Wake Forest University Press: 11 books

The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry 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...

Frank Ormsby's poetry is deep but never sententious, exhibits great technique but never flaunts it, is of the moment but never trendy. In his most recent volume, The Darkness of Snow, we see memories of his youth in Fermanagh as well as poems of adult years in Belfast, reflecting on the aftermath...

Winner: 2017 PEN Pinter Prize A remote townland in County Mayo, Carrigskeewaun has been for nearly fifty years Michael Longley's home-from-home, his soul-landscape. Its lakes and mountains, wild animals and flowers, its moody seas and skies have for decades lit up his poetry. Now they overflow...

The title of Medbh McGuckian's newest volume, Blaris Moor, refers to a traditional ballad that commemorates the trial and execution in 1797 of four militia men condemned by the authorities as members of the United Irishmen. The United Irishmen were so named because their failed Rebellion of 1798—among...

Harry Clifton, who divides his life between Ireland and elsewhere, is widely considered a bridge between younger and older Irish poets. This new volume provides further evidence of his pivotal position. Portobello, the district in Dublin where he lives, is a microcosm of a changing, cosmopolitan Ireland....

In The Radio, Leontia Flynn exercises her signature wit, formal inventiveness, bitter irony, and unique blend of vernacular speech and literary allusion. In the title poem, the radio is a portal from the outside world, piping "explosive news" of the Northern Irish Troubles into the poet's...

Scapegoat and Other Poems displays the remarkable versatility of Alan Gillis's voice, the range of his subjects, and the perspicacity of his poems. He moves from the popular to the political, from the satirical to the lyrical, with exceptional ease and insight. In "Progress," "To Belfast,"...

As one of the groundbreaking poets from Ulster, John Montague was significant in the development of postwar Irish, British, and American poetry. His early poems reflect the political and sectarian divide of his native County Tyrone, explore his Catholic upbringing, and moving record a ritualized lifestyle...

In The Stairwell, his tenth collection, Michael Longley's themes and forms reach a new intensity. The second part of the book is a powerful sequence of elegies for his twin brother, Peter, and the dominant mood elsewhere is elegiac. The title poem begins: “I have been thinking about the music for...

From the first estates of Dublin to the karmic wastes of northern China, this new volume by the eminent Irish poet Harry Clifton charts a course through the spiritual orphanhood, the loss and protection of innocence that define our new nomadic age. The poet has moved beyond middle age to revisit,...

Conor O'Callaghan's Live Streaming 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 with Petrarch's love for Laura and idolizing a heavyweight boxer. O'Callaghan's typical flair for the contemporary, for the live stream...