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Irish Independent
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Vona Groarke: ‘I don't usually read for comfort. I read poetry for excitement and risk. Novels for company. Biography for nosiness'
Vona Groarke is the new Ireland Professor of Poetry, until 2028. Her ninth poetry collection is Infinity Pool, published in May by The Gallery Press. She has taught at the University of Manchester since 2007 and is writer-in-residence at St John's College, Cambridge, and with the Sligo Yeats Society. Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O'Hara won the 2024 Michel Deon Prize. She lives in Co Sligo. The books by your bedside? The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck, The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, Seduction and Betrayal by Elizabeth Hardwick, Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton, Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst, and Sara Baume's Seven Steeples. You'd almost think prose sends me to sleep, were it not for Louise Gluck's Poems 1962-2020. And Karen Solie's Wellwater. That covers a poetic multitude.
Irish Times
14-06-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Poem of the Week: Lack of Sleep
A lack of sleep devours my bed. It feeds on dreams until I choke. It sours the insides of my head. It turns me into ash and smoke. This started when my mother died. Remember that October night. It was as if the rain had cried, nothing again can be put right. I climb stairs, giving in to grief. Switch on and off a bedside lamp. The trees outside stand stripped of leaves. Sorrow decides to pitch its camp. No soldier comes to guard this post. Lock in the dark and bolt the doors. Through lack of sleep the night is lost. Rise from white sheets and walk the floor. Today's poem is from Frank McGuinness's new collection, The River Crana (The Gallery Press)
