The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry

by Brearton, Fran; Gillis, Alan

• ISBN13: 9780199561247
• ISBN10: 0199561249
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-12-29
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Forty chapters, written by leading scholars across the world, describe the latest thinking on modern Irish poetry. The Handbook begins with a consideration of Yeats's early work, and the legacy of the 19th century. The broadly chronological areas which follow, covering the period from the 1910s through to the 21st century, allow scope for coverage of key poetic voices in Ireland in their historical and political context. From the experimentalism of Beckett, MacGreevy, and others ofthe modernist generation, to the refashioning of Yeats's Ireland on the part of poets such as MacNeice, Kavanagh, and Clarke mid-century, through to the controversially titled post-1969 'Northern Renaissance' of poetry, this volume will provide extensive coverage of the key movements of the modernperiod.The Handbook covers the work of, among others, Paul Durcan, Thomas Kinsella, Brendan Kennelly, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Michael Longley, Medbh McGuckian, and Ciaran Carson. The thematic sections interspersed throughout - chapters on women's poetry, religion, translation, painting, music, stylistics - allow for comparative studies of poets north and south across the century. Central to the guiding spirit of this project is the Handbook's consideration of poetic forms, and a number of essaysexplore the generic diversity of poetry in Ireland, its various manipulations, reinventions and sometimes repudiations of traditional forms. The last essays in the book examine the work of a 'new' generation of poets from Ireland, concentrating on work published in the last two decades by JustinQuinn, Leontia Flynn, Sinead Morrissey, David Wheatley, Vona Groarke, and others.

Author Biography

Fran Brearton is Reader in English at Queen's University Belfast. Her books include The Great War in Irish Poetry (2000), Reading Michael Longley (2006), and, as co-editor, Modern Irish & Scottish Poetry (2011) and Incorrigibly Plural: Louis MacNeice and His Legacy (2012).

Alan Gillis is Lecturer in English at The University of Edinburgh, and editor of Edinburgh Review. His books include Irish Poetry of the 1930s (2005) and, as co-editor, The Edinburgh Introduction to Studying English Literature (2010), as well as three collections of poetry: Here Comes the Night (2010), Hawks and Doves (2007) and Somebody, Somewhere (2004)

Table of Contents

PART I: POETRY AND THE REVIVAL
1. Recovering Ancient Ireland, Matthew Campbell
2. Yeats and Symbolism, Warwick Gould
3. Yeats, Clarke, and The Irish Poet's Relationship with English, Michael O'Neill
PART II: THE POETRY OF WAR
4. 'The Roses are Torn': Ireland's War Poets, Jim Haughey
5. 'Pledged to Ireland': The Poets and Poems of Easter 1916, Gerald Dawe
6. W. B. Yeats: Poetry and Violence, Edna Longley
PART III: MODERNISM AND TRADITIONALISM
7. Yeats, Eliot, and the Idea of Tradition, Edward Larrissy
8. Irish Poetic Modernism: Portrait of the Artist in Exile, Susan Schriebman
9. Samuel Beckett: Exile and Experiment, David Wheatley
10. Voice & Voiceprints: Joyce and Recent Irish Poetry, Dillon Johnston
PART IV: MID-CENTURY IRISH POETRY
11. Patrick Kavanagh's 'Potentialities', Kit Fryatt
12. MacNeice Among His Contemporaries: 1939 and 1941, Thomas Walker
13. The Poetics of Partition: Poetry and Northern Ireland in the 1940s, Richard Kirkland
14. Disturbing Irish Poetry: Kinsella and Clarke 1951-1962, John McAuliffe
15. Memory and Starlight in Late MacNeice, Jonathan Allison
PART V: POETRY & THE ARTS
16. Modern Irish Poetry and the Visual Arts: Yeats to Heaney, Neil Corcoran
17. Poetry, Music, and Reproduced Sound, Damien Keane
18. 'Private Relations': Selves, Poems, and Paintings Durcan to Morrissey, Rui Carvalho Homem
19. Contemporary Northern Irish Poetry and Romanticism, Peter Mackay
PART VI: ON THE BORDERS: A FURTHER LOOK AT THE LANGUAGE QUESTION
20. 'Ghosts of Metrical Procedures': Translations from the Irish, Aodan Mac Poilin
21. Translation as Collaboration: Ni Dhomhnaill and Muldoon, Eric Falci
22. Incoming: Irish Poetry and Translation, Justin Quinn
23. A Stylistic Analysis of Modern Irish Poetry, Paul Simpson
PART VII: POETRY & POLITICS: 1970S & 1980S
24. Befitting Emblems: The Early 1970s, Heather Clark
25. 'Neurosis of Sand': Authority, Memory, and the Hunger Strike, Shane Alcobia-Murphy
26. Engagements with the Public Sphere in the Poetry of Paul Durcan and Brendan Kennelly, John Redmond
27. Domestic Violences: Medbh McGuckian and Irish Women s Writing in the 1980s, Leontia Flynn
PART VIII: CULTURAL LANDSCAPES
28. Catholic Art and Culture: Clarke to Heaney, Gail McConnell
29. In Belfast, Elmer Kennedy-Andrews
30. 'Our Lost Lives': Protestantism and Northern Irish Poetry, Peter McDonald
31. Walking Dublin: Contemporary Irish Poets in the City, Maria Johnston
PART IX: THE POET AS CRITIC
32. The Irish Poet as Critic, Hugh Haughton
33. The Poet as Anthologist, Steven Matthews
34. Irish Poetry and the News, Jahan Ramazani
PART X: ON POETIC FORM
35. The Modern Irish Sonnet, Alan Gillis
36. Irish Elegy After Yeats, Stephen Regan
37. 'Repeat the changes change the repeats': Alternative Irish Poetry, John Goodby
38. 'The nothing-could-be-simpler-line': Form in Contemporary Irish Poetry, Fran Brearton
PART XI: ON RECENT POETRY
39. New Irish Women Poets: The Evolution of (In)determinacy in Vona Groarke, Catriona Clutterbuck
40. 'a potted peace / lily'? Northern Irish Poetry Since the Ceasefires, Miriam Gamble