A Concise Companion to Postwar British and Irish Poetry [Hardcover]

• An historical overview and critical introduction to the poetry published in Britain and Ireland over the last half-century
• Introduces students to figures including Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, and Andrew Motion
• Takes an integrative approach, emphasizing the complex negotiations between the British and Irish poetic traditions, and pulling together competing tendencies and positions
• Written by critics from Britain, Ireland, and the United States
• Includes suggestions for further reading and a chronology, detailing the most important writers, volumes and events

Notes on Contributors ix

Acknowledgments xii

Chronology xv

Introduction 1
Nigel Alderman and C. D. Blanton

1 Poetic Modernism and the Century’s Wars 11
Vincent Sherry

2 The Movement and the Mainstream 32
Stephen Burt

3 Myth, History, and The New Poetry 51
Nigel Alderman

4 Region and Nation in Britain and Ireland 72
Michael Thurston

5 Form and Identity in Northern Irish Poetry 92
John P. Waters

6 Poetry and Decolonization 111
Jahan Ramazani

7 Transatlantic Currents 134
C. D. Blanton

8 Neo-Modernism and Avant-Garde Orientations 155
Drew Milne

9 Contemporary British Women Poets and the Lyric Subject 176
Linda A. Kinnahan&lã