The Aisling: Ireland’s Dream Poem
An aisling is a dream poem in which Ireland appears to the poet as a grieving woman. It is also a century of coded political writing. How to read one.
Poetry
How to Write Poetry: 18 Forms, Explained
Eighteen poetry forms, each with a full guide: what the form is for, how it is built, where it came from, and an original example.
Selections from Ancient Irish Poetry: Kuno Meyer’s 1911 Translations
Kuno Meyer gathered the finest short poems of early Christian Ireland in 1911: Pangur Bán, the Old Woman of Beare, Colum Cille in exile. What we restored, and what we left alone.
How to Write a Cento: The Poem Made of Other Poems
A cento is a poem made entirely of lines from other poems. Every line is a quotation. Done well, it is one of the most honest forms in English.
How to Write an Aubade: The Dawn Poem That Refuses to Let the Night End
An aubade is a dawn poem, not a morning poem. A morning poem describes the morning. An aubade argues with it. Here is how to write one that works.
The Villanelle Has No Mercy
The villanelle is simple. The execution is not. Two refrains do all the work, and if you pick the wrong ones the poem collapses. How to write one that works.
Caoineadh: The Irish Lament Tradition Most Poets Have Never Read
In 1773 a woman stood over her murdered husband and composed the greatest poem written in these islands in the eighteenth century. Here is the tradition that produced it.
Dinnseanchas: The Irish Poetry of Place
Before Heaney on bogs, before the Nobel for a poem about a forge, there were 176 medieval Irish poems whose only job was to explain why a place was called what it was called.
What Kuno Meyer Actually Translated: An Introduction to Early Irish Lyric
A German philologist in 1911 translated a hundred early Irish lyrics and changed what anyone thought Irish poetry was. Most people have never read him.
The Ballad Was Never Polite
A ballad was never a love song. From Scottish murder ballads to Lead Belly to Gwendolyn Brooks, it has always been a reckoning.