Interview with Catriona Clutterbuck
…ay to take the next step without sinking and drowning. It was my editor at Wake Forest University Press, Jeff Holdridge, along with an early reader of the manuscript for the Press, who, three or four years in, first suggested to me that I incorporate earlier poems along with the bereavement poems into the same volume. And so I went back and revisited my older work, including a sequence written when I was expecting Emily and when she was a baby and…
Continue ReadingPoetry By Heart
…e winner of the TS Eliot Poetry Prize. We published Morrissey in our first Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry and The New North: Contemporary Poetry from Northern Ireland. The Independent asks Morrissey if she is in favor of students in school learning poetry by heart and she replies, “An important aspect of poetry’s power is its ability to cast a spell over those listening to it – its basic mechanics, rhyme and rhythm exist in order to do precise…
Continue ReadingDavid Wheatley
…ss, Samuel Beckett’s Selected Poems 1930–1989 for Faber and Faber, and The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Vol. IV (Wake Forest University Press, 2017). Wheatley’s critical study Contemporary British Poetry was published by Palgrave in 2015. His other publications include a short book on pubs, Dark and True and Tender (CB Editions, 2012); a poetic study of Scottish “avant-gardening,” The Reed Bunting Unseen: A Camouflage Garden for Ian Hamilto…
Continue ReadingCaitríona O’Reilly
…edited several issues of the Poetry Ireland Review. O’Reilly has taught at Wake Forest University and the Irish Writer’s Center in Dublin. Her newest volume, Geis, was published in North America by WFU Press in October 2015 and was chosen as one of The Guardian’s Best Books of 2015. Geis is the first appearance of a full volume by Caitríona O’Reilly in North America, though she has been anthologized numerous times, including in The Wake Forest Ser…
Continue ReadingThe WFU Press Holiday Sale & Gift-Giving Guide
…whomever you are shopping for. 1. For the reader new to Irish poetry: The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry is perfect for those who want to begin reading Irish poets but don’t know where to start. Each volume in this set of anthologies includes a selection of poetry from five poets, accompanied by introductions by the anthology’s editor or interviews with the authors. 2. For the lover of epic poetry: From Beowulf to Gilgamesh to the Odyssey, ep…
Continue ReadingJohn McAuliffe
…ery in 2021, and a North American edition appeared the following year from Wake Forest University Press. A previous selection of his poetry was included in The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry Volume III, edited by Conor O’Callaghan. His latest collection, National Theatre, was published by Gallery in 2024, and a North American edition was published by Wake Forest in March 2026. He also works as a reviewer, editor, and translator. He wrote a mon…
Continue ReadingIntroducing Geis by Caitríona O’Reilly
…ichael Longley has called “formally versatile and linguistically copious.” Wake Forest University Press is pleased to add Caitríona O’Reilly to our roster. The publication of Geis marks her North American debut and follows two critically acclaimed prior collections, The Nowhere Birds (2001) and The Sea Cabinet (2006). However, O’Reilly is no stranger to American poetry. Her influences can be traced to Emily Dickinson, H. D., Sylvia Plath, John Hai…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Water” by Dennis O’Driscoll
…nter of ice in the heart, the white blood of the snowman, the burst main flooding from Christ’s frozen side. –Dennis O’Driscoll, from The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Vol. I (2005)…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Sleep and Spiders” by Caitríona O’Reilly
…wake at five to what five is— a cold blue glow and a self trussed, barely breathing, paralytic with dreams. –Caitríona O’Reilly, from The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume I (2005)…
Continue Reading5 things we’re looking forward to in 2015
…we will be celebrating National Poetry Month. We’ve already found some fun ways to enjoy poetry during the month, from honoring the student winners of our Wake Up to Poetry contest here at Wake Forest, to sharing ideas about how others can become more involved in their own literary communities. Check out additional ways you can celebrate….
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Pollen” by Moya Cannon
…rom 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 layers of mud black, red and umber; it sleeps under the wet pelt of a November hill where long grass is the colour of fox; it sleeps deep under lakes; twelves metres down it survives, dust of arctic meadows, old and tough as love. –Moya Cannon, from The…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Glaciers” by Sinéad Morrissey
…t cannot be stopped. God’s wand is absolute. Looking at glaciers Jinxed into stillness – I miss oceans in my head. – Sinéad Morrissey, The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume I (2005)…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Late Morning” by Peter McDonald
…snow-crust broken apart with grass: I might have been a ghost, a shadow, and not the guest they had been expecting. – Peter McDonald, The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume IV (2017)…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Going Places” by John McAuliffe
…g in the backseats of cars, going places, Telephone wires on either side, like fences For giant invisible horses. –John McAuliffe, from The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume III (2013)…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Viola D’Amore” by Moya Cannon
…er why the hill sings, wonder why they find wells. – Moya Cannon, from The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Vol. II (2010) *A viola d’amore is an instrument from the baroque period, similar to today’s design, but with key differences. The “hidden strings” Cannon refers to in this poem are additional strings set below the main strings that the player draws the bow across. These are called “sympathetic” strings because they vibrate in sympathy wi…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Patience” by Justin Quinn
…gather and fold… I am about forty years old or ten, wide-eyed. I am my mother or father. Outside there is some weather. –Justin Quinn, The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume III (2013)…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “She is my love” by Trevor Joyce
…e word spares no regard Great is my grief too long this lingering who most suspects me is all my love —Trevor Joyce, The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume IV (2017)…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Áiféilín” by Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh
…All day That would be an exaggeration It’s just that My eye Gladdened at the sight of you, Stranger, Left behind Last night And this morning There’s a taste of stout And regret In my mouth –Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, translated by Gabriel Rosenstock from The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Vol. IV (2017) Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, born in Kerry, has published two volumes in Irish, Péacadh (Coiscéim, 2008) and Tost agus Allagar (C…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Sleepwalking” by David Wheatley
…of meaning the place that I knew without a word or a struggle, threatening only that it might become habitable. –David Wheatley, from The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Vol. I (2005)…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Timbre” by Moya Cannon
…h rings release the song of the place— droughts, good summers, long frosts— the way pain and joy unlock in a voice. –Moya Cannon, from The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume II (2010)…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Jean” by Colette Bryce
…ure in a cardboard frame, the face a crater. Here’s to the cruellest joke, Jean, that it came too late, and never. –Colette Bryce, from The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Vol. III (2013) …
Continue ReadingArts & Culture
…distinct and original combination of the geometric pieces. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that “Tangram II” is black and gold, a small nod to Wake Forest University’s school colors….
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Morte la nuit / When night has died” by Claire Malroux
…wers of Wake Forest University Press may not be aware that, though we are best known for publishing poetry by Irish authors, we do offer a small selection of French poetry in translation. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, our Contemporary French Poetry in Translation Series included work by Francis Ponge, Jacques Dupin, and Philippe Jaccottet, to name a few. And apart from that series, some of our Irish poets have done translations of major French…
Continue ReadingGeis
…America, though she has been anthologized numerous times, including in The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume I (2005) and The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry (2nd edition, 2011). In poems that range from the searingly personal to the more playfully abstract and philosophical, this poet’s characteristic imaginative range and linguistic verve are everywhere in evidence. These are poems that question our sometimes tenuous links with…
Continue ReadingConor O’Callaghan
…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 son to Roy Keane leaving the Irish national football team while the team was preparing to play…
Continue ReadingGerard Fanning
…the composer Ian Wilson for his Harbouring Suite (2008). Gerard Fanning was preparing his fourth collection when he died on October 18th, 2017, aged sixty-five. Wake Forest University Press published his Collected Poems in 2024. Author photo by Moya Nolan….
Continue ReadingTravel
…you were meant to be”. If you are interested in Harry Clifton’s work, his new book, The Winter Sleep of Captain Lemass, will be published by Wake Forest University University Press later this spring….
Continue ReadingMary O’Donnell
…rt story collection Walking Ghosts (Mercier Press) and the celebrated novel Sweep the Cobwebs off the Sky (Epoque Press UK). Tenderness is her first poetry collection with Wake Forest University Press. Born in County Monaghan, she now lives in County Kildare. Author photo by Conor Horgan….
Continue ReadingPeter Fallon
…7), Eye to Eye (1992), and The Deerfield Series: Strength of Heart (1997). Wake Forest University Press published his selected poems, News of the World, in 1993. An expanded edition, News of the World: Selected and New Poems, was published in Ireland in 1998. His recent publications include a translation of The Georgics of Virgil (2004), and two collections of poems, The Company of Horses (2007) and Strong, My Love (2014). Peter Fallon received th…
Continue ReadingBone and Marrow Book Tour
…latest anthology, Bone and Marrow/Cnámh agus Smior: An Anthology of Irish Poetry from Medieval to Modern, with a series of launch events organized with the anthology editors Samuel K. Fisher and Brian Ó Conchubhair. Planned events include a tour of Ireland from 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 wil…
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 Cannon, from The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume II (2010)…
Continue ReadingArts and Culture: Alice Maher and Irish Readers
…ught, naturally, about readers. Combine that with her interest in identities, particularly gendered identities, and you have her series, Lectores Mirabiles (Wonderful Readers). She gave us permission to use Lectores Mirabiles V for the cover of The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry, and we particularly love this cover, partly for its own power, and partly because it recalls … to us … Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin‘s poem, “Pygmalion’s Image,” and t…
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 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 carefully as a bright cup of water, as new bread. –Moya Cannon, from The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume II (2010)…
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: “On Not Experiencing the Ultraviolet Catastrophe” by Maurice Riordan
…You may be shunned, you may turn a dusky porcelain. My love, you may be skinned. But you will not burn. –Maurice Riordan, from The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume III (2013)…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Tomorrow” by Dennis O’Driscoll
…ook back on, not today. Tomorrow I start to be happy; today is almost yesterday. –Excerpt from “Tomorrow” by Dennis O’Driscoll, The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume I (2005) …
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Tionlacan/Accompaniment” by Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh
…onesomeness until the quiet inside me was playing along in a chorus –Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, translated by David Wheatley, from The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Vol. IV (2017)…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “The Previous Owner” by Seán Lysaght
…ve behind this house, still shining in the perfect tense, while the owner’s story takes him somewhere else. –Seán Lysaght, from The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume II (2010)…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Awaiting Burial” by Sinéad Morrissey
…u dreamt of, O Sarah, speak to me, you’ve been through The journey, was there light on the other side –Sinéad Morrissey, from The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Vol. I (2005)…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “Matt Kiernan” by Gerard Fanning
…last he plays The air is as true As the quiet inflection of easter snow Settling in its drifts of blue. –Gerard Fanning, from The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Vol. III (2013)…
Continue ReadingPoem of the Week: “The mornings you turn into a grub” by Ailbhe Darcy
…is pure egg all the way through. You are pure egg, all the way through, the mornings you turn into a grub. –Ailbhe Darcy, from The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Vol. IV (2017)…
Continue Reading