Description: 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 historical and political contextualization. Playing on influences, crossovers, 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 ni 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.
Brief description: Dr 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 An Introduction to Sorley MacLean (2010) and is editing volumes of Gaelic poetry and critical essays.
Review Quotes: 'An insightful and informative survey of poetry and poets in both countries.' Books Ireland