The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry features the work of three Nobel laureates - W.
B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney - as well as Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde,
Thomas Moore, Patrick Kavanagh, Louis MacNeice, Eavan Boland and James Joyce. It also
includes epigrams, traditional verses and Old Irish songs, with 250 new English
translations by the greatest poets currently working, including Seamus Heaney and Ciarán
Carson.
Reflecting everything from Ireland's rich history of writing about
the land, to its untypical prominence of women in and writing its poetry, and the
abundance of oppositions that have preoccupied its verse through the ages (from Christian
and pre-Christian attitudes, to Gaels and Vikings, Nationalism and Unionism, Catholicism
and Protestantism, the Irish and English languages) this is an inclusive and masterfully
arranged collection of Irish verse. The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry is an
indispensable and important guide to the country's unparalleled literary culture.
The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry - Video
reading
Click here, to watch Seamus Heaney read an extract from The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry.
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