1. A Map of Contemporary
Irish Poetry
Prepared by:
Sara Vahabi

2. Contents
• The History of Irish Poetry • Important Poets
Irish Poetry in the 21st Century I. Louis MacNeice
I. The Oral Culture II. Austin Clarke
The Significant Irish Poets III. Patrik Kavanagh
II. The 17th Century IV. Padraic Fallon
Conclusion • Irish Poetry in the 21st Century
III. The 18th Century • The Significant Irish Poets
IV. The 19th Century • Conclusion
V. The 20th Century
• Censorship
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3. The history
• The poetries of two languages, one in Irish and the other in
English.
• The earliest surviving poems in Irish date back to the 6th
century, while the first known poems in English from
Ireland date to the 14th century.
• Poetry in Irish represents the oldest vernacular poetry in
Europe.
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4. • Irish poetry are generally short lyrics on themes from
religion or the world of nature.
• They were frequently written by their scribe authors in the
margins of the illuminated manuscripts that they were
copying.
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5. The Oral Culture
A poem could be used:
• to immortalize both the poet and the subject of the poem,
• for entertainment purposes.
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6. The 17th century
• A new Gaelic poetry took root, one that sought inspiration
in the margins of a dispossessed Irish-speaking society.
• The language of this poetry is today called Early Modern
Irish.
• Although some 17th century poets continued to enjoy a
degree of patronage, many, if not most, of them were part-
time writers who also worked on the land, as teachers, and
anywhere that they could earn their keep.
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7. The 18th century
Poetry in Irish now reflects the passing of the old Gaelic order
and the patronage on which the poets depended for their
livelihoods.
“What shall we do from now on without timber?
The last of the woods is gone.
No more of Kilcash and its household
And its bells will not ring again.
The place where that great lady lived
Who received esteem and love above all others
Earls came from overseas to visit there
And Mass was sweetly read.”
(the anonymous poet laments that the castle of Cill Chais stands empty, its
woods are cut down and its old splendours departed. )
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8. The 19th Century
• The decline of the Irish language and the concurrent rise of
English as the main language of Ireland.
• Mining the Irish-language heritage as a source of themes
and techniques.
• Poetry in Irish became essentially a folk art.
• Was one of the great periods for the composition of folk
songs in both languages, and the majority of the traditional
singer's repertoire is typically made up of 19th century
songs.
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9. The 20th century
"still lining up to try on Yeats's
robes,"
Peter Porter
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10. Seamus
Heaney
Drek
Richard
Murphy
W.B.Yeats Mahon
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11. "the only literary art in which we have not made our presence
felt is the one in which we are supposed to excel; this is,
poetry. Yeats apart, few Irish poets have been accepted as
international figures in the way that Pablo Neruda is, or
Octavio Paz, or Ungaretti.“
John Montague, I973.
"I think it is true to say that outside Ireland there is little or no
interest in contemporary Irish poetry."
Michael Smith , 1973.
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12. Censorship
• The 1930's and 1940's, Ireland was economically
underdeveloped and intellectually repressed.
• The lack of good native publishers added to the disorder and
confusion of poets, while the censorship was, to cite Robert
Graves, "the fiercest”.
• Graves's King Jesus, I, Claudius, and Wife to Mr. Milton
were banned.
• Austin Clarke's novels and Frank O'Connor's version of a
classic Gaelic poem, "The Midnight Court," were added to
the for bidden index.
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13. Important Poets
Frederick Louis Padraic Fallon
MacNeice (1905 - 1974)
(1907 – 1963)
Austin Clarke Patrick Kavanagh
(1896 – 1974) (1904 – 1967)
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14. Louis MacNeice
• was-like Samuel Beckett-a some what deracinated figure,
imaginatively bound to Ireland yet belonging nowhere in
particular.
• was asked "Are you Irish?" he drily replied: "You might call
it that."
• His engagement with Yeats was profound
• was much less political a poet than W. H. Auden or Stephen
Spender, for example.
• MacNeice's poetry was informed by his immediate interests
and surroundings and is more social than political.
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15. Austin Clarke
• Was one of the leading Irish poets of the generation after Yeats.
• Wrote plays, novels and memoirs.
• Clarke's main contribution to Irish poetry was the hardness with which
he used technical means borrowed from classical Irish language poetry
when writing in English.
• His poems concerning the hypocrisies of the newly-independent Irish
state and Catholic Puritanism were set against poems presenting an
idealized medieval Ireland.
• Clarke experimented with Gaelic prosody and used verbal high jinks and
zany rhymes.
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16. His published collections of poetry includes:
• The Vengeance of Fion (1917)
• The Fires of Baal (1921)
• The Swwword of the West (1921)
• The Cattledrive in Connaught and Other Poems (1925)
• The Pilgrimage and Other Poems (1929)
• The Collected Poems of Austin Clarke (1936)
• Nigh and Morning (1938)
• Ancient Lights (1955)
• Too Great a Vine: Poems and Satires (1960)
• The Horse Eaters: Poem and Satires (1960)
• Collected Later Poems (1961)
• Forget-Me-Not (1962)
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17. Patrick Kavanagh
• The foremost poets of the 20th century
• Best works: the novel Tarry Flynn and the poems Raglan
Road and The Great Hunger.
• His work can best be categorized as accounts of Irish life
and achieved a universal appeal through reference to
commonplace.
• He used simple language forms and edited his poetry
continuously to simplify them.
• Colloquial language is an intrinsic element of Kavanagh's
style.
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18. • Patrick Kavanagh is the best-loved by far among general
readers and he has been eloquently championed by Seamus
Heaney, another poet with an unusually broad readership.
• If stocks in Patrick Kavanagh and Louis MacNeice have risen
steadily in recent decades, Austin Clarke has slumped, while
serious trading in the absurdly undervalued Padraic Fallon
has scarcely started.
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19. Padraic Fallon
• Wrote numerous verse plays that were broadcast on Radio
Eireann.
• Many of his poems were published in journals and
periodicals from the early thirties onward .
• It was not until 1974, the year of Fallon`s death, that an
extensive collection , Poems, was published in book form.
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20. Irish poetry in the 21st Century
• is undergoing development as radical as the 1960s.
• Increased globalisation has led to a younger generation of
poets seeking influences and precursors as varied as post-war
Polish poets and Contemporary Americans.
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21. The significant Irish poets, emerged in
recent years
Pat Boran, Hugh McFadden, Richard Mc Sweeney,
Paula Meehan, Sinéad Morrissey,
Paul Muldoon, Gerry Murphy,
Bernard O'Donoghue, Conor O'Callaghan,
Caitriona O'Reilly, Justin Quinn,
Maurice Riordan, Adam Rudden,
Gerard McKeown, William Wall,
Brendan Kennelly, Derek Mahon,
Dónal Seoighe. Ciarán Carson,
Patrick Chapman, Harry Clifton,
Tony Curtis, Padraig J. Daly,
Gerald Dawe, Greg Delanty,
Séan Dunne, Paul Durcan,
Eamon Grennan, Vona Groarke,
Kerry Hardie, Seamus Heaney,
John Hughes,
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Thomas McCarthy, 21

22. Conclusion
• Ireland must be one of the least difficult places in the world in
which to have a book of poems published.
• Collections appear which even an American vanity press might
blanch at -and they are not only printed but publicised and
praised as well.
• A national reputation is not all that hard to achieve when the
nation is a small one; indeed, a modest international reputation
may prove possible if the poet comes to the attention of those
students and academics for whom Irish Studies represent an
attractively compact alternative to courses on cultures of a more
intimidating size and complexity.
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23. Later poets, including Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Nuala Ni
Dhomhnaill, and Michael Hartnett, have absorbed European
influences without fanfare,
while Peter Sirr, Harry Clifton, and Michael O'Loughlin have
produced an intelligent, cosmopolitan poetry of love, exile,
and alienation which connects them with the English poets
Michael Hofirnann and Stephen Romer.
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24. There are poems by Devlin and Coffey without which Irish
poetry would be the poorer and narrower; and they helped to
pave the way for the poets whom Michael Smith recruited to
his adventurous New Writers' Press and for more recent
modernists who have sought reputations outside Ireland: Billy
Mills, Catherine Walsh, and Maurice Scully.
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25. "If English poets suffer from indifference, Irish poets suffer
from too much public expectation."
Thomas McCarthy
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