Southword Poetry Podcast

(00:00) – Clíona Ní Ríordáin and Patrick Cotter discussion
(04:44) – Stephen Sexton interview
(01:01:07) – Southword poem, Biophoton by Andrew Gebhardt 

Stephen Sexton’s first book, If All the World and Love Were Young was the winner of the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2019 and the Shine / Strong Award for Best First Collection. He was awarded the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2020. He was the winner of the National Poetry Competition in 2016 and the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award in 2018. Cheryl’s Destinies was published in 2021, and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection.

This week's Southword poem is 'Biophoton' by Andrew Gebhardt, which received third prize in the Gregory O'Donoghue International Poetry Competition and is published in issue 50. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.

(00:00) – Clíona Ní Ríordáin and Patrick Cotter discussion
(07:05) – Máighréad Medbh interview
(01:04:52) – Southword poem, Incantations of Loss by Lani O’Hanlon 

Máighréad Medbh is a poet and prose writer with nine published books. Most of her poetry books are long-form sequences or narratives, and her ecological verse novel, Parvit of Agelast (Arlen House), was shortlisted for the 2017 Pigott Prize. After her first book from Blackstaff Press in 1990, she earned a reputation for dramatic presentation, performing widely in Ireland and abroad. She has written for radio, collaborated on award-winning art films, and has three novels online. In 2025 she was awarded the Aodh Ruadh Ó Domhnaill Poetry Exchange, during which she completed her new work Dwelling, a transhistorical exploration of identity, change and displacement, conflating poetry and essay.

This week's Southword poem is 'Incantations of Loss' by Lani O’Hanlon, which is published in issue 49. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.

(00:00) – Clíona Ní Ríordáin and Patrick Cotter discussion
(02:17) – Jericho Brown interview
(57:00) – Southword poem, The Last Ice Pop by Patrick Wright

Jericho Brown is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from The Academy of American Poets, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Brown’s first book, Please (2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named one of the best of the year by Library Journal, Coldfront, and the Academy of American Poets. He is also the author of the collection The Tradition (2019), which was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award and the winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

This week's Southword poem is 'The Last Ice Pop' by Patrick Wright, which is published in issue 49. You can buy single issues, subscribe, or find out how to submit to Southword here.

(00:00) – Clíona Ní Ríordáin and Patrick Cotter discussion
(11:01) – Eilean Ni Chuilleanáin interview
(01:02:57) – Southword poem, Roadkill in Offaly by Simon Costello

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin was born in Cork City in 1942. She was a founder member of Cyphers, the literary journal (1975). Her first collection, Acts and Monuments, won the Patrick Kavanagh Award. The Gallery Press has published her nine collections of poems including The Sun-fish which won the Griffin International Poetry Prize and The Mother House (2019) winner of the Irish Times Poetry Now Award. Her Collected Poems (2020) won the Pigott Poetry Prize. Her 2023 collection The Map of the World won the Farmgate Café National Poetry Award. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is a Fellow and Professor of English (Emeritus) at Trinity College Dublin. She served as Ireland Professor of Poetry from 2016-2019 and, in 2025, was elected a Saoi, the highest honour of Aosdána.

This week's Southword poem is 'Roadkill in Offaly' by Simon Costello, which was one of the poems in the selection which won the inaugural Southword Editors' Poetry Award and 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
(04:21) – Mary O'Malley interview
(52:30) – Southword poem, The Burial of Ten-to Two Blue by Paul McMahon

Mary O’Malley was born in Connemara, and educated at University College Galway. She lived in Lisbon for eight years and taught at the Universidade Nova there. She served several years on the council of Poetry Ireland and was on the Committee of the Cúirt International Poetry Festival for eight years. She was the author of its educational programme. She has published nine books of poetry, including Valparaiso arising out of her Residency on the national marine research ship. Her latest Collection, The Shark Nursery, is published by Carcanet.

This week's Southword poem is 'The Burial of Ten-to Two Blue' by Paul McMahon, 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
(03:04) – Aifric Mac Aodha interview
(42:06) – Southword poem, Mermaid Archipelago by Patrick Chapman

Aifric Mac Aodha was born in 1979. Her first collection, Gabháil Syrinx, was published in 2010. She has taught in St Petersburg, New York and Canada and has lectured in old and modern Irish at UCD. She lives in Dublin where she works for the Irish-language publisher, An Gúm. She was the winner of the Oireachtas Prize for Poetry (2017) and was Irish-Language Writer-in-Residence at Dublin City University (DCU) in 2023. She has published two bilingual collections with The Gallery Press and Aifric’s Irish-language poems are translated into English by David Wheatley. Foreign News was published in 2017 and her new collection Old Friends in 2024.

This week's Southword poem is 'Mermaid Archipelago' by Patrick Chapman, 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
(06:39) – Isabelle Baafi interview
(40:41) – Southword poem, Aching Embouchure by Ellen Zhang

Isabelle Baafi is the author of Chaotic Good (Faber & Faber / Wesleyan University Press, 2025), which is a Poetry Book Society (PBS) Recommendation, and Ripe (ignitionpress, 2020), which won a Somerset Maugham Award and was a PBS Pamphlet Choice. Her writing has been published in Granta, the TLS, The Poetry Review, Callaloo, The London Magazine, and elsewhere. She is a Ledbury Poetry Critic and an Obsidian Foundation Fellow. She edits at Poetry London and Magma.

This week's Southword poem is 'Aching Embouchure' by Ellen Zhang, 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
(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.