MUNSTER LITERATURE CENTRE
IONAD LITRÍOCHTA an DEISCIRT

Cork Poet Laureate

The Cork Poet Laureateship is an initiative of the Munster Literature Centre, funded by Cork City Council. During a period of historic upheaval the laureateship is conceived as a project where a Cork poet can respond personally to themes and issues of public import affecting Cork City and County. These can be sporting events, current affairs, social issues, historic anniversaries or anything else the laureate believes concerns the people of Cork as a community. The laureateship runs for ten months from May 2021.

In 2022 the poems will be collected into a chapbook to be launched during the Cork World Book Festival. William Wall has been appointed as laureate.

The Irish Examiner will publish each poem in the first week of every month and Cork City Library will print posters of the poem each month.

The Irish Examiner: William Wall: Cork's Poet Laureate on capturing the Covid era and teaching Cillian Murphy

About William Wall

June Poem: Hometown blues

williamwallcpl

William Wall has published four collections of poetry, six novels and three collections of short fiction. His fifth collection of poetry, Smugglers In the Underground Hug Trade – Journal of The Plague Year will be published by Doire Press in October 2021. He was the first European to win the Drue Heinz Literature Prize in the USA (2017) and was awarded the Premio Lerici Pea Angloliguria in Italy in 2021. He has won numerous other awards including the Virginia Faulkner Prize (USA), The Seán O’Faoláin Prize (Ireland), The Listowel Writers’ Week Poetry Pamphlet Prize (Ireland), and The Patrick Kavanagh award (Ireland). His 2005 novel This is The Country was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He has been short- or long-listed for many more, including the Irish Book Awards and the Manchester Fiction Prize. His stories and poems have appeared in magazines and journals from the USA to China including Poesia (Turin), Granta (London), Southword (Cork), The Stinging Fly (Dublin), Ninth Letter (Illinois), and Studi Irlandese (Florence). He holds a PhD in creative writing from UCC. His work has been widely translated and he translates from Italian.

June Poem:

Irish Examiner Listen: Hometown Blues by William Wall, Cork's poet laureate

Hometown blues
i.m. Rory Gallagher

as I step the boards

feeling that familiar bounce

I hear the shouts

the stamping feet

I am back in ’71

my best friend and me

up from the country

for the homecoming

Rory’s mama in the kitchen