Submissions closed, a personal note

Dear Reader,

I believe that the Irish writing establishment does not like being challenged. Poethead represented a thirteen-year weekly challenge to their very basic view of poetry,  a view that is both anti-avant-garde and anti-intellectual.  A view that considers business more important than the movement of the poet and her poem within the Irish cultural discourse. Profound anti-intellectualism had led to a historically sexist canon driven by a will to dominate the intellectual cultural life of Ireland. The decisions made now about how we frame the literary canon will echo for decades. 

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There has been a consistent failure to confront the causes of women poets’ exclusion meaning that these exclusions will recur. I am uninterested in any argumentation that contributes to the further marginalisation of women artists’ voices, I don’t care how fashionable the repression.  The exclusion of poets on the basis of their class, income, age, sex, religion, race, or formalist approach to the poem et al, is wrong, it will never be right.  It limits poetry and skews the historical narrative.  

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To the poets that I have published: thank you for your beautiful work, your emails, and your support over the past thirteen years. In particular, I have found solace and wonder in your work throughout the very difficult year of 2020. It was a great honour to work with you and to hear updates about new possibilities for your writing.

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The only  lesson every poet must learn is to protect and nourish the root of their work. Persistence and practice are key to the art and making time to work at poetry is imperative. I have started a personal poetry-centered site here.

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.The site in its current form will remain available as an archive, but no more updates will be made. Please visit  the Poethead Archive

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Chris  Murray  (Updated March 2021/ November 2021)

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Detail from “Making Den of Sibyl Wren” by Salma Ahmad Caller (2018)

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