Medbh McGuckian‘s most recent collection of poems is My Love Has Fared Inland.
Near-sighted, I would not lift my eyes From either my floor-length gown or my Pastel mood. There was too much yellow For my temperature to rise a lot At sunset into new mays and may nots: I was afraid to see the ever dancelike Breast of cloud swirl open in the sky As my garments. Promising a son, To him, to memory, I could not love His love, and all that came after Was a mere...
In Irish poetry, from Ó Rathaille to the rebel songs, a paradigmatic encounter recurs. Up on a hill, or down by the glenside, the poet meets a woman who celebrates Ireland’s pastand...
The excitable, exuberant surface of Mark Ford’s poems makes them instantly attractive. They speak with a bewildered urgency: See, no hands! she cried Sailing down the turnpike, And flapped...
This is Ciaran Carson’s second collection of poems. His first, The New Estate (1976), revealed an intricate, lyrical poet intensely aware of traditional Irish cultures, and concerned to...
Johnson’s Imlac, urging that the poet neglect the ‘minuter discriminations’ of the tulip leaf in favour of ‘general properties’, has been unpopular for two hundred...
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