Pulitzer Prize nominated poet to give reading in Achill

A POETRY reading by Mayo-born poet John F Deane and American poet Bruce Weigl will take place in Achill tomorrow evening.

The Achill Heinrich Böll Association will host a poetry reading by John F Deane and American poet Bruce Weigl tomorrow evening, June 14 at 8pm at St Thomas’ Hall, Dugort on Achill Island.

Pulitzer Prize nominated poet Bruce Weigl is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, including 'On the Shores of Welcome Home' (2019), winner of the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award; 'The Abundance of Nothing' (2012), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; 'The Unraveling Strangeness' (2002); 'Archeology of the Circle: New and Selected Poems' (1999); 'After the Others' (1999); and 'Song of Napalm' (1988), which was also nominated for a Pulitzer.

He has also written several collections of critical essays, has published translations of Vietnamese and Romanian poetry, and has also edited or co-edited several anthologies of war poetry, including 'Writing Between the Lines: An Anthology on War and Its Social Consequences' (1997) and Mountain River: Vietnamese Poetry from the Wars, 1948–1993; A Bilingual Collection' (1998). Weigl’s own poetry has been widely anthologised, including in 'Best American Poetry' (1994), 'The Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets' (1985), 'Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness' (1993), and 'American Alphabets: 25 Contemporary Poets' (2006).

Weigl has won numerous awards for his work, including the Robert Creeley Award, the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Poet’s Prize from the Academy of American Poets, the Cleveland Arts Prize, and two Pushcart Prizes. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Yaddo Foundation.

Achill native John F Deane’s poetry explores the beauty of the island where he was born, on the west coast of Ireland, and the wonders of natural creation everywhere. His imagination is most at home in rural Ireland, where the long centuries of scholarship and faith have retained their focus and shape. Music is present everywhere in his selection, in the poems' lyricism and in their reference to composers and compositions, particularly Beethoven and Olivier Messiaen.
The poems move from a childhood encounter with a basking shark off his Achill Island home, to an elderly gentleman climbing the stairs to bed. A love of the landscape of his home island is developed in poems that combine an awareness of beauty and fragility with the spiritual significance the physical world offers those who are open to it. A 'rewilding' of old certainties of faith and worship, a movement through the gifts of spirit and Spirit occur.

All interested are invited to attend this event which is supported by Mayo County Council and Arts Council of Ireland.