Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T17:37:10.252Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - From Irish mode to modernisation

the poetry of Austin Clarke

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

Matthew Campbell
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
Get access

Summary

It is almost a truism of Irish literary history that the work of Austin Clarke (1896-1973), one of the Irish poets of the greatest range and achievement since Yeats, has yet to receive the attention it deserves. Somehow it still hovers both in and out of the canon, frequently more honoured in the breach of oversight than in the observance of university syllabuses, summer schools, anthologies and bookshop poetry sections. Clarke was excluded by Yeats from his Faber Book of Modern Verse in 1936; but while he was restored in most anthologies between The Oxford Book of Irish Verse in 1958 and Patrick Crotty's Modern Irish Poetry of 1995, it was still possible for Yeats's snub to be repeated half a century later in (or out of) Paul Muldoon's Faber Book of Modern Irish Poetry (1986). Clarke remains in print, yet precariously; a Selected Poems edited by Hugh Maxton, which was published in 1991, is still available, but the only Collected is the 1974 edition prepared by Liam Miller of Dolmen Press with the poet himself. The contrast with, say, Patrick Kavanagh (for whom complete and selected poems are currently, and recently, in print), is marked.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×