The Latitude of Naples

Eva Bourke, born in Germany in 1946 is a poet and translator. She has published six previous collections of poetry, Gonella (Salmon, 1985), Litany for the Pig (Salmon, 1990), Spring in Henry Street (Dedalus, 1996), Travels with Gandolpho (Dedalus, 2000), The Latitude of Naples (Dedalus, 2005) and piano (Dedalus, 2011). Her many translations include a selection of the poems of Elisabeth Borchers in English, as well as two comprehensive anthologies of Irish poetry in German, the most recent of which is Mit grüner Tinte / With Green Ink (1996). With Borbála Faragó she co-edited Landing Places: Immigrant Poets in Ireland (2010) and, with Vincent Woods, Fermata: Writings Inspired by Music (2016). She has taught in Creative Writing programmes in the US and on the MA in Writing at NUI, Galway. Eva Bourke has received numerous awards and bursaries from the Arts Council and is a member of Aosdána. PERSONAL STATEMENT "I admire formal poetry but I’m drawn to free verse more for its natural, organic, holistic feeling encompassing the physical (voice, heartbeat) and the non-physical (insight). Poetry offers illumination and hope by giving us trustworthy language appealing directly to the intellect, the senses and above all the emotions." REVIEW EXCERPT "… rich, copiously descriptive poems (…) packed with astonishing images and detailed observation, this is a book to relish. Bourke’s prose poems tell fabulous stories …" — John McAuliffe on piano (The Irish Times)