Patricia-Monaghan.com

Patricia has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in literature for the second consecutive year.  The award, one of the most prestigious in the nation, is given annually for works published in the literary press.  Patricia received an award in 2003, and was nominated again in 2006.  She was honored to be nominated a third time.

The Split This Rock festival of poetry and witness will bring together poets and activists from around the nation for a weekend in March in Washington, D.C.   Patricia will be chairing a panel on the oracular tradition in poetry, which will present ideas that have been developed by Fellows of the Black Earth Institute (www.blackearthinstitute.org), of which Patricia is a Senior Fellow.  This will be the largest national audience for the Institute's work and will feature, as well as Fellows Allison Hedge Coke and Richard Cambridge, the renowened translator of Rumi, poet Coleman Barks.

Patricia’s special edition chapbook, Soldier’s Heart: The Book of Sweeney, will be celebrated at the 2005 Clifden Arts Week in Connemara, Ireland, in late September (clifdenartsweek.ie).

Accompanied by acclaimed harpist Lynn Saoirse (lynnsaoirse.com), Patricia will read from her series of poems evoking the life of mythic king Sweeney of Ulster, who went “mad from the din of battle” and lived naked in a tree until his tragic death. The archetype of the homeless veteran, Sweeney offers much wisdom to today’s world.
To order: fourthorder.org

The sequence was one of the winners in the Winning Writers War Poetry contest in 2003 (winningwriters.com/warcontest/2003/monaghan.htm)

Renowned folk composer Michael Smith (artistsofnote.com/michael/index.html) and beloved Chicago vocalist Jamie O’Reilly (jamieoreilly.com) have collaborated on a CD, Songs of the Kerry Madwoman, with lyrics from Patricia’s recent book, Homefront.

The poems, in complex medieval Irish verse forms, tell the story of the Irish poet Mis, after whom the Slieve Mis mountains in County Kerry are named. When she saw her father killed in battle, Mis went mad, living like a beast in the woodlands until redeemed by the power of love and music. Michael and Jamie will perform the composition at the Chicago Humanities Festival (chfestival.org/fest2005/index2.cfm) on Saturday, November 5. Acclaimed Chicago actor John Starrs will perform the role of Sweeney in the production.

Thirty years in the writing, Patricia’s new book of poetry, Homefront, will be released in November from Word Tech Press in Cincinnati. Two long mythic sequences tell stories from Irish mythology, about mad king Sweeney and the wild woman Mis, both of whom became insane after witnessing slaughter in war. The remaining poems describe the reality faced by the countless children of veterans who deal with family violence and addiction connected to what the ancient Celts called “soldier’s heart,” the psychological and spiritual affliction of those traumatized by their participation in war. To order the book: (wordtechcommunications.com)