In the last fifty years Irish poets have produced some of the most exciting poetry in contemporary literature, writing about love and sexuality, violence and history, country and city. This book, first published in 2003, provides an introduction to major figures such as Seamus Heaney, and also introduces the reader to significant precursors like Louis MacNeice or Patrick Kavanagh, and vital contemporaries and successors: among others, Thomas Kinsella, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Paul Muldoon. Readers will find discussions of Irish poetry from the traditional to the modernist, written in Irish as well as English, from both North and South. This Companion provides cultural and historical background to contemporary Irish poetry in the contexts of modern Ireland but also in the broad currents of modern world literature. It includes a chronology and guide to further reading and will prove invaluable to students and teachers alike.
Chronology; 1. Ireland in poetry, 1999, 1949, 1969 Matthew Campbell; 2. From Irish mode to modernisation: the poetry of Austin Clarke John Goodby; 3. Patrick Kavanagh and anti-pastoral Jonathan Allison; 4. Louis MacNiece: irony and responsibility Peter McDonald; 5. The Irish modernists and their legacy Alex Davis; 6. Poetry of the 1960s: the 'Northern Ireland Renaissance' Fran Brearton; 7. Seamus Heaney and violence Dillon Johnston; 8. Mahon and Longley: places and placelessness Terence Brown; 9. Between two languages: contemporary poetry in Irish and English Frank Sewell; 10. Boland, McGuckian, Ní Chuilleanáin and the body of the nation Guinn Batten; 11. Sonnets, centos, and long lines: Muldoon, Paulin, McGuckian and Carson Shane Murphy; 12. Performance and dissent: Irish poets in the public sphere Lucy Collins; 13. Irish poets and the world Robert Faggen; 14. Irish poetry into the twenty-first century David Wheatley.
