CONTEMPORARY IRISH POETRY Also by Elmer Andrews "THE POETRY OF SEAMUS HEANEY: All the Realms of Whisper "SEAMUS HEANEY: A Collection of Critical Essays (editor) "Also published by Palgrave Macmillan Contemporary Irish Poetry A Collection of Critical Essays Edited by ELMER ANDREWS Lecturer in English University of Ulster at Coleraine M © The Macmillan Press Ltd 1992 Editorial matter and selection © Eimer Andrews 1992 Chapter 7 © Seamus Heaney 1992 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WIP 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First edition 1992 Reprinted 1993 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-0-333-60897-5 ISBN 978-1-349-80425-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-80425-2 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Contents Acknowledgements vii Notes on the Contributors viii 1 Introduction Elmer Andrews 1 2 Borderlands of Irish Poetry Eilean N( Chuilleandin 25 3 Myth and Modernity in Irish Poetry Richard Kearney 41 4 The Aesthetic and the Territorial Edna Longley 63 5 History and Poetry: Derek Mahon and Tom Paulin Peter McDonald 86 6 History and its Retrieval in Contemporary Northern Irish Poetry: Paulin, Montague and Others Patricia Craig 107 7 Place and Displacement: Reflections on Some Recent Poetry from Northern Ireland Seamus Heaney 124 8 The Landscape of Three Irelands: Hewitt, Murphy and Montague John Wilson Foster 145 9 The Suburban Night: On Eavan Boland, Paul Durcan and Thomas McCarthy Gerald Dawe 168 v vi Contents 10 'Move, if you move, like water': The Poetry of Thomas Kinsella, 1972-88 Maurice Harmon 194 11 Rhythm and Development in Michael Longley's Earlier Poetry Michael Allen 214 12 The Poetry of Derek Mahon: 'places where a thought might grow' Elmer Andrews 235 13 The Thoughtful Songs of James Simmons A. S. Knowland 264 14 The Poetry of Medbh McGuckian Michael Allen 286 15 Paul Muldoon: 'Who's to know what's knowable?' Barbara Buchanan 310 Select Bibliography of Contemporary Irish Poetry 328 Index 335 Acknowledgements Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint the following copyright material. EAv AN BOLAND: extracts from In Her Own Image (1980), reprinted by permission of Arlen House; Night Feed (1982), reprinted by permis- sion of Arlen House and Marian Boyars; The Journey and Other Poems (1986), reprinted by permission of Arlen House and Carcanet. PAUL DURCAN: extracts from The Selected Paul Durcan (1982) and Going Home to Russia (1987), reprinted by permission of Blackstaff Press. MICHAEL LONGLEY: extracts from No Continuing City (1969), re- printed by permission of Gill and Macmillan, and Macmillan; An Exploded View (1973), reprinted by permission of Victor Gollancz; Poems 1963-1983 (1985), reprinted by permission of Salamander Press, and Penguin Books (1986). MEDBH McGUCKIAN: extracts from The Flower Master (1982), Venus and the Rain (1984), reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press; On Ballycastle Beach (1988), reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press and Wake Forest University Press. DEREK MAHON: extracts from Night-Crossing (1968), Lives (1972), The Snow Party (1975), Poems 1962-1978 (1979), The Hunt by Night (1982), reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press. PAUL MULDOON: extracts from Mules (1977) and Meeting the British (1987), reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. TOM PAULIN: extracts from The Liberty Tree (1983), reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. vii Notes on the Contributors Michael Allen was educated at Leeds University. A Senior Lec- turer at Queen's University, Belfast, he is the author of Poe and the British Magazine Tradition (1969), a British Association for American Studies pamphlet on Emily Dickinson (1985) and essays on Amer- ican and Irish writers in various books and periodicals. Elmer Andrews was educated at Dalriada School, Ballymoney, and at Queen's University, Belfast, where he gained his MA and Ph.D. degrees. He has taught in Greece and at Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco. Currently, he is a Lecturer in English at the University of Ulster at Coleraine. His publications include The Poetry of Seamus Heaney: All the Realms of Whisper (1988), Seamus Heaney: A Collection of Critical Essays (editor, forthcoming), and essays on American and Irish writers in various books and journals. Barbara Buchanan was educated at Queen's University, Belfast, the New University of Ulster and London School of Economics. She is Head of the English department in a sixth-form college in London. Patricia Craig was born in Belfast and educated there and in London. She is a freelance author and critic, a biographer of Eli- zabeth Bowen, and a frequent contributor to many periodicals, including The Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books. Gerald Dawe was educated at Orangefield Boys' School, Belfast, the New University of Ulster and University College, Galway. Currently lecturing in English at Trinity College, Dublin, he has published two books of poems, Sheltering Places (1978) and The Lundys Letter (1985), edited The Younger Irish Poets (1982) and co- edited with Edna Longley Across a Roaring Hill: The Protestant Im- agination in Modern Ireland (1985). He has received a Major State Award (1974-7) and an Arts Council bursary for poetry (1980) and was awarded the Macaulay Fellowship in Literature in 1984. He is general editor of the literary review Krino. viii Notes on the Contributors ix John Wilson Foster was educated at Queen's University, Belfast, and the University of Oregon. He is Associate Professor of English at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. His publications include Forces and Themes in Ulster Fiction, Fictions on the Irish Liter- ary Revival (1987), and numerous contributions to books and jour- nals on Irish literature and culture. Maurice Harmon was educated at University College, Dublin, and at Harvard University. He is Associate Professor of Anglo-Irish Uterature and Drama at University College, Dublin. His publica- tions include Sean O'Faolain: A Critical Introduction (1966, rev. edn 1984), The Poetry of 1'homlls Kinsella (1974), Select Bibliography for the Study of Anglo-Irish Literature and its Background: An Irish Studies Handbook (1977), Irish Poets After Yeats (editor, 1978), Imilge and Illusion: Anglo-Irish Literature and its Contexts (editor, 1979), A Short History of Anglo-Irish Literature (co-editor with Roger McHugh, 1982) and The Irish Writer and the City (editor, 1984). He edits the Irish University Review: A Journal of Irish Studies. Seamus Heaney was educated at Queen's University, Belfast. He was Boylston Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard University (1984-9), and is currently Professor of Poetry at Oxford. His collections of poetry include Death of a Naturalist (1966), Door into the Dark (1969), Wintering Out (1972), North (1975), Field Work (1979), Selected Poems 1965-1975 (1980), Station Island (1984) and The Haw Lantern (1988). He has published two volumes of collected prose: Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978 (1980) and The Government of the Tongue: The T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures and Other Critical Writings (1988). Richard Kearney was eClucated at University College, Dublin, at McGill University, Montreal, and at the University of Paris. A Lecturer in Philosophy at University College, Dublin, he is the author of DiDlogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers (1984), La Poetique du possible (1984), Modern Movements in European Philosophy (1986), Narratives of Contemporary Irish Culture (1987), The Wake of Imilgination (1988) and Transitions: Narratives in Modern Irish Culture (1988); and editor of The Crane Bag Book of Irish Studies (2 vols, 1981 and 1987) and The Irish Mind: Exploring Intellectual Traditions (1984). He was co-editor of The Crane Bag and is currently co-editor of the Irish Review. He has participated in television and radio program- mes on Irish, British, French, German and American networks, x Notes on the Contributors with contributions on Irish culture, the media and modern Euro- pean thought. A. S. Knowland was educated at Frensham Heights School and Exeter College, Oxford, where he read classics and then English. He was Lecturer in English at University College, Toronto, and Professor and Head of Department at Magee University College, Londonderry. In 1960 he became Director of Studies at St Clare's Hall, Oxford, a post which he held until his retirement in 1984. He has been a visiting professor at the universities of Connecticut and Munich, and has taught at the Yeats International Summer School in Sligo. He has edited a collection of Caroline plays, is author of W. B. Yeats: Dramatist of Vision, and co-author, with A. Norman Jeffares, of A Commentary on the Collected Plays of W. B. Yeats (1975). Edna Longley is Professor of English at Queen's University, Bel- fast. She has edited Edward Thomas's Poems and Last Poems (1973), and his critical prose in A Language not to be Betrayed: Selected Prose of Edward Thomas (1981). She has also edited the works of James Simmons and Paul Durcan, and co-edited, with Gerald Dawe, Across a Roaring Hill: The Protestant Imagination in Modern Ireland (1985). Her extensive writings on contemporary Irish and English poetry include Poetry in the Wars (1986) and Louis MacNeice: A Study (1988). Peter McDonald was an undergraduate at University College, Oxford, and received his doctorate from Oxford in 1987.