In this interpretative anthology of Irish verse, the author traces through several centuries of creativity and contradiction, which finds poets productively at odds with their forebears, their contemporaries and even with themselves. Swift’s self-lacerating savagery sets the tone, yet this tradition of ferocity also includes Gaelic poets like Daithi O Brudair and Anglophone voices like James Clarence Mangan. Women poets, from Esther Johnson to Medbh McGuckian, are in some ways the most representative voices of all in this tradition of outsidership. The book brings together Irish poetry to reveal a broad yet sharply-focused tradition of diversity and dissidence.