Southword Poetry Podcast: Recent Episodes
Munster Literature Centre
The Southword Poetry Podcast is produced by the Munster Literature Centre and hosted by Sarah Byrne. Every month, a guest poet talks in depth about their latest work and shares a few of their poems. We also hear a poem from a recent issue of the literary journal Southword. Poets for the 2022 season have been selected by Sarah Byrne, Patrick Cotter & James O’Leary. The Munster Literature Centre is a grateful recipient of funding from the Arts Council of Ireland and the Arts Office of Cork City Council.
(00:00) – Clíona Ní Ríordáin and Patrick Cotter discussion
(08:38) – Gerry Murphy interview
(47:21) – Southword poem, Mrs. Violet Club by Polina Cosgrave
Gerry Murphy is an Irish poet, born in Cork in 1952. His first poetry collection was A Small Fat Boy Walking Backwards (1985, 1992). He has since published many collections with The Dedalus Press including Rio de la Plata and All That (1993), The Empty Quarter (1995), Extracts from the Lost Log-Book of Christopher Columbus (1999), Torso of an Ex-Girlfriend (2002), My Flirtation with International Socialism (2010), Muse (2015) and The Humours of Nothingness (2020). He has published two chapbooks with Southword Editions, Kissing Maura O’Keeffe (2019) and My Life as a Stalinist (2018). Murphy’s poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Poetry Ireland Review, The Well Review and The Future (Arlen House, 2018). Pocket Apocalypse, his translations of the Polish poet Katarzyna Borun-Jagodzinska, appeared in 2005 from Southword Editions. Murphy’s own poems form the basis for a live poetry-and-music show by Crazy Dog Audio Theatre, entitled The People’s Republic of Gerry Murphy, which ran at the Cork Guinness Jazz Festival in 2010 to considerable critical success.
This week's Southword poem is 'Mrs. Violet Club' by Polina Cosgrave, which appears in issue 45. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
(00:00) – Clíona Ní Ríordáin and Patrick Cotter discussion
(03:09) – David Nash interview
(48:19) – Southword poem, Soap and Bones by Jerm Curtin
David Nash was born in Co. Cork and lives between Ireland and Chile. His work is widely published in journals, and his texts have appeared in numerous art exhibitions and books, including for Wolfgang Tillmans at IMMA. A Spanish-language children’s book, Bajo Mis Pies, came out in 2020, as did two translations of books on the cultural history of Chile. He writes for Harpers Bazaar Korea and Elle Korea, and essays have appeared in the Irish Times. His first pamphlet, The Islands of Chile, was published in 2022. His poetry collection No Man’s Land was published by Dedalus Press in November 2023 and was shortlisted for the 2024 RSL Ondaatje Prize which celebrates outstanding works of fiction, non-fiction or poetry that best evoke the spirit of a place.
This week's Southword poem is 'Soap and Bones' by Jerm Curtin, which appears in issue 45. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
(00:00) – Clíona Ní Ríordáin and Patrick Cotter discussion
(03:20) – Joyelle McSweeney interview
(54:50) – Southword poem, Another Beginning by Triin Paja
Guggenheim Fellow Joyelle McSweeney is the author of ten books of poetry, drama and prose, a well-known critic, and a vital publisher of international literature in translation. McSweeney's recent book, Toxicon and Arachne (Nightboat Books, 2020), was called "frightening and brilliant" by Dan Chiasson in the New Yorker and earned her the Shelley Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America. Her 2014 essay collection, The Necropastoral: Poetry, Media, Occults, is widely regarded as a visionary work of eco-criticism. She lives in South Bend, Indiana and teaches at Notre Dame.
This week's Southword poem is 'Another Beginning' by Triin Paja, which appears in issue 45. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
(00:00) – Clíona Ní Ríordáin and Patrick Cotter discussion
(11:24) – Traci Brimhall interview
(57:24) – Southword poem, The Orange by Viviana Fiorentino
Traci Brimhall is a professor of creative writing and narrative medicine at Kansas State University. She is the author of five collections of poetry, including Love Prodigal (published November 2024 by Copper Canyon). Her poems have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The Nation, The New Republic, Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, and Best American Poetry. She’s received fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, the National Parks Service, the Academy of American Poets, and Purdue Archives and Special Collections to study the lost poem drafts of Amelia Earhart. She’s the current poet laureate for the State of Kansas.
This week's Southword poem is 'The Orange' by Viviana Fiorentino, shortlisted for the Gregory O'Donoghue International Poetry Competition, which appears in issue 46. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
(00:00) – Clíona Ní Ríordáin and Patrick Cotter discussion
(07:47) – Michael O’Loughlin interview
(01:02:15) – Southword poem, Before I stillbirthed the birch by Katie Griffiths
Michael O’Loughlin was born in Dublin in 1958 and studied at Trinity College Dublin. He has published six collections of poetry, including Another Nation: New and Selected Poems (1996), In This Life (2011) and Poems: 1980–2015, published by New Island Books (2017). O'Loughlin is a regular contributor to The Irish Times and has published numerous translations, critical essays, reviews and screenplays. He has been Writer in Residence in Galway City and County, Writer Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, and is a member of Aosdána. His most recent project, Liberty Hall, was released in 2021.
This week's Southword poem is 'Before I stillbirthed the birch' by Katie Griffiths, winner of the Gregory O'Donoghue International Poetry Competition, which appears in issue 46. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
(00:00) – Clíona Ní Ríordáin and James O’Leary Discussion
(03:30) – Matthew Dickman interview
(56:35) – Southword poem, Missing by Daragh Byrne
Matthew Dickman grew up in Lents, a working-class area of Portland, Oregon. He earned a BA at the University of Oregon and an MFA at the University of Texas-Austin’s Michener Center. He is the author of the poetry collections Husbandry (2022), Wonderland (2018), Mayakovsky's Revolver (2014), 50 American Poems (cowritten with Michael Dickman, 2012), and All American Poem (2008).
This week's Southword poem is 'Missing' by Daragh Byrne, which appears in issue 43. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
(00:00) – Clíona Ní Ríordáin and James O’Leary Discussion
(02:46) - John W. Sexton interview
(01:00:32) - Southword poem, Doors Opening, Doors Closing by Aidan Matthews
John W. Sexton was born in 1958 and identifies with the Aisling poetic tradition. His work spans vision poetry, contemporary fabulism and tangential surrealism. He is the author of seven poetry collections including The Offspring of the Moon (Salmon Poetry 2013), Futures Pass (Salmon Poetry 2018), Visions at Templeglantine (Revival Press 2020) and The Nothingness Kit (Beir Bua Press 2022). A chapbook of his surrealist poetry, Inverted Night, came out from SurVision in April 2019. His next collection, The World Under the World, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry.
This week's Southword poem is ‘Doors Opening, Doors Closing' by Aidan Matthews, which appears in issue 44. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
(00:00) – Clíona Ní Ríordáin and James O’Leary Discussion
(03:32) - Gail McConnell interview
(01:01:50) - Southword poem, 13.58, January 28th 2022 by James McDermott
Gail McConnell is from Belfast. She is the author of of The Sun is Open (Penned in the Margins, 2021) and two poetry pamphlets: Fothermather (Ink Sweat & Tears, 2019) and Fourteen (Green Bottle Press, 2018). Fothermather was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Poetry Award. Gail’s poems have appeared in The Poetry Review, PN Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Blackbox Manifold and Stand, and she is the recipient of two awards from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. She has made two programmes based on her poetry for BBC Radio 4: Fothermather and The Open Box. She is Reader in English at Queen’s University Belfast and the author of Northern Irish Poetry and Theology (Palgrave, 2014). Gail’s writing interests include violence, creatureliness, queerness and the possibilities and politics of language and form.
This week's Southword poem is ‘13.58, January 28th 2022' by James McDermott, which appears in issue 43. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
(00:00) - Paisley Rekdal interview
(53:00) - Clíona Ní Ríordáin and Patrick Cotter Discussion
(01:03:15) - Southword poem, Waiting for the baby by Afric McGlinchey
Rekdal grew up in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of a Chinese American mother and a Norwegian father. She earned a BA from the University of Washington, an MA from the University of Toronto Centre for Medieval Studies, and an MFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is the author of the poetry collections West: A Translation (2023), winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; A Crash of Rhinos (2000); Six Girls Without Pants (2002); The Invention of the Kaleidoscope (2007); and Imaginary Vessels (2016), as well as the book of essays The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee: Observations on Not Fitting In (2000).
This week's Southword poem is ‘Waiting for the baby' by Afric McGlinchey, which appears in issue 43. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
(00:00) - Clíona Ní Ríordáin and James O'Leary Discussion
(04:55) - Deborah Paredez interview
(58:00) - Southword poem, Mother Tongue by Grace H. Zhou
Deborah Paredez is a poet and cultural critic. She is the author of the poetry volumes This Side of Skin (Wings Press 2002)and Year of the Dog (BOA Editions 2020), and the critical study Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory (Duke UP, 2009). Her poetry and essays have appeared in Poetry magazine,the New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. She is the cofounder and for a decade served as codirector (2009-2019) of CantoMundo, a national organization for Latinx poets. She lives in New York City where she teaches creative writing and ethnic studies at Columbia University.
This week's Southword poem is ‘Mother Tongue' by Grace H. Zhou, which appears in issue 44. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
(00:00) - Clíona Ní Ríordáin and Patrick Cotter Discussion
(08:35) - Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh interview
(55:48) - Southword poem, A South Ulster Homestead by Mary O'Donnell
Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh was born in Kerry. She has read at festivals in New York, Paris, Montréal, Berlin and Ballyferriter. In 2012 her poem ‘Deireadh na Feide’ won the O’Neill Poetry Prize. ‘Filleadh ar an gCathair’ was chosen as Ireland’s EU Presidency poem in 2013 and was shortlisted in 2015 for RTE’s ‘A Poem for Ireland’. Coiscéim published her first book Péacadh (2008) and Tost agus Allagar (2016). The latter won the Michael Hartnett Award in 2019. A bilingual collection, The Coast Road, was published by Gallery Press, and includes English translations by thirteen poets. Dánta Andrée Chedid, translations from the French, was published in 2019 by Cois Life as part of their ‘File ar Fhile’ series. She is the 2020 recipient of the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award. A new collection, Tonn Teaspaigh agus Dánta Eile, was published by Éabhlóid in November 2022.
This week's Southword poem is ‘A South Ulster Homestead' by Mary O'Donnell, which appears in issue 44. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
(00:00) - Clíona Ní Ríordáin and Patrick Cotter Discussion
(08:43) - Martín Espada interview
(01:14:46) - Southword poem, When Our Mother Dies by Jenny Mitchell
Martín Espada has published more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist and translator. His latest book of poems is called Floaters, winner of the 2021 National Book Award and the Massachusetts Book Award, and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He has received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Robert Creeley Award, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the PEN/Revson Fellowship, a Letras Boricuas Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. A former tenant lawyer in Greater Boston, Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
This week's Southword poem is ‘When Our Mother Dies' by Jenny Mitchell, which won the 2023 Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Competition and appears in issue 44. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
(0:00) - Clíona Ní Ríordáin and Patrick Cotter Discussion
(24:23) - Thomas McCarthy interview
(1:06:53) - Southword poem, The Woman Who Used To Bleed by Lorraine McArdle
Thomas McCarthy was born in Co. Waterford and educated at UCC. His many collections of poetry include Pandemonium (2016) and Prophecy (2019). A former Editor of Poetry Ireland Review, he is a member of Aosdána. His diaries, Poetry, Memory and the Party, were published in 2022 by The Gallery Press. His essays will be published by The Gallery later this year and his new collection, Plenitude, will be published by Carcanet Press UK in Spring 2025.
This week's Southword poem is ‘The Woman Who Used To Bleed' by Lorraine McArdle, which appears in issue 43. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
(0:00) - Clíona Ní Ríordáin and James O'Leary Discussion
(4:00) - Abigail Parry interview
(47:23) - Southword poem, My Poetry Isn’t Art Enough by Pragya Gogoi
I Think We’re Alone Nowwas supposed to be a book about intimacy: what it might look like in solitude, in partnership, and in terms of collective responsibility. Instead, the poems are preoccupied with pop music, etymology, surveillance equipment and cervical examination, church architecture and beetles. Just about anything, in fact, except what intimacy is or looks like. So this is a book that runs on failure, and also a book about failures: of language to do what we want, of connection to be meaningful or mutual, and of the analytic approach to say anything useful about what we are to one another. Here are abrupt estrangements and errors of translation, frustrations and ellipses, failed investigations. And beetles.I Think We’re Alone Now is Abigail Parry's second collection. Her first collection, Jinx (Bloodaxe Books, 2018), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2018 and the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Poetry Prize 2019.
This week's Southword poem is ‘My Poetry Isn’t Art Enough' by Pragya Gogoi, which appears in issue 43. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
(0:00) - Clíona Ní Ríordáin and Patrick Cotter Discussion
(7:34) - Paddy Bushe interview
(51:48) - Southword poem, Perault's Wolf by Tracy Gaughan
Paddy Bushe was born in Dublin in 1948 and now lives in Waterville, Co. Kerry. He writes in Irish and in English and he is a member of Aosdána. He received the 2006 Oireachtas prize for poetry, the 2006 Michael Hartnett Poetry Award and the 2017 Irish Times Poetry Now Award. In 2020, Dedalus Press published Double Vision, a two-volume publication comprising Second Sight, the author's own selection of his Irish language poems, accompanied by the author's own translations, as well as Peripheral Vision, his latest collection in English.
This week's Southword poem is ‘Perault's Wolf’ by Tracy Gaughan, which appears in issue 43. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
Paul Muldoon is the author of fourteen collections of poetry, including Moy Sand and Gravel, for which he received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and the most recent, Howdie-Skelp (2021). His other awards include the 1994 T. S. Eliot Prize, the 2003 Griffin Prize, the 2015 Pigott Prize, and the 2017 Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. Born in County Armagh in 1951, he has lived sine 1987 in the United States, where he is the Howard G. B. Clark Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University.
This week's Southword poem is ‘Last’ by Amy Woolard, which appears in issue 43. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
Ishion Hutchinson was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica. He is the author of two poetry collections: Far District and House of Lords and Commons. He is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize, the Whiting Writers Award, the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, the Windham-Campbell Prize for Poetry and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, among others. He is a contributing editor to the literary journals The Common and Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art and teaches in the graduate writing program at Cornell University.
This week's Southword poem is ‘Elegy’ by Olaitan Humble, which appears in issue 43. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
Susannah Dickey grew up in Derry and now lives in London. She is the author of four poetry pamphlets, I had some very slight concerns (2017), genuine human values (2018), bloodthirsty for marriage (2020), and Oh! (2022). In 2019 she won the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize, and in 2021 she was longlisted for the Sunday Times Short Story Award. She is an Eric Gregory Award winner, a prize granted for a collection by poets under the age of 30. Her debut poetry collection, Isdal, will be published in 2023. She is the author of Tennis Lessons (2020) and Common Decency (2022), both published by Doubleday UK.
This week's Southword poem is ‘Lagan’ by Niamh Prior, which appears in issue 41. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
Dean Browne won the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2021 and his pamphlet, Kitchens at Night, was a winner of the Poetry Business International Pamphlet Competition; it was published by Smith|Doorstop in 2022. His poems have appeared widely in journals such as Banshee, Poetry (Chicago), Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Review, PN Review, Southword, The Stinging Fly, and elsewhere.
This week's Southword poem is ‘Egyptian Wing’ by Heather Treseler, which appears in issue 41. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
Molly Twomey grew up in Lismore, County Waterford, and graduated in 2019 with an MA in Creative Writing from University College Cork. She has been published in Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, The Irish Times, Mslexia, The Stinging Fly and elsewhere. She runs an online international poetry event, Just to Say, sponsored by Jacar Press. In 2021, she was chosen for Poetry Ireland’s Introductions series and awarded an Arts Council Literature Bursary. Her debut collection, Raised Among Vultures, will be published in May 2022 with The Gallery Press.
This week's Southword poem is ‘Reading Ilya Kaminsky’ by Gerard Smyth, which appears in issue 42. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
Shangyang Fang grew up in Chengdu, China, and composes poems both in English and Chinese. While studying civil engineering at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, he realized his bigger passion lies in the architecture of language and became a poetry fellow at Michener Center for Writers. He is the recipient of the Joy Harjo Poetry Award and Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize. His name, Shangyang, originating from Chinese mythology, was a one-legged bird whose dance brought forth flood and rain. His debut is Burying the Mountain from Copper Canyon Press.
This week's Southword poem is ‘The Last Kodak Moment’ by Timothy McBride, which appears in issue 41. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
Ciaran O’Driscoll lives in Limerick. A member of Aosdána, he has published ten books of poetry, including Gog and Magog (1987), Moving On, Still There: New and Selected Poems (2001), and Surreal Man (2006). His work has been translated into many languages. Angel Hour (SurVision, 2021) is his most recent full collection. Liverpool University Press published his childhood memoir, A Runner Among Falling Leaves (2001). His novel, A Year’s Midnight, was published by Pighog Press (2012). His awards include the James Joyce Prize and the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry. His poem ‘Please Hold’ (featured in Forward’s anthology Poems of the Decade (2011) has become a set text for A Level English Literature. Five of his poems are included in the forthcoming anthology Contemporary Surrealist and Magical Realist Poetry, edited by Jonas Danys (Lamar University Literary Press, USA).
This week's Southword poem is ‘Sept 13th, 2001’ by Dante Micheaux, which appears in issue 41. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
Jenna Clake's debut collection of poetry Fortune Cookie won the Melita Hume prize in 2016, and was published in 2017 by Eyewear. It received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2018, and was shortlisted for a Somerset Maugham Award in the same year. Her second collection Museum of Ice Cream was published by Bloodaxe in 2021. Her debut novel Disturbance will be published by Trapeze (UK) and Norton (US) in 2023. Follow her on Twitter.
This week's Southword poem is 'The Quarry Lake' by Bernadette McCarthy, which appears in issue 41. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
Cameron Awkward-Rich is the author of two collections of poetry: Sympathetic Little Monster (Ricochet Editions, 2016) and Dispatch (Persea Books, 2019). His creative work has been supported by fellowships from Cave Canem, The Watering Hole, and the Lannan Foundation. Also a scholar of trans theory and expressive culture in the U.S., Cameron earned his PhD from Stanford University's program in Modern Thought & Literature. His more critical writing can be found in Signs, Trans Studies Quarterly, American Quarterly and elsewhere, and has been supported by fellowships from Duke University's Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the ACLS. His book The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment is forthcoming from Duke University Press in Fall 2022. Presently, he is an assistant professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
This week's Southword poem is Puerto Lopez by Mark Roper, which appears in issue 41. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
Victoria Kennefick's debut poetry collection, Eat or We Both Starve (Carcanet, 2021), won the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize 2022 and was awarded the Dalkey Book Festival Emerging Writer of the Year 2022. Most recently, it has been shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry 2022. In 2021, it was shortlisted for both the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Costa Poetry Book Award. It was a book of the year in The Guardian, The Irish Times, The Telegraph, The Sunday Independent and The White Review. Her pamphlet, White Whale (Southword Editions, 2015), won the Munster Literature Centre’s Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Competition and the Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet. Victoria is the current poet-in-residence at the Yeats Society Sligo.
This week's Southword poem is My Eyes by Dermot Bolger, which appears in issue 41. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.
The Southword Poetry Podcast, hosted by Sarah Byrne, launches it's first episode on 1st August with guest poet Victoria Kennefick. Season 1 will have ten episodes released on the 1st of every month.
Produced by the Munster Literature Centre https://www.munsterlit.ie/