Southword Poetry Podcast · Munster Literature Centre

Aifric Mac Aodha: Old Friends

·43 min·5 clips

The frame is patient. The host introduces the poet through a memory of a 2010 reading, where the delivery had a hypnotic pull. That memory gives the episode a clean way into the books and the changes between them. Sequence matters. The early poems sound concise, personal, and lexicographically alert; later work has more room for history, essence, and the demands of longer form. The tone is thoughtful without turning grand. Irishness is allowed to be complicated: epic origins sit near local materials, dual carriageways, high-rise flats, and the texture of modern urban life. Then the interview comes closer in. A question about why the first poem belonged at the front turns into a sharper exchange about order, enoughness, and the impatience a writer can feel toward early work. The guest is hard on herself. She says the first collection feels slight now, partly because writing enough poems in Irish for a book can mean becoming a different person by the end of it. The host does not quite let that stand. A later volume, the host notes, brought two bodies of work together, and poetry is not a counting exercise. The disagreement stays gentle, but it gives the conversation its warmth. Playfulness comes through, too. Even the guest's concern about in-jokes becomes a defense of verbal alertness and private reference handled with craft. A long title, borrowed from a collection of proverbs, leads into failure and the odd borrowed power of sayings. The closing poem changes the mood, with sea imagery, theatrical movement, and a washed-up arrival on the shore of 1968 before the credits bring the room back down.

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A focused poetry conversation about Afrika Moke's shift toward sequence and the long poem.

The Southword Poetry Podcast episode tracks Afrika Moke's move from very concise early poems to sequence and the long poem. That arc gives the conversation its shape, and it works best when it stays close to the craft: the long title, the playfulness and in-jokes, the pull of…

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Press play if you want poetry talk that takes form, failure, and translation seriously.

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