International Poets in Conversation

International Poets in Conversation Link Here

Ilya Kaminsky very generously invited me to Chicago to record at the Poetry Foundation an "International Poets in Conversation" podcast with a senior Irish poet of my choice. I chose Matthew Sweeney. The podcast series is part of an initiative by the Poetry Foundation to encourage poetry communities across the United States to programme poets from abroad. Our trip to Chicago was contingent on us being able to arrange at least three other readings - which we did in Brooklyn, Seattle, Berkeley and San Francisco. Here you can listen to us discuss Eilean Ní Chuilleanáin and Michael Hartnett among other Irish poets and also talk about the influence 20th Century German poetry had on our own work.
The link brings you to a page which lists previous recordings in the series including the likes of Adam Zagajewski, Kwame Dawes and two of my favourite younger poets - Belarussian Valzhyna Mort and German poet Jan Wagner who is Sweeney's translator. Also listed on the same page are recordings by American poets such as Philip Levine, Mark Doty and Eavan Boland.

Best Irish Poetry 2010

The fourth issue of Best of Irish Poetry has just been published. It is a handsome looking volume featuring a photo by Russian Evgeniy Shaman. It appears to be from the same photoshoot as the image in my blog banner.
This year it is edited by Matthew Sweeney who does a good job of casting an insider/outsider eye on the Irish poetry scene. Matthew has spent most of the last twenty years moving in the poetry circles of Britain and Germany and in his introduction admits pleasant surprise to discover for the first time poetry imprints such as Doghouse, Arlen House and Bradshaw Books. He has done a great job not only in selecting poems published in Irish literary journals but also poems by Irish poets in periodicals from across Britain and North America. The big names known to non-specialist readers such as Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Paul Muldoon and Michael Longley are here along with other established names such as Pearse Hutchinson, Kerry Hardie, John F. Deane and Eamon Grennan. Women are well represented especially from the younger generation such as Sinead Morrissey, Leontia Flynn and Leanne O’Sullivan. There are also poets here who will be previously unknown to even the most expert reader of contemporary Irish poetry. 12 euro in the shops. It is available at a special price of ten euro from http://www.munsterlit.ie/