On the making of It Reeks of Radio in Poetry Ireland Review 141
My essay on the making of the long poem that constitutes my most recent book It Reeks of Radio (BLR Editions, 2023) appears in the latest issue No. 141 of Poetry Ireland Review . Commissioned by the issue's guest editor, Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe , my essay broadly considers the background interests that led to my decision to work with radio archives - and specifically with the archived correspondence around historical broadcasts on RTÉ Radio rather than the radio scripts themselves - my practical and compositional working process, and the considerations that led to the poem embedding a visual dimension and the result taking the form of a book. The concluding paragraph offers brief commentary on the tensions in the relationship between poetry - an artform that at its keenest exists in the hyper-present - and archival documents, and consequently on the concept of commemoration through poetry, as well as the democratising potential of public media, while inviting each reade...