Poets & Partitions: Confronting Communal Identities in Northern Ireland

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of Northern Irish poetry focusing on the colonial, political, and cultural underpinnings that have shaped artistic expression in a variety of ways. In discussing the rich poetry reflecting the conflict of community, Jon Curley examines what aesthetic choices poets make in order to register, resist, or re-imagine life and thought under particularly tumultuous conditions. The focus is on both the better-known contemporary Northern Irish poets as well as their more obscure but no less significant counterparts. Forms of communal identity generated in Northern Ireland are examined by way of an ethical critique that references the conceptual blockages and innovations that help foster new poetic representations of society. Establishing the complexity and potency of poetic experimentation, Poets and Partitions is a timely commentary for all those interested in the intersection of aesthetics and politics. The exploration of communal identity-formations in Northern Irish poetry or poetry in general has been dismissed by some critics as an unhelpful approach to understanding literature. But, as this study demonstrates, it is a vital area of scholarly examination and Jon Curley’s in-depth analysis illuminates understanding of how poets confront their communal, social, and sectarian orders.