'Scattered and Diverse' - Irish Poetry Since 1900

In the introduction to The Penguin Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry, first published in 1990, editors Peter Fallon and Derek Mahon note that Irish poetry ‘speaks for itself in one or another of the many voices which have evolved over the years’1and this crucial acknowledgement in an important and popular anthology points clearly to the disparate, polyvocal and chimerical nature of a good deal of contemporary Irish poetry up to 1990 and beyond. Ranging from Cathal O’Searchaigh’s homoerotic odes to his gay lover to Paul Durcan’s laments over the crass materialism of contemporary Ireland, Irish poetry since 1990 has been clearly marked by the notable absence of a dominant voice and an eclectic, surprising and challenging mélange of subject matter. Light has been shone on almost every manifestation of contemporary Irish life by poets displaying, in Louis De Paor’s wonderful phrase, an ‘agitated intelligence’2in the wake of widespread social and economic changes. What can be said with some certainty is that contemporary poetry in the Republic is marked by a broad range of confident voices articulating a tentative recognition of the complex nature of major shifts in the traditional markers of Irish identity. In the North, a changing social and political landscape is equally reflected in the discontinuous narrative of the major poetic voices, including Ciaran Carson, Paul Muldoon and Medbh McGuckian, an uncertainty captured by Carson in ‘Belfast Confetti’ when his self-image reflects a national questioning: ‘My name? Where am I coming from? Where am I going?A / fusillade of question marks’