13 - Irish poets and the world

Summary

The global reputation of the Irish poetry world can be attributed to many things including, at the risk of sounding too uncritical, its great variety and quality. The sociology and politics of the reception of Irish poetry, particularly in the United States, has been the subject of various levels of critical speculation. Critics have mapped the influences of the literatures of many nations on a range of contemporary Irish poets. This chapter will explore the ways some contemporary Irish poets have reached beyond Ireland to imagine and define their poetic practice. Irish poets have been greatly interested in the achievements of American, Eastern European, French and Greek poets, from Dickinson, Whitman, Williams, Frost and Lowell to Herbert, Milosz and Mandelstam, to Nerval, Cavafy and Seferis. The hold these writers and others have for a number of contemporary Irish poets - Boland, Heaney, Mahon, Kinsella, Muldoon - springs from a desire to establish human identity out of the tensions, debates and violence about national traditions and national identity.