Poetry Ireland Announces Guest Editor Appointments for 2023 Poetry Ireland Review and Trumpet

23rd January 2023

Poetry Ireland is delighted to announce three new guest editors of Poetry Ireland Review for the 2023 publication year, who will each take up editorship of an upcoming issue of the highly-regarded poetry journal. The three guest editors are Maurice Riordan, Spring Issue, Annemarie Ní Churreáin, Summer Issue, and Nidhi Zak / Aria Eipe, Winter Issue.

Poetry Ireland also welcomes William Keohane,who has been appointed guest editor of Trumpet, an annual literary pamphlet carrying reviews, opinions and essays on poetry and the writing life by newer voices.

This is the second year in which Poetry Ireland have welcomed guest editors for both Poetry Ireland Review and Trumpet. All three editors will review submissions for their respective issues of Poetry Ireland Review,139, 140 and 141, with Will Keohane commissioning poetry, prose, and artwork for Trumpet 12.

Maurice Riordan said of the announcement, “I am delighted to be guest-editing Poetry Ireland Review for the Spring. It's one of the few places left that properly values good poems and good critical writing. And I'm happy to be part of that. I'm enjoying sifting through the poetry submissions. Editors often refer to their inbox as 'the slush pile', but really it is in fact the editor's friend. It's there one finds the unexpected, the assured new voice or the surprising new tune from an old one, or just a fresh look at some aspect of the world. And it's a pleasure, and a privilege, to be slowly building up a small cairn of accepted poems–which hopefully, in turn, will give pleasure to readers. Alas, it's the melancholy task of the editor, too, to 'reject' most submissions. But I'm grateful to everyone who tries their luck with this issue.”

Annemarie Ní Churreáin said “It’s a special honour to serve as a guest editor of Poetry Ireland Review. As I set out on this journey, I’m grateful for the work of previous editors and contributors, for the dedication of the staff at Poetry Ireland, and for the long tradition of fine writing that continues to flower through the pages of Poetry Ireland Review. The path ahead is lit!”

Nidhi Zak / Aria Eipe said "It's with a certain wide-eyed joy that I approached this invitation to edit an issue of Poetry Ireland Review, alongside a formidable team who are so incomparably supportive and nurturing of poets across the island. Poetry Ireland's pillars and people have been a second home to me; its legendary editors made me feel like I belonged to that lyrical world of words long before I ever quite believed it myself. I look forward to felicitating the possibility of poetry, to working with poets who are consistently expanding the palette of language and the arc of perception – and exploring the singular kinds of astonishment that contemporary poetry might introduce or incorporate which moves it, and us, to places anew."

Previous editors of Poetry Ireland Review have included Colette Bryce, Vona Groarke, John F Deane, Caitríona O Reilly, Paul Muldoon, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Nessa O’Mahony, who edited the most recent issue which was dedicated to the life and work of poet and academic Eavan Boland (1944 - 2020). Aifric Mac Aodha is the current Irish-language editor of the journal.

William Keohane will be the fourth guest editor of Trumpet, following on from Dr Tapasya Narang who guest edited Trumpet 11, Mícheál McCann in 2021, and Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan who was appointed the first guest editor of Trumpet in 2020.

William said of his appointment, “It is a real privilege to edit Trumpet 12 and I am grateful to Poetry Ireland for this opportunity. Trumpet 12 will explore the theme of crossing. The prefix ‘trans’ as in translation, means across, over, or beyond. This issue of Trumpet will highlight poetry, essays and artworks that attempt to cross over, works that bridge and blur definitional boundaries. Trumpet 12 will also explore the act of erasure or crossing out, highlighting voices that are often excluded and proving insights into the language that we lose in and through translation. Most writing is, at a basic level, an arrangement of lines. This issue will question how we approach the line, what exists beyond it, and how we might cross, bend, or break it.”

Poetry Ireland Review 139, 140 and 141 will be publishedin Spring, Summer and Winter respectively, with Trumpet 12 released late Summer 2023. Current and back issues of both Poetry Ireland Review and Trumpet are available to purchase through the Poetry Ireland website – poetryireland.ie.

For further information please contact comms@poetryireland.ie

BIOGRAPHIES

Maurice Riordan’s most recent collection is Shoulder Tap, published by Faber & Faber in 2021. Previous books include A Word from the Loki (1995), Floods (2000), The Holy Land (2007) and The Water Stealer (2013). He edited The Finest Music, an anthology of early Irish lyrics in translation, and A Quark for Mister Mark: 101 Poems about Science. He has received the Michael Hartnett Award, a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors, and a PEN translation award. He is a former editor of The Poetry Review and Poetry London and is Emeritus Professor of Poetry at Sheffield Hallam University. Born inLisgoold, Co. Cork, he livesin London, where he teaches at the Faber Academy.

 

Annemarie Ní Churreáin is a poet from the Donegal Gaeltacht. Her books include Bloodroot (Doire Press, 2017), Town (The Salvage Press. 2018) and The Poison Glen (The Gallery Press, 2021). She is a recipient of the Arts Council’s Next Generation Artist Award and a co-recipient of The Markievicz Award. Of her work The Yale Review has stated that “Ní Churreáin often captures a whole world of cultural and historical implications in a single, simple, but metaphorically rich image.” Ní Churreáin is  a former literary fellow of Akademie Schloss Solitude in Germany, Hawthornden Castle in Scotland, and The Jack Kerouac House in Florida. She is the 2022-23 Decades of Centenaries Artist in Residence with Donegal County Museum and Archives Service. Visit www.studiotwentyfive.com

 

Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe is a poet, pacifist and fabulist. Auguries of a Minor God, her first collection, was published with Faber & Faber in 2021. A finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize, John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize and the Butler Literary Award, it was chosen as a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, National Poetry Day Recommendation, Shakespeare & Co. Year of Reading Selection, and a Book of the Year by both The Irish Times and The Irish Independent. Born in India, Nidhi grew up across the Middle East, Europe and North America, before calling Ireland home. Founder of the Play It Forward Fellowships for underrepresented writers, she is poetry editor at Skein Press and Fallow Media, and contributing editor with The Stinging Fly. She is the recipient of a Next Generation Artist Award in Literature from the Arts Council of Ireland and currently serves on the Expert Advisory Committee forCulture Ireland as well as the Advisory Board of Diversifying Irish Poetry.

 

Will Keohane is a writer from Limerick, Ireland. His essays have been published in British GQ, Banshee, The Stinging Fly, and The Tangerine and his poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review and Queering the Green, an anthology of post-2000 Queer Irish poetry. He is the writer-in-residence at Ormston House.