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essay on Jacket2

An essay I've been making notes towards for the best part of two years has now seen the light of day courtesy of Jacket2, the online journal of contemporary poetry and poetics associated with PennSound and the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Titled 'Monoculture beer no more: other poetries from Ireland', it aims to offer an interrogation of the territorial concerns of the vast majority of the poetry coming out of Ireland, and a discussion of emerging avant-garde tendencies brought about by political discontent and driven by poets and editors/curators straddling linguistic & national divisions.

I like to think that the effect of the article having been written over a period of time is akin to that of long-exposure photography: in addition to capturing individual items it also records time. In it I discuss, link to and/or quote from the work of (among others) Catherine Walsh, Anamaría Crowe Serrano, Dylan Harris, Kit Fryatt and Susan Connolly.

I'm excited & proud to be joining the list of contributors to Jacket2. Thanks in particular to Julia Bloch for her editorial attention and support.

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