Teaching Modern Irish Poetry

Modern Irish poetry beyond Yeats and Heaney

Interpreting modern Irish poetry within a network of national and cultural identities and in the context of economic and demographic changes of the past fifty years, this volume looks at Irish poetry anew and offers instructors guidance on refashioning the standard Yeats-to-Heaney survey course for the contemporary classroom.

Essays address topics such as poetry and trauma, animal poetics, queer poetry, and Black Irish writers and approach teaching Irish poetry in different places, from Mexico to Belfast; to Irish-language learners; with creative writing pedagogy; and alongside classical and medieval poetry. The range of topics and approaches represented here will inspire teachers to explore new poets and poems and to reconsider familiar ones.

This volume contains discussion of the following works: Eavan Boland, “Mise Eire,” “The Singers,” and “That the Science of Cartography Is Limited”; Colette Bryce, “Don’t Speak to the Brits, Just Pretend They Don’t Exist”; Kimberly Campanello, MOTHERBABYHOME; Ciaran Carson, “Belfast Confetti” and “Hamlet”; Ailbhe Darcy, “Jellyfish”; Aubrey de Vere, “Desolation of the West”; Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe, “Ama de Casa”; Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi, “When”; Leontia Flynn, “Belfast”; Seamus Heaney, “Punishment”; Nandi Jola, “Black Irish”; Patrick Kavanagh, Lough Derg; Thomas Kinsella, Butcher’s Dozen: A Lesson for the Octave of Widgery; Edna Longley, Poetry in the Wars; Louis MacNeice, “Belfast”; Derek Mahon, “The Snow Party” and “A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford”; Paula Meehan, “The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks”; Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire (The Lament for Art O’Leary); Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, “Pygmalion’s Image,” “Translation,” and “Old Roads”; Annemarie Ní Churreáin, “The Secret” and “Weir View”; Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, The Fifty Minute Mermaid and “Ceist na Teangan”; Doireann Ní Ghríofa, “In Albumen, in Pixels, in Bricks”; Lianne O’Hara, “Bench”; Patrick Pearse, “Mise Éire”; The Táin (anonymous); and W. B. Yeats, “The Rose Tree.”