News > October 4, 2007

By Elliot Engstrom | Asst. news editor

The National Endowment for the Arts has chosen Wake Forest University Press to publish an anthology of Northern Irish poetry through the endowment’s International Literary Exchange program.

The program funds presses in the United States to publish translated versions of literary anthologies.

“This is the second collaboration for Wake Forest University Press with the NEA,” said Candide Jones, assistant director of Wake Forest Press.

“Last year, we received a grant for an upcoming second volume of the Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, a new series that Press Director Jeff Holdridge began a few years ago.”

The press will receive $35,000 to publish 2,000 paperback copies of the anthology, featuring poems by 30 Northern Irish poets.

All of the poets to be featured in the anthology were born in 1955 or later.

“The book will be important for many reasons, including that it will feature a number of newer, younger poets from Northern Ireland, as well as a few poems from the older, more established poets who have influenced them,” Jones said. “This book will be different from our usual books, in which we choose all the poems, and do all the editing,.

The editor for this volume is Chris Agee, a poet in Northern Ireland, who will choose the poets and poems.

The Press will handle the production, publication and promotion of the book. “We’re delighted that it will be included in Wake Forest University Press’s catalogue,” said Jones.

Agee is editor of Irish Pages, a journal of contemporary writing published in

Belfast. He is also a former editor of Poetry of Ireland Review, Poetry (Chicago) and Metre, and teaches at the Open University in Ireland.

Wake Forest University Press received the endowment in part due to its 31-year history of publishing Irish poetry in the United States.

“Despite our very small size, we are the major publisher of Irish poetry in North America,” Jones said. “We have a familiarity with the poets and the poetry.”

The press has been involved in Irish poetry and tradition for decades.

For each of the past 10 years, the press has hosted the Wake Forest University Irish Festival, which celebrates Irish poetry and music by bringing in a host of poets and musicians.

In a national competition, only two other publishers were selected to receive funding for International Literary Exchange projects.

Dalkey Archive Press at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and East Washington University Press of Cheney, WA were the other recipients of NEA funding.

“We hope to have a ‘launch’ of the book in September or October, 2008, probably in Washington, D.C. and New York, and we’ll arrange to have a couple of the poets from the book at the U.S. launch,” said Jones.

The NEA is also doing a volume of American poetry, edited by an American, which will be published in Northern Ireland as a companion to the Northern Irish anthology.

“Irish poetry – whether from the Republic or from Northern Ireland – isn’t just great Irish poetry. It’s great poetry, period,” Jones said.

“So whether a person has an interest in Ireland or not, the volume promises to be a wonderful poetic experience.”

For more information about the anthology or Wake Forest University Press in general, students can visit www.wfu.edu/wfupress.