RTE Poem of the Week
After its publication in Poetry Ireland Review, I was very happy to see ‘Dominío Vale do Mondego’ chosen as RTE’s Poem of the Week.
It’s available to read here.
Tag: poet
‘Cosmic Latte’ Appears in Magma
I have been trying to get published in Magma for years, so I am truly honoured and thrilled to have a poem in its latest issue. ‘Cosmic Latte’ is dedicated to the women in my life who are more amazing than words could ever say.
Cosmic Latte is the official name given to the colour of space, which scientists have determined is a shade of ‘beigeish white.’ Professor of astronomy Jeffrey Newman said of the findings, ‘Our result can be expressed compactly in haiku form:
Look at new spring snow –
See the River of Heaven
An hour after dawn.’
‘Mar-a-Lago’ and ‘Ophelia’ in the Mascara Literary Review
It is an honour to have two of my poems published in the latest issue of the Mascara Literary Review.
‘Mar-a-Lago’ takes its inspiration from Beyonce’s visual album
Lemonade, in particular its imagery of black women’s reclamation of colonial spaces in America like the plantation house.
While ‘Ophelia’ is on the surface about the storm of the same name that hit Ireland in autumn 2017, it is also concerned with a political situation–the amendment to our constitution that gives the unborn rights equal to that of a living woman.
The referendum in which people will vote to repeal this amendment will be held in Ireland on May 25.
‘Mar-a-Lago’ and ‘Ophelia’ are available to read here.
Fish Poetry Prize 2017: Read winning poem
I really enjoyed reading at the launch of the Fish Anthology 2017 down in beautiful Bantry at the West Cork Literary Festival this week.
My winning poem ‘Paris, 13 November 2015’ has now been posted on the Fish website, along with the winning entries in the Fiction, Flash Fiction, and Short Memoir categories.
You can find it here.
Arts Council Travel and Training Award
I’m beyond grateful to the Arts Council of Ireland for a Travel and Training Award which will allow me to spend 2 weeks this month on the island of Thasos in Greece, studying poetry with the amazing Aimee Nezhukumatathil.
Greece is a country that’s very close to my heart–I spent some time on the island of Kefalonia last year, and having minored in Ancient Classics in my undergrad degree I am hoping to write a series of poems that reinterpret Greek myths and legends from a feminist and personal perspective.
Perhaps that’s easier said than done. For now, here’s a poem of Aimee’s from the Poetry Foundation.
Invitation by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Winner of Fish Poetry Prize 2017
Words cannot express how delighted I am to have won the Fish Poetry Prize 2017.
It’s an unbelievable honour and I’m still coming to terms with it.
Judge Jo Shapcott chose my poem ‘Paris, 13 November 2015’ as the winner of the competition, saying, ‘Love and violence collide in this poem. The way the writer interleaves terror and passion makes for a remarkable, tender and terrifying work.’
Warmest thanks to Jo and to everyone at Fish.
You can read the list of winners along with those short- and longlisted here.
‘Remarkable Emotional Range’: Alison Brackenbury Reviews Rapture
I am so happy with the review of Rapture by Alison Brackenbury that appears in the latest issue of the PN Review, below.
Rapture, Roisin Kelly’s first pamphlet, brings exuberant colour: ‘June comes to the sky above Leitrim / and Mars is as red as a rose’. Her writing is eagerly physical. Love ‘can be […] like biting into fruit / below the sun, into the juice and pulp of it’. Words addressed to the smallest souvenir ring with tenderness: ‘Little matchbox’… Kelly’s lines carry passionate echoes of liturgy: ‘With your blue sweater, my body worships you’. With ecstatically long vowels and singing sound, these poems are a feast.
Even loss, in Rapture, is transfigured to a constellation: ‘My ex-boyfriend turned lonely Orion’. The poems’ boldness of statement grows almost proverbial: ‘the breakfast table / of love has wrecked many ships’. This brief collection shows remarkable emotional range. Kelly leaves the reader afloat on a tide of colour, her ‘comet’s tail of old ice and stardust / on its way to the red heat of its marriage bed’.
Review of Rapture in The Irish Times
Many thanks to The Irish Times for John McAuliffe’s lovely review of Rapture, below:
Roisin Kelly’s Rapture (€5) is the first publication in what Southword Editions promises will be a series, New Irish Voices. Kelly’s poems might be more traditional than Redmond’s, but they are fresh, sensuous and direct where Redmond drifts, teases and dallies. Addressing an ex, she writes: “Wherever you are, go / with a bride-thought haunting your shoulder, as lovely as snow” (At a Photography Exhibition in New York Public Library). “The words are everything,” she writes in Easter, although her implication of “words” with desire risks, and gets away with, using some of the oldest images: “Now a rose is once again / not only rose but also soft and red / and thorn and bee and honey.”
Róisín Kelly 