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Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-19602-4 - Modern Irish and Scottish Poetry Edited by Peter Mackay, Edna Longley and Fran Brearton Frontmatter More information

MODERN IRISH AND SCOTTISH POETRY

The comparative study of the literatures of Ireland and Scotland has emerged as a distinct and buoyant field in recent years. This collection of new essays offers the first sustained comparison of modern Irish and Scottish poetry, featuring close readings of texts within broad histor- ical and political contextualisation. Playing on influences, cross-overs, connections, disconnections and differences, the ‘affinities’ and ‘opposites’ traced in this book cross both Irish and Scottish poetry in many directions. Contributors include major scholars of the new ‘archipelagic’ approach, as well as leading Irish and Scottish poets providing important insights into current creative practice. Poets discussed include W. B. Yeats, Hugh MacDiarmid, Sorley MacLean, Louis MacNeice, Edwin Morgan, Douglas Dunn, Seamus Heaney, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Michael Longley, Medbh McGuckian, Nuala ní Dhomhnaill, Don Paterson and Kathleen Jamie. This book is a major contribution to our understanding of poetry from these islands in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

peter mackay has worked as a Research Fellow at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, and lectured on Scottish and Scottish Gaelic literature at Trinity College Dublin. He has written Sorley MacLean (2010), and is editing volumes of Gaelic poetry and critical essays. edna longley is a Professor Emerita at Queen’s University Belfast. Her publications include Poetry and Posterity (2000) and, as editor, Edward Thomas: The Annotated Collected Poems (2008). fran brearton is Reader in English at Queen’s University Belfast. She is the author of The Great War in Irish Poetry (2000) and Reading Michael Longley (2006).

© in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-19602-4 - Modern Irish and Scottish Poetry Edited by Peter Mackay, Edna Longley and Fran Brearton Frontmatter More information

MODERN IRISH AND SCOTTISH POETRY

edited by PETER MACKAY, EDNA LONGLEY

AND FRAN BREARTON

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb28ru,UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521196024

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2011

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Modern Irish and Scottish Poetry / edited by Peter Mackay, Edna Longley, Fran Brearton. p. cm ISBN 978-0-521-19602-4 (hardback) 1. English poetry – Irish authors – History and criticism. 2. English poetry – Scottish authors – History and criticism. 3. English poetry – 20th century – History and criticism. 4. Rhymers’ Club (London, England) I. Mackay, Peter, 1979– editor of compilation. II. Crotty, Patrick, 1952– Swordsmen. pr8771.m62 2011 8210.914099411–dc22 2010052383

isbn 978-0-521-19602-4 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

This book is dedicated to the memory of George Watson (1942–2009).

Contents

List of contributors page ix Acknowledgements x

Introduction 1 Edna Longley 1 Swordsmen: W. B. Yeats and Hugh MacDiarmid 20 Patrick Crotty 2 Tradition and the individual editor: Professor Grierson, modernism and national poetics 39 Cairns Craig 3 Louis MacNeice among the islands 58 John Kerrigan 4 Townland, desert, cave: Irish and Scottish Second World War poetry 87 Peter Mackay 5 Afﬁnities in time and space: reading the Gaelic poetry of Ireland and Scotland 102 Máire Ní Annracháin 6 Contemporary afﬁnities 119 Douglas Dunn 7 The Classics in modern Scottish and Irish poetry 131 Robert Crawford 8 Translating Beowulf: Edwin Morgan and Seamus Heaney 147 Hugh Magennis

vii

viii Contents 9 Reading in the gutters 161 Eric Falci 10 ‘What matters is the yeast’: ‘foreignising’ Gaelic poetry 176 Christopher Whyte 11 Outside English: Irish and Scottish poets in the East 191 Justin Quinn 12 Names for nameless things: the poetics of place names 204 Alan Gillis 13 Desire lines: mapping the city in contemporary Belfast and Glasgow poetry 222 Aaron Kelly 14 ‘The ugly burds without wings’?: reactions to tradition since the 1960s 238 Eleanor Bell 15 ‘And cannot say / and cannot say’: Richard Price, Randolph Healy and the dialogue of the deaf 251 David Wheatley 16 On ‘The Friendship of Young Poets’: Douglas Dunn, Michael Longley and Derek Mahon 265 Fran Brearton 17 ‘No misprints in this work’: the poetic ‘translations’ of Medbh McGuckian and Frank Kuppner 280 Leontia Flynn 18 Phoenix or dead crow? Irish and Scottish poetry magazines, 1945–2000 294 Edna Longley 19 Outwith the Pale: Irish–Scottish studies as an act of translation 313 Michael Brown

Guide to further reading 328 Index 331

Contributors

eleanor bell, University of Strathclyde fran brearton, Queen’s University Belfast michael brown, Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies, University of Aberdeen cairns craig, Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies, University of Aberdeen robert crawford, University of St Andrews patrick crotty, Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies, University of Aberdeen douglas dunn, University of St Andrews eric falci, University of California, Berkeley leontia flynn, Queen’s University Belfast alan gillis, University of Edinburgh aaron kelly, University of Edinburgh john kerrigan, University of Cambridge edna longley, Queen’s University Belfast peter mackay, Queen’s University Belfast hugh magennis, Queen’s University Belfast ma´ ire nı´ annracha´ in, University College Dublin justin quinn, Charles University, Prague david wheatley, University of Hull christopher whyte, Budapest

Acknowledgements

The editors’ grateful thanks go to all contributors; to other academic participants in the Irish and Scottish poetry project: Tom Hubbard, Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, Liam McIlvanney, Fiona Stafford and Roderick Watson; and to the poets and musicians who also participated: Ciaran and Deirdre Carson, Christine and Martin Dowling, Len Graham, Kathleen Jamie, Liz Lochhead, Michael Longley, Peter McDonald, Andrew McNeillie, Alison McMorland, Sinéad Morrissey and Pádraigin Ní Uallacháin. Details and recordings of the symposia, poetry readings and music events can be accessed on the website: www.qub.ac.uk/schools/ SeamusHeaneyCentreforPoetry/irishscottishpoetry. Grateful thanks are also due to the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen and the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry for ﬁnancial, administrative and institutional support. We would like to thank the following for permission to reproduce copyright material: Faber and Faber Ltd for permission to quote from Douglas Dunn, ‘Realisms’, Seamus Heaney, ‘Would They Had Stay’d’, and Paul Muldoon, ‘Hard Drive’; quotations from Alan Gillis, Hawks and Doves, by kind permission of the author and The Gallery Press; quotations from Michael Hartnett’s translation of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, ‘Támaid damanta’, by kind permission of the Estate of Michael Hartnett c/o Gallery Press; Salt Publishing Ltd for quotations from Randolph Healy, ‘Arbor Vitae’; Tom Leonard for permission to quote from ‘Right Inuff’, © Tom Leonard, Ghostie Men (Etruscan Books/Wordpower, 2009); Derek Mahon for permission to quote from ‘Going Home’ in The Snow Party (OUP, 1975). Quotations from W. B. Yeats, ‘A Last Confession’ and ‘Solomon and the Witch’, are reprinted with the permission of A. P. Watt Ltd on behalf of Gráinne Yeats, and with the permission of Scribner, a division of Simon Schuster, Inc. Copyright © 1993 by the Macmillan Company. Copyright © renewed 1961 by Bertha Georgie Yeats.