Reviews for Contemporary Irish poetry

The average rating for Contemporary Irish poetry based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-01-22 00:00:00 Mr John William Scollen This was my Bible of Contemporary Poetry in the 1990's. I read it so often it's pages came apart. Somehow, the reading of this selection of writing, together with Jeremy Prynne, James Joyce, John Keats and some of Shakespeare's writing, had a subliminal effect on my writing, without me ever realising the mind-to-writing precipitation. I was gaining 8 and 9/10 for all my essays at University in Classical Civilisations. 'You've got something'....said one lecturer.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-12-02 00:00:00 Christopher Ishii This is a re-read. I picked up this collection of poems at 14 from a second hand store, mainly out of curiosity regarding the use of the word 'Albion' (not to blow up my spot, but I may have been a Libertines stan in my teens). The poetry holds up. It's engaging and at times explosive, making you stop and really think about a line over and over again. I see the text as indicative of its time; of course, there are far more male poets than female poets featured. There's also that sort of '60s Baby-Boomer-esque hangover of "I'm writing PISS and WHORE and BOOZE and OTHER BAD WORDS and it's being PRINTED, whaddayamake of that mum and dad?!" People were still really freaked out about Howl, I guess! The Rolling Stones were scandalizing the English aristocracy just by prancing around in tight pants and wearing their hair long. Marianne Faithfull even gets mentioned in one poem called The News by Herbert Lomas. Rebellion had a template set in diametric opposition to tradition. It seems kind of lame now, but again, it's a beautiful artefact of its time. A standout poet for me was Gael Turnbull, and I will be seeking out more of his works because of what was featured of his here. Rated four stars because some of these modernist poets just took it too far with the spacing of their words (this is a pet peeve of mine, so it's personal preference). Also didn't love how edgy some of these poets thought they were being simply by mentioning, for instance, sex workers or homosexuals as window-dressing for their poetry - they were never the subject of the poems, just these sort of props. I get why I thought these sort of poems were so cool when I was 14, but hey, I also loved Bukowski back then.