Michael Curran-Dorsano, "Where the Dead Poets Sing"

 

Originally from Minneapolis, Michael Curran-Dorsano is an international artist, whose career as an actor, writer, and teacher has spanned the globe. He’s also a proud graduate of Juilliard’s Drama Division and NUI Galway’s MA in Writing. His poetry has been published in journals such as Vox Galvia, Pendemic.ie, Smashing Times, and Spellweaver, and his debut collection Where the Dead Poets Sing will be released in February, 2026 with Wayfarer Books. On the stage and on the page, he draws from classical and contemporary influences, as well as a deep love of myth and storytelling in the bardic tradition. His website is here. 

About Where the Dead Poets Sing, by Michael Curran-Dorsano
In Where the Dead Poets Sing, an American immigrant seeks refuge in the West of Ireland as his country falls under the dark grip of fascism. Caught between the tectonic shifts of a global pandemic, an insurrection back home, the Irish housing crisis and the rise of A.I., he journeys through dreamscape, memory and song in a desperate attempt to find new meaning in a crumbling world. 

At the heart of this collection is an elegy for the dying Earth, and an ode to all the immigrants, wanderers, and lost souls who fall through the cracks. A blend of the lyrical and experimental, the mythic and the mundane, each poem is a journey toward home, divinity, and a deeper human connection in a world thrown into chaos. 

You can read more about Where the Dead Poets Sing on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection. 

From Where the Dead Poets Sing

To Stranger Shores

Beyond the edge of reason from starboard to port the sailor sees dream walk on dream the feverish memory of birdsong through the cycling seasons swallowed by the sea of autumn leaves that once crunched beneath his tiny feet floating free on the ocean breeze with waves curling steam cresting from the puttering engine to kiss that sacred line between darkness and light rising to join the long sleepless night as root and branch hewn and bound to form his bobbing ship drone with the sounds of the forest floor torn from fresh flowing streams now carven husks that gleam with names of those he left behind in the sunken caverns of his flickering eyes their wick charred and yearning for the dark awaits the stern the wheel of his ancestors turns again his fate their fate he knows now as the sailor plows through the unkempt braids of foam and brine of a strange new goddess

The Invisible Hand 

our violent delights 

unhinged 

with each pendulum swing, 

the stalwart bolt rattling, 

tarnished gold corroding 

the cantilever holding 

the frenzied tick-tock-tick, 

the errant flick 

of some invisible hand, 

shadows lick the walls stretching 

tall than fall, crashing 

to a skittering crawl, 

only to leap up to the stalls, 

mercy’s minister long departed there, 

only empty pews scrawled 

with tooth and claw, 

the babel of the rabble long left to rot, 

a shot rings like bell in a well, 

thunderous bellowing swells, 

bolt, nut and washer break, 

time flies with its armament, 

the shake of rafters as certain stone shatters, 

what breeds in the shadows 

when they lose their master? 

the shots fire faster, 

blood runs from the sun tipped alabaster, 

no words to speak when time and mercy sleep, 

deep sunk beneath the Church 

of this American Dream.