Tagged: “Women’s poetry”

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

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

“I came to nursing late and with almost no warning”: An Interview with Sara Berkeley

Sara Berkeley’s newest collection, Some of the Things I’ve Seen, is available this month from Wake Forest University Press. Originally published as The Last Cold Day in Ireland by The Gallery Press, this book chronicles Berkeley’s move across the United States during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as her work as a hospice nurse, a career she…

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

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

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

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

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

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

Poem of the Week: “Santo Spirito Lands on Mars” by Medbh McGuckian

Looking at the picture seems almost a form of trespass:
it would never have shown itself as it did,
this finely chiselled scene, a red, cobbled road,
rust-red tiles that shiver in ordinary sunrays.

Poem of the Week: “Rib” by Catriona Clutterbuck

When God took a rib out of man
and made it up into woman,
he left the cage of man’s heart unfinished,
missing one bar, undone.

Poem of the Week: “Other People’s Lives” by Vona Groarke

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

Poem of the Week: “Jean” by Colette Bryce

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

“A Deep Ocean One Can Plunge Into”: An Interview with Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s newest book The Mother House was published in the US this April, and it has been gaining praise across the board, including being chosen for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award. Despite finishing out the semester at home, WFU Press intern Emelyn Hatch conducted an interview with the poet via email to dig deeper into this shining collection.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Poem of the Week: “The Girl Who Turned into a Sunflower” by Medbh McGuckian

Her Muse means water, the moisture on the banks,
which can be awakened by a drop of oil.

Poem of the Week: “Durée d’Octobre / In October” by Claire Malroux

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

Poem of the Week: “Amber” by Eavan Boland

It never mattered that there was once a vast grieving:

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

through seasons and centuries to the ground—

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

APRIL

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

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

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

Radio Signals: An interview with Leontia Flynn

Leontia Flynn’s The Radio is out this month, so WFU Press interns gathered to ask the poet more about her newest collection. Written in three sections, The Radio explores the boundaries of home and family life from Flynn’s experience caring for her infant child, to coping with her father’s death, to remembering the influence of…

Introducing Geis by Caitríona O’Reilly

In her third collection of poetry, Caitríona O’Reilly presents a cabinet of curiosities, landscapes ranging from Iceland to Iowa, and a cast of characters including Jackson Pollock, Camille Claudel, and Clint Eastwood. Moving between the scientific and the supernatural, O’Reilly is consistently sharp with language that is Latinate, tactile, and intuitive, what Michael Longley has…

Introducing: The Boys of Bluehill

Wake Forest University Press is proud to announce the arrival of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s Boys of Bluehill. In her newest collection, Ní Chuilleanáin addresses the themes of music, religion, art, and language to create a beautiful union between revelatory imagery and an acute poetic sensibility. Of her work, Seamus Heaney remarked: “There is something second-sighted about Eiléan Ní Chulleanáin’s work….

Poem of the Week: “Closed Bells” by Medbh McGuckian

As we transition into winter, Medbh McGuckian’s frosty poem Closed Bells reminds us of the fast-dropping temperatures. Her fleshed out, frostbitten images offer the characteristic “wordlessness” for which McGuckian is best known and create a dream world suspended in the mid-season chill. Closed Bells Frost hollows small areas of leaf in gardenless margins. Wounded by the thought of nests expanding, they inspire devotion…

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

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

Poem of the Week: “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…

Paula Meehan touring United States

Wake Forest University Press poet and  current Ireland Professor of Poetry, Paula Meehan, has been charming audiences in the United States on her current reading tour. Earlier in March, Meehan appeared at HoCoPoLitSo’s Thirty-Sixth Annual Evening of Irish Music and Poetry. And on Thursday, April 3, Meehan will be reading at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York. The reading…

Poem 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…

The Miraculous Máire Mhac an tSaoi

Wake Forest Press will publish The Miraculous Parish, a bilingual volume of Máire Mhac an tSaoi’s poetry this May. An activist and visionary, Mhac an tSaoi has paved the way for such female literary giants as Eavan Boland, Medbh McGuckian, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. The Miraculous Parish solidifies her reputation as the…

Poem 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!

Medbh McGuckian speaks about The High Caul Cap: “the cap is an end and a beginning”

In today’s Irish Echo, Peter McDermott interviews Medbh McGuckian on identity, inspiration, Seamus Heaney, and why she reads books upside down. McDermott’s article offers a glimpse into the poet’s thoughts behind her most recent book, The High Caul Cap, which WFUP published this past autumn. Here’s a link to the interview: McGuckian speaks candidly, revealing that the crux of the volume…

Wake Forest Book of of Irish Women’s Poetry

We are so excited for our new Women’s Anthology—which is not unexpected, we know how great it’s going to be given the hours upon hours we labor over fada placement and typos. Here at the press we are thrilled to announce our 2011 Women’s Anthology Tour, which will be in October in conjunction with the…

Judging a Book by its Cover: Vona Groarke’s Spindrift

While an old adage suggests that you can’t judge a book by its cover, in the modern publishing world, that’s often all you have to go by. The ever-expanding digital marketplace uses cover art as an ambassador for the intangible, providing a thumbnail image of the physical book. Similarly, in old-fashioned bookstores, cover art is,…