(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 Now was 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.