This is going to be a kind of rambling discussion related to my recent experiences of reading Irish poetry. I am currently part way through on MA module on Irish poetry, which has thus far been interesting, but also frustrating because the focus is on canonical poets like MacNeice, Heaney, Kavanagh, with very little discussion of modernism or what would later be termed ‘linguistically innovative poetry’. I really cannot remember the exact date of my interest in modernist poetry but if I had to guess it must have been around the time of my last year at Edge Hill University. Funnily enough Robert Sheppard is the director of the creative writing programme at that same university and is a card-carrying member of the British underground poetry scene. It must also have been around this time that I discovered the poetry of George Mackay Brown, who I found out was my tutor’s favourite writer by looking at his blog online. And thinking about it, it was probably not long after I discovered...
A blog on British and Irish Poetry, ecology and the Anthropocene.