Poetry and Drama
Sebastian Barry , The Steward of Chistendom (Methuen UK), Boss Grady's Boys and Prayers of Sherkin (Methuen UK), and Our Lady of Sligo . Characters from Barry's family history are central to these plays, all characterized by his richly poetic use of language. Samuel Beckett , Collected Shorter Plays and Waiting for Godot (Faber; Grove). Bleak hilarity from the laureate of the void. All essential for swanning around Dublin coffee shops. Brendan Behan , The Complete Plays (Methuen; Grove). Flashes of brilliance from a writer destroyed by alcoholism. His The Quare Fellow takes up where Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol leaves off. Eavan Boland , The Journey (Carcanet UK o/p); Selected Poems (Carcanet UK) and Outside History (Carcanet; Norton). Thoughtful, spare and elegant verse from one of Ireland's most significant poets. Pat Boran , The Unwound Clock (Dedalus UK o/p). Wry, insightful poems of contemporary Irish life. Marina Carr , Portia Coughlan (Faber UK), The Mai (Gallery IRE) and On Raftery's Hill (Faber UK). Three plays by one of Ireland's most promising playwrights. Ciaran Carson , The Twelfth of Never (Gallery IRE). Richly allusive poetry that will baffle those not steeped in Irish history and politics; Carson's novels offer a more accessible taste of one of Ireland's most musical literary voices. Austin Clarke , Selected Poems (Colin Smythe; Penguin). Clarke's tender work evokes the same stark grandeur as the paintings of Jack Yeats. Patrick Crotty (ed), Modern Irish Poetry: An Anthology (Blackstaff; Dufour). This anthology covers a broad range of poetry from 1922 onwards, includes Irish and English translations of a number of poems, and provides highly accessible introductions to both the period and the individual poets represented. Denis Devlin , Collected Poems (Wake-Forest US). Pre-eminent Irish poet of the 1930s, owing allegiance to a European modern tradition rather than the prevailing Yeatsian. Paul Durcan , A Snail in My Prime (Harvill; Penguin); O Westport in the Light of Asia Minor (Harvill UK); The Berlin Wall Cafe (Harvill UK); Greetings to our Friends in Brazil (Harvill). Ireland's most popular and readable poet. Berlin Wall is a lament for a broken marriage, recounted with agonizing honesty, dignity and, ultimately, forgiveness. Peter Fallon , News of the World (Gallery; Wake-Forest). Reflections on a reassuring landscape, the present consciously linked to the past, punctuated by the petty rivalries and discrete madnesses of country life. George Farquhar , The Recruiting Officer (OUP). The usual helping of cross-dressing and mistaken identity, yet this goes beyond the implications of most Restoration comedy, even flirting with feminism before finally marrying everyone off in the last scene. Padraic Fiacc , Missa Terribilis (Blackstaff UK o/p). Fiacc's work is informed by the political and social tribalisms of Northern Ireland, and explores personal relationships in these contexts. Brian Friel , Dancing at Lughnasa (Faber). Family drama by Derry playwright examining the coexistence of Catholicism and paganism in Irish society, and the tensions between them. Plays 1 (Faber) contains six of his greatest works, including Translations and Faith Healer . Oliver Goldsmith , She Stoops to Conquer (A&C Black; W.W. Norton). Sparky dialogue, with a more English sheen than Farquhar. Augusta, Lady Gregory , Collected Plays (Colin Smythe; Dufour). The Anglo-Irish writer who understood most about the cadences of the Irish language. This gives not only her translations, but also her original drama an authenticity lacking in the work of others. Seamus Heaney , Death of a Naturalist (Faber); Station Island, Seeing Things and Opened Ground: Poems 1966-96 (Faber; Farrar Straus & Giroux). The most important Irish poet since Yeats. His poems are immediate and passionate, even when dealing with intellectual problems and radical social divisions. The Redress of Poetry (Faber o/p; Farrar Straus & Giroux) is an example of his energetic prose, consisting of the lectures he gave while Professor of Poetry at Oxford from 1989 to 1994. The title of The Spirit Level (Faber), winner of the 1997 Whitbread Prize, alludes to the delicate balances of private and political life following the ceasefire; cool, reassuring poetry with its own quiet music. Opened Ground is a massive new collection selected from all his previous published work. Patrick Kavanagh , Selected Poems (Penguin UK). Joyfully mystic exploration of the rural countryside and the lives of its inhabitants by one of Ireland's most popular poets. See also his autobiographical novel, Tarry Flynn (Penguin UK). Brendan Kennelly , Cromwell (Bloodaxe; Dufour). Speculative meditation on the role of the conqueror in Irish history. Poetry My Arse (Bloodaxe; Dufour) is an epic poem which "sinks its teeth into the pants of poetry itself", while Begin (Bloodaxe UK) presents an accessible and highly enjoyable selection of Kennelly's "echopoems". Thomas Kinsella , Collected Poems: 1956-1994 (OUP), and his first-rate anthology The New Oxford Book of Irish Verse (OUP). Shane MacGowan , Poguetry (Faber UK o/p). Powerful and pungent lyrics by the former Pogues' bardperson. Not for Yeats fans. Louis MacNeice , Collected Poems (Faber UK) or Selected Poems (Faber; Wake-Forest). Good chum of Auden, Spender and the rest of the "1930s' generation", Carrickfergus-born MacNeice achieves a fruitier texture and an even more detached tone. Derek Mahon , Selected Poems (Penguin UK); Collected Poems (Dufour US); The Hudson Letter (Gallery UK); The Yellow Book (Gallery; Wake-Forest). One of the finest contemporary Northern Irish poets. See also his Penguin Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry (ed with Peter Fallon). Martin McDonagh , The Beauty Queen of Linnane, The Skull of Connemara and The Lonesome West (all Methuen UK).Festering familial hatred, murder and isolation on the west coast of Ireland dished up with aplomb. Medbh McGuckian , Venus in the Rain (Gallery; Dufour); Selected Poems (Gallery; Wake Forest). Trawling the subconscious for their imagery, McGuckian's sensuous and elusive poems are highly demanding and equally rewarding. Frank McGuinness , Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme (Faber). An exploration of the Ulster Protestant experience of World War I by one of Ireland's most important playwrights. Someone to Watch Over Me (Faber) reveals the resources of cultural history and personality that sustain three hostages - one Irish, one American and one British. Conor McPherson , McPherson: Four Plays (Nick Hern Books). A collection including This Lime Tree Bower , a very funny play in which the lives of three men change in the course of a weekend, and The Weir , an eerie, compelling drama set in an isolated village in the west of Ireland. A Dublin Carol (Nick Hern Books) is a moving piece set around the seasonal reflections of a Dublin undertaker. Paula Meehan , The Man who was Marked by Winter (Gallery; Eastern Washington University); Pillow Talk (Gallery UK); Dharmakaya (Carcanet). Memorable work, often concerned with women's lives, issues of family, gender and sexuality and rooted in the inner-city experience. Gary Mitchell , Tearing the Loom & In a Little World of our Own, Trust and The Force of Change (all Nick Hern Books UK). Fine plays from one of Belfast's leading playwrights, chiefly focusing on the changing lives of the Loyalist community. John Montague , Collected Poems (Gallery; Wake-Forest). Terse poetry concerned with history, community and social decay. See also his anthology, The Book of Irish Verse (Faber; Budget Book Service). Paul Muldoon , New Selected Poems (Faber UK). Muldoon's own selection of his more accessible, witty and inventive poetry taken from work spanning thirty years. Tom Murphy , Famine, The Patriot Game, The Blue Macushla and The Gigli Concert (Methuen/Heinemand). Along with Friel and McGuinness, Murphy is one of the three outstanding contemporary playwrights. Eilean Ni Chuilleanain , The Rose Geranium (Gallery IRE); The Brazen Serpent (Gallery; Wake-Forest). Manages to carve something new, purposeful and whole from the iconography and language of religion; quietly impressive. Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill , Selected Poems (Raven Arts Press; New Island o/p) is in Irish and English. Haunting translations of her modern erotic verse by the fine poet Michael Hartnett are included in Raven Introductions 3 (Colin Smythe UK) and in Frank Ormsby's anthology . Sean O'Casey , Three Dublin Plays (Faber). Contains his powerful Dublin trilogy, Juno and the Paycock, Shadow of a Gunman and The Plough and the Stars , set against the backdrop of the civil war. Frank Ormsby (ed), The Long Embrace: Twentieth Century Irish Love Poems (Blackstaff UK o/p). Excellent anthology with major chunks from the work of almost every important twentieth-century Irish poet from Yeats to the present day. A Rage To Order (ed) (Blackstaff IRE o/p); impressive anthology of poetry born of the Troubles. Horror, pain, anger and pity somehow all wrestled into some sense of form; an absorbing book. See also his Poets from the North of Ireland anthology (Blackstaff; Dufour). Tom Paulin , Fivemiletown; The Strange Museum; Walking a Line; Selected Poems 1972-90 (all Faber). Often called "dry" both in praise and accusation, Paulin's work reverberates with thoughtful political commitment and a sophisticated irony. John Millington Synge , The Complete Plays (Methuen; Vintage). Lots of begorras and mavourneens and other dialogue kindly invented for the Irish peasantry by Synge; but The Playboy of the Western World (Penguin) is a brilliant and unique work, greeted in Dublin by riots, threats and moral outrage. Oscar Wilde , Complete Plays (Methuen). His drama is characterized by bittersweet satire, subversive one-liners and profound existentialist philosophy all masquerading as well-made, drawing-room farce. In his poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, the great comedian achieves his greatest success, in tragedy. William Butler Yeats , The Poems (Everyman UK) and The Collected Poems (Scribner US). They're all here, poems of rhapsody, love, revolution and eventual rage at a disconnected and failed Ireland "fumbling in the greasy till".
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