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Best of Irish Poetry 2010
Editor: Matthew Sweeney

Songs of Earth and Light
Barbara Korun poems translated by Theo Dorgan

Done Dating DJs
by Jennifer Minniti-Shippey
Winner, 2008 Fool for Poetry Competition

Richesses: Francophone Songwriter Poets
Edited and translated by Aidan Hayes

Munster Literature Centre

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JOHN McAULIFFE

John McAuliffe has published two books with The Gallery Press, A Better Life (2002) and Next Door (2007), and a pamphlet, A Midgie, just out from Smith/Doorstop. He was born in 1973 and grew up in Listowel, Co. Kerry. He lives in Manchester, where he co-directs the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester and edits the Manchester Review and the online poetry digest thepage.name. In Spring 2010 he was Visiting Heimbold Professor of Irish Studies at Villanova University in Philadelphia.

Freak Weather

It’s not, tonight, what we’d expected to see,

through that couple reflected in the window,

the window that first reflects their having tea

then empties as you point, get up and go,

out through the kitchen and the unlocked back door,

to where at least a half an inch of snow

has taken on a shine, and creaks at your

going out to see and feel its weird spring show

and what it will take with its turn for the worst,

its touch of ice, the magnolia burning, the daffodil

and crocus lidded with its soft strange shift,

the room behind you bright as an inch of windowsill,

a voice, not mine, across the way saying go inside ok,

as we skirt your footprints, steaming, tilted, at bay.

©2010 John McAuliffe

Author Links

McAuliffe poem at International Literary Quarterly

Article about McAuliffe including poem at Poetry Foundation

'Context': poem at Agni