Overview

Derek Mahon (1941–2020) is widely recognized as one of the most important Irish poets of his generation. This collection of new critical essays offers an important retrospective assessment of the nature of his poetic achievement. Bringing together many leading scholars of modern and contemporary Irish poetry, including a notable number of accomplished poet-critics, its contributors range widely across Mahon’s body of work. Their essays offer fresh considerations of the biographical, geographical and literary contexts that shaped his poetic voice. This includes paying attention not only to more familiar influences but also to previously little considered interlocutors. The stylistic and formal achievement of his voice is re-evaluated in ways that range from attentive close readings to considerations of his controversial practice of self-revision, and his engagements with music and experiments in translation. The politics of a poet often misleadingly considered apolitical are also reframed to take in the engagements of his early work through to the ecocritical commitment of his later poetry. Indeed, a notable aspect of this book is the consideration it gives to all the phases of Mahon’s career. As a whole, the collection opens up many new ways of reading and understanding Mahon’s important body of work.

Full Product Details

Author:   Nicholas Grene ,  Tom Walker
Publisher:   Liverpool University Press
Imprint:   Liverpool University Press
ISBN:  

9781835537978

ISBN 10:   1835537979
Pages:   304
Publication Date:   01 October 2024
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Introduction Nicholas Grene and Tom Walker I. Affiliations Mahon, Coleridge, Yeats: The Given Life Matthew Campbell ‘Hold on to that dissolving map’: Places and Displacements in Mahon and MacNeice Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin The ‘Mighty Four’ and More: Mahon and American Poetry Philip Coleman ‘Vivid Contact’: Good Faith in the Poetry of Mahon and Boland Catríona Clutterbuck Mahon and Morrissey: The Thing and the Thing Made Lucy Collins II. Locations ‘A Worldly Time’: Mahon and Belfast Gerald Dawe Mahon’s New York Lucy McDiarmid Mahon’s Cosmopolitan Limits Justin Quinn III. Aesthetics Mahon’s Defence of Poetry Edna Longley Twinning ‘Infinite’ with ‘Fulfilment’: Rhyme and the Paradoxes of Choice in Mahon’s Early Poetry Adam Hanna ‘Late Listening’: Music in Mahon’s Poetry Maria Johnston Surfaces and Superficialities in Mahon Gail McConnell From France to la Francophonie: Mahon’s Translation of Unbelonging Clíona Ní Riordáin IV. Politics Towards the New Atlantis: Mahon’s Early Politics Tom Walker Mahon’s Class Unease Nicholas Grene Mahon’s ‘Late Sacramental Gleam’ Seán Hewitt ‘songs to be sung beyond the human’: Mahon’s Terminal Ecologies Sam Solnick Late Mahon: Resistance and the Medium Hugh Haughton

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Author Information

Nicholas Grene is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Trinity College Dublin. Tom Walker is Associate Professor in Irish Writing at Trinity College Dublin.

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