Irish Poetry

I have always been attracted to Irish poetry. Maybe it's because my ancestors were Irish (My maternal great grandmothers were born in Cork and Waterford), or maybe it's because I appreciate the lyrical and rhythmic quality of it. I could never get enough of Seamus Heaney, James Joyce (Ulysses, although not poetry, is one of my favourite novels, and has directly influenced my own writing), and William Butler Yeats. Several years ago I was in Dublin with my wife (I was on a speaking trip, and she is a teacher of English) and as we were walking around the city, we stumbled upon the Dublin Writers Museum. We spent a fabulous 4 hours wandering around, just soaking up all the history, memorabilia and sense of awe at the collected talent of Irish poetry. If you're ever in Dublin, it's a must visit!

One of the jewels in the Wheelsong Books crown is a young Irish poet named Aoife Cunningham. She is a rare talent - a poet who writes far in advance of her years, and who taps into the visceral emotions and events that happen around her with brutal honesty and contagious humour. It really is a pleasure to read her poetry, and we had the distinct pleasure to publish her debut collection of poetry, Circus of Circles in 2024. 

Circus of Circles is currently enjoying a surge of interest in sales. Aoife is fairly prolific anyway, so people are reading her work on our poetry groups with regularity. But they are also showing an interest in owning a copy of her beautiful work. Circus of Circles has recently been in the top 3 of Amazon's Irish poetry best sellers (yes, this is a fickle and rapidly changing chart, which depends upon arcane rules and algorithms that I suspect even the Amazon wizards don't fully understand .... since when was Dylan Thomas an Irish poet?) 

Here is Aoife Cunningham's profile: 

Key facts and background

• Aoife grew up in a rural area around Galway, in a family of six children: she is a twin to her brother, with two younger twin sisters and two older brothers. Source: Connacht Tribune

• She began writing poetry at around age 16 following a difficult period with her mental health — writing became a kind of lifeline for her. Source: Galway City Tribune

• Her writing is described as raw, unapologetic, and emotionally honest. She calls herself a “heartist”—combining “heart” and “artist.” Source: Connacht Tribune

Work & Achievements

• Her debut poetry collection is titled Circus of Circles. 

• She launched “Circus of Circles” in December 2024—at the University Hospital Galway (UHG), as a gesture of gratitude to the hospital staff who had supported her during her difficult times. Connacht Tribune

• Many of the poems in that collection were written while she was in hospital. galwaydaily.com

• She has performed spoken-word poetry at events such as the Galway Fringe Festival (Fringe), at Dublins’ Àras Chrónáin, and at public literary events like those run by Over the Edge Literary Events in Galway. Connacht Tribune

Her Perspective & Style

• Her poetry seems deeply personal and oriented around healing, mental-health journeys, vulnerability — using art as a path to recovery and self-expression. Connacht Tribune

• By choosing to launch her book in the hospital where she had received her care, she deliberately highlights the connection between art, healing, community, and gratitude. 

Circus of Circles is the first we hope of many collections we will see from Aoife Cunningham. Yes, the poetry is as colourful and evocative as the jazzy cover art. It's a volume of poetry that will not age, but will remain a snapshot of her prodigious writing talent. You can purchase your copy of Aoife's Circus of Circles from all good online bookstores *listed here, or directly from Wheelsong books by emailing wheelsong6@gmail.com

*Proceeds of the sales from this book will be donated to Save the Children by request of the author.

Steve Wheeler

Experimental Poetry 9: Anarchic poetry

You want anarchy? You got it! Anarchy is a state of disorder caused by rejection of rules and authority. It is the basis of a number of art movements including Abstract impressionism, Surrealism, Dadaism and punk rock. Poetry too has its anarchic poets. Read for example Ezra Pound, James Joyce or e. e. cummings. The latter rejected the use of upper case letters, hence the alternative presentation of his name. Edward Estlin Cummings as I will present him, experimented mercilessly not only with words, but also the form in which they were presented. He even misused punctuation deliberately to create feelings of disorientation, fragmentation and unease. In short, cummings used just about every aspect of language to create atmosphere and hammer home his messages. 

Method 15: Syntactic Deviance. Here, there is a total lack of regard for the conventional. You really will need to step outside your comfort zone, and this is where most of you will give up. And yet, if you do pursue this avenue of experimentation, you'll discover new ways of presenting your art of poetry which might otherwise have passed you by. Forget all the rules of grammar and punctuation. Spell things differently. Create sentences without verbs. Turn the writing upside down. Write diagonally or in reverse. Be absurd in what you write. Everything and anything goes. 

For me, this is one of Cummings' best poems: It dwells on loneliness and has the metaphor (a leaf falling) inside the word loneliness. It is inventive, disruptive and unexpected. In short, it is anarchic poetry. It breaks all the rules, including fragmentation of the words to signify a slow falling of the leaf. 

Method 16: Morphological Innovation. This is where you might dispense with conventional words and create your own. You might like to take a word and extend it to convey a meaning. Delicious becomes un-delicious, or chocolate becomes chocolate-ness. Go even further and blend words together to make new ones, or neologisms. A rabbit's burrow becomes its rabbitat and agonising over the loss of your luggage becomes bagonising. Be inventive. There are no rules, and you'll create your own language of poetry! These new words are known as portmanteaus and they are a part of morphological innovation. 

Method 17: Ad Nauseum. This Latin phrase means 'until sick'. This is the point in your poetry where you can go completely out on a limb and do totally unpredictable stuff. And then do it again, and again, and again, until it sickens, and then keep doing it until you run out of paper. 

Steve Wheeler

Previous posts in this series

Experimental Poetry 1: Found Poetry
Experimental Poetry 2: Stream of Consciousness
Experimental Poetry 3: Fake Translations
Experimental Poetry 4: Overlapping Voices
Experimental Poetry 5: Random Prompts
Experimental Poetry 6: The Movie Method
Experimental Poetry 7: Unexpected End Rhymes
Experimental Poetry 8: Calligrams

Image from Wikimedia used under a Creative Commons licence.