Salmon: A Journey in Poetry, 1981-2007
Edited by Jessie Lendennie

Salmon: A Journey in Poetry 1981-2007 celebrates 26 years of innovative and exciting Irish and international poetry. The organization of the volume is simple: two poems from the poet’s Salmon collection (or collections) and one uncollected poem. Detailed biographical notes for each poet, and a complete bilbiography of Salmon's publications, are also included.

"A treasure-trove of poetry from Salmon. This is one anthology that is worth its weight." Hugh McFadden, Books Ireland

"In this anthology, Jessie Lendennie brings us 318 poems she has gathered along her path from Arkansas to County Clare—and at journey’s end, we want more." Deborah Fries, Terrain.org

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Thornfield: Poems by the Thornfield Poets
Selected & Introduced by Andrew Carpenter

The poets whose work is collected in this vibrant and exciting collection of contemporary Irish poetry belong to a group that meets regularly in University College Dublin. The poems – varied, eclectic and ironic – explore diverse themes and topics, some of them pushing words to their boundaries, others grappling with complex emotions and states of mind. The volume includes three remarkable unpublished poems by the late Dorothy Molloy, a founder member of the original Thornfield Poets workshop. The other contributors are Ivy Bannister, Louise C. Callaghan, Mary Rose Callan, Susan Connolly, Enda Coyle-Greene, Celia de Fréine, Anne Dean, Anne Fitzgerald, Cecilia McGovern, Maggie O’Dwyer, Máiríde Woods.

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Ground Forces
Poems by PAUL ALLEN

I am throwing no phony bouquets when I say that, on reading this, I often felt, as someone once said, like putting my quill back in my goose. Allen manages to be funny, deeply reverent, judicious, and moving all in the same breaths. He is one of the best poets going. Sydney Lea

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Catastrophic Chords
Poems by MARCK L. BEGGS

In his third collection, Marck L. Beggs puts forth his most thematically developed work yet. While the first part of the book comprises a series of musically oriented poems about relationships and loss, the second part concerns itself with an extended dialogue between Henry David Thoreau and Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber.

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Conflicted Light
Poems by J.P DANCING BEAR

Using myth, politics, nature, and art, J.P. Dancing Bear asks questions that can only be asked through poetry. These accomplished and various poems feature sure-handed lines and vivid images. J.P. Dancing Bear has an ear for “the inner tones of the world” and an eye that sees “aspens turning into an imitation of fire" and “bullfrog stars hunger[ing] for crickets.” Conflicted Light reveals the vitality of contemporary American verse.
—Natasha Saje

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Catching the Light: Views & Interviews
by GERALD DAWE

?This fascinating series of literary views and interviews illuminate the coming of age of Belfast-born poet Gerald Dawe during the fifties and sixties in Northern Ireland, the literary and political worlds he discovered on moving to the Republic of Ireland in the early seventies, and his travels since, in Europe and other parts of the world, shadowed by the violent closing decade of the twentieth century and the beginning of the new century.

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Tethered to the Earth
Poems by TYLER FARRELL

Tyler Farrell was educated by Irish poets, Eamonn Wall and James Liddy in Omaha, NE and Milwaukee, WI, respectively. He is now an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Dubuque (Iowa) and book review editor for An Sionnach. Tethered to the Earth contains human figures in two landscapes as well as the complex emotions evoked when one is far from home. After living and teaching in Northern Wisconsin for two school years and traveling through Europe for five weeks (the summer between), the poet’s view of the world seemed a far bigger place.

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The Mischievous Boy and other poems
by MAURICE HARMON

In this far-reaching collection Maurice Harmon extends the examination of modern Irish life that he began twenty years ago. the mischievous boy exposes the conditions of life in Ireland through various manifestations -- in James Joyce, Thomas Kinsella, and William Carleton.

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To Keep the Light Burning: Reflections in times of loss
by ANNE LE MARQUAND HARTIGAN

To Keep the Light Burning: Reflections in times of loss is a particular book of poetry and prose put together with the aim to be of help to those experiencing loss and grief from death. A collection of poems that could be read at funerals; traditional burials or cremations. Poems for now, when many need a different way to express their loss, and may or may not choose a religious ceremony. Linking this with the traditional ways we in Ireland cope with and honour the dead.

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The Odor of Sanctity
Poems by MICHAEL HEFFERNAN

Michael Heffernan began writing poems in 1958. His books include The Cry of Oliver Hardy (1979), To the Wreakers of Havoc (1984), both recently reissued by the University of Georgia Press; The Man at Home (Arkansas, 1988); Love's Answer (Iowa Poetry Prize, 1994); The Night Breeze Off the Ocean (Eastern Washington University Press, 2005), along with his two earlier books from Salmon, The Back Road to Arcadia (1994) and Another Part of the Island (1999). His work has earned three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (US), two Pushcart Prizes, and the Porter Prize for Literary Excellence.
He and his wife, Ann, love being in Ireland. They have four grown children, three sons and a daughter.

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Finding The Gossamer
Poems by PATRICK HICKS

Patrick Hicks is a dual citizen of Ireland and the United States, as well as Writer-in-Residence at Augustana College. His work has appeared in scores of international publications including, Ploughshares, The Utne Reader, Commonweal, The National Catholic Reporter, Cimarron Review, Nimrod, and many others. He is the author of Travelling Through History (2005), Draglines (2006), and The Kiss that Saved My Life (2007). Several poems from Finding The Gossamer have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He has lived in Northern Ireland, England, Germany, and Spain.

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Time Gentlemen, Please
Poems by KEVIN HIGGINS

"Gifted poets like Kevin Higgins rescue language from the "blatant blather of knaves" in which it is immured, and harness its vitality to tell it like it really is." Tomás Mac Siomain.

"...an extraordinary book... Higgins uses humour, sharp observational skills, and bile, to compose brief, imagistic poems of original mood and rare power, to amuse, move, sadden, and inform. His work ... is undeniably poetry of full integrity, and major Irish poetry, for our time." Todd Swift

Kevin Higgins second collection, following his highly successful first collection, The Boy With No Face (2005).

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Signs, Translations
Poems by JOHN HILDEBIDLE

John Hildebidle studied at Harvard. He taught in a public secondary school for eight years, and then worked as a teacher/dean at Harvard. For nearly a quarter of a century, he has been a part of the English Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He spent a year on a Fulbright teaching at University College Galway (now NUIG). His books include THE OLD CHORE (Alice James Books) and a prose collection entitled STUBBORNNESS: A FIELD GUIDE, which won the John Gardner prize from SUNY-Binghamton press. He lives near Boston.

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Lost in the Gaeltacht
Poems by CAROLINE LYNCH

Caroline Lynch is the real thing. Hers is a root language that, like the commonplace wife who plays Medea, takes us far beyond the commonplace. Her world is one where chaos muscles its way into the corners of every safe place. It is a dangerous world which she negotiates through myth, through prayer, through literature. Her poetry, a signalled intention to communicate, to penetrate, is, as she has written, a 'skirmish for freedom'. In the end, her hands are free to accept whatever small beauty that falls into them. In welcoming this volume, I congratulate Caroline Lynch on a fine achievement and wish her well in her poetic quest. Gabriel Fitzmaurice

Caroline Lynch was born in 1976 and grew up in Cork. She won the Listowel Writers' Week poetry collection competition in 2007 and those winning poems make up this slim volume. She lives in Galway and is working on her first full collection.

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Polishing The Evidence
Poems by CECILIA McGOVERN

In polishing the evidence, Cecilia McGovern returns in many poems to her roots, as a child involved in the seasonal grind of farm work in Mayo. This closeness to earth is a reminder of the struggle for survival of previous generations, a struggle never referred to directly by anybody, that results for her in an ambivalent relationship with the landscape, reflected in the lines “Close as I’ll ever be to saying/ “Go raibh maith agat a Mhaigh Eo”. (Dark Interiors).

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Big Pink Umbrella
Poems by SUSAN MILLAR DuMARS

Susan Millar DuMars was born in Philadelphia in 1966. She holds an MA in Writing from the University of San Francisco. Her poems and short stories have been published widely in the US, UK and Ireland. Her poetry was included in the 2004 Anthology I, published by Ainnir; in 2005, Lapwing published a pamphlet of her poems, the well reviewed Everyone Loves Me. Susan's stories have been short-listed for many awards, and in 2005 she received an Irish Arts Council Bursary for her fiction. American Girls, a volume of her short stories, was published by Lapwing in 2007.

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Lost Republics
Poems by ALAN JUDE MOORE

Most of the poems in Lost Republics were written in Moscow. One of the world's great cities, Moscow's immensity extends a strange sort of citizenship to all those who live there, and these poems reflect that state of being; they come from the perception of a Western European living in the capital of Eastern Europe: simultaneously belonging and not belonging.

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Green
Poems by PATRICK MORAN

Green, Patrick Moran's second collection of poetry, shows a poet trying to reconcile his rural heritage with an Ireland in the process of transition. In doing so, these carefully wraught poems explore the implications of leaving: the parting from loved ones; what is left to us; and the scraps we are left with.

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A Father's Day
Poems by PETE MULLINEAUX

"Keen-eyed and lyrical, this superbly crafted exploration of the male identity is both rich and touching in its honesty and vulnerability. We see the poet reflect on what it means to be a partner, a father and a man who has lost a father. Emotional and tender but also humorous, witty and philosophical, this is a brave collection from a wonderful poetic mind. No hat, no horse, no Marlboro and yet -- behold the man." Gerard Hanberry

Pete Mullineaux has taken the long way round before compiling this debut full collection arranged around themes relating to fathers and fatherhood in particular, as well as male identity in general. While the focus is primarily on the male, several outspoken female voices are present. The writing overall experiments with a variety of forms and reflects a quirky but challenging personal-politics, laced with a rich irony and humour.

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The Kiss - New and Selected Poems and Translations
by ULICK O'CONNOR

Among Ulick O'Connor's prodigious literary output as biographer, playwright, literary historian and critic, he is of course a poet. Since his first book of poems Life Styles appeared in 1973 he has been writing and publishing, albeit intermittently, memorable poetry for more than four decades. His engagement with his subject matter, his deft use of form, craft and above all lyricism, define these poems and make it a pleasure to rediscover them or encounter them for a first time. In a judicious selection, they are gathered here along with his translations from numerous languages, including his exceptional renderings of Baudelaire and more recent poems that have appeared in journals over the past decade.

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Reliquaries
Poems by ANGELA PATTEN

Angela Patten comes into her own in this collection. There is an assurance and deftness to the verse of Reliquaries that manages perspective just so: the domestic interiors of her childhood and youth are set forth with mingled irony and love, as numinous relics that survive in memory and poetry despite the savage depredations of time. There is a radiant sense in these poems of the experience of ordinary working class Irish people and their culture that is completely authentic and honest. — Anthony Bradley, Editor, Contemporary Irish Poetry

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Torching the Brown River
Poems by LORNA SHAUGHNESSY

Lorna Shaughnessy was born in Belfast and lives in County Galway. She lectures in the Department of Spanish, NUI Galway. She has published two translations of contemporary Mexican poetry, Mother Tongue. Selected Poems by Pura López Colomé and If We Have Lost our Oldest Tales by María Baranda, both with Arlen House (2006).

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Seaway: New & Selected Poems
by TODD SWIFT

Todd Swift is one of the leading Canadian poets and poetry activists of his
generation. The collection of essays about Anglo-Quebec poetry, Language Acts (which he co-edited with Jason Camlot), was a finalist for the 2007 Gabrielle Roy Prize. He has had four previous collections of poems published by DC Books in Montreal, Canada. He lives in London, England, with his wife, where he works as a lecturer in creative writing, editor, and writer. Seaway: New & Selected Poems gathers together 80 poems and is the first full retrospective of a poetry career that spans over two decades.

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In Train
Poems by Peter van de Kamp

Many conversations are happening in these poems, wistful conversations which the poet is having with the reader and witty, engaging conversations with himself or with nobody in particular. Arresting, full of rhythm and gentle flow -- never a dull moment. Oh, and he knows how to rhyme as well! Gabriel Rosenstock

Peter van de Kamp was born in The Hague, The Netherlands in 1956. He taught English and Anglo-Irish Literature, Rhetoric and Stylistics at the University of Leiden and University College, Dublin, where he was a Newman Scholar. He now teaches at the Institute of Technology, Tralee. A poet, translator, critic, anthologist and scholar, he has published extensively in Ireland, England, Europe and the States.

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A Tour of Your Country
Poems by EAMONN WALL

?In his most wide-ranging work to date, Eamonn Wall probes and meditates on the histories, habitations, landscapes and ecologies of ancestral and newly-encountered places. A Tour of Your Country takes the reader from the American West to the Arctic to Wall’s native Wexford, and to some spaces in-between. Throughout, the poems record and explore the finely-tuned tension that exists between the road and home, between routes and roots, and between the physical world and how poets have been conditioned to observe and represent it. This new collection is a highly-charged literary work—one that engages in dialogues with an array of sources to create a new kind of map of the space that is common to us all.

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