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Summary

The history of Irish poetry, like the history of Ireland itself, has long been bound up with the broadcast voices that radiate into, and out of, its shores and the walls of its homes. This essay registers the poetic resonances of radio on the island of Ireland by considering both the traces of the medium that appear in poetry and prose by Louis MacNeice, Eavan Boland, Leontia Flynn, Seamus Heaney, and others, and by examining the cultural role and aesthetic qualities of works produced for radio, with a particular attention to Austin Clarke’s weekly poetry broadcasts (made between 1939 and 1955) and his radio play ‘As the Crow Flies’ (1942). By merging Clarke’s interest in traditional Irish prosody and myth with the demands of writing for a mass medium, ‘As the Crow Flies’ offers an allegory of the futile search for meaning, and shelter, in a world convulsed by violence.

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Chapter 7 - ‘The Re-Tuning of the World Itself’: Irish Poetry on the Radio

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Chapter 7 - ‘The Re-Tuning of the World Itself’: Irish Poetry on the Radio

Summary