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New Irish Anthology Series Launched

November 17, 2006
As a teenager twenty-odd years ago and beginning a serious habit as a poetry reader I found anthologies a more accessible avenue for my enthusiasm than individual collections. Collections by individual poets seemed so pricey and with the paucity of knowledge about contemporary poetry bestowed on me by the Irish education system and society at large, such individual collections were a risk in purchase, one could not always be guaranteed a poet one liked. Anthologies invariably included a good proportion of fascinating and stimulating poems which could point the young or new poetry reader in a more informed fashion towards a rewarding individual collection. 

The problem is that, traditionally, anthologies arrive with the infrequency of buses in the underdeveloped Irish public transport system, sometimes decades apart in an attempted canonical gesture, leaving many new and exciting voices undiscovered by the general reader year after year. I’ve long envied the annual series of anthologies, miscellanies if you prefer, produced in America and the United Kingdom which aim to present a round-up of some of the year’s best poems. I believe every nation should have such a series and that is why Southword Editions under my direction has initiated the Best of Irish Poetry 2007 – including fifty of the best poems in Irish and English published in a twelve-month period between 2005 and 2006. 

Another important reason for introducing such a venture is to reclaim from the New York and London publishing centres authority over the formulation of an Irish Canon. Ireland has suffered in that respect as a small and formerly impoverished nation on the cultural periphery of these great capitals of taste. Quite often readers abroad are presented with a selection of Irish poets restricted to those who are first published in the USA or the UK. This annual series will present a more general selection generated by more informed pundits. 

The editors will change from year to year allowing for a catholicity of taste to emerge over time. The inaugural editors are Colm Breathnach as Irish-language editor and Maurice Riordan as English-language (or Hiberno-English) editor. Below is an edited version of Maurice’s introduction to this first volume in the new annual series.

Patrick Cotter

These forty poems in English, by Irish poets or poets living in Ireland, were published in books, magazines and newspapers over the twelve-month period between July 2005 and July 2006. About a third appeared in Ireland, the rest in the US and the UK. They come from little-known, hard-to-find publications, as well as from prestigious imprints such as the New Yorker and the TLS. If nothing else, this selection reflects the broad geographical reach of places where poems from Ireland can turn up nowadays. It also shows the esteem  – surely disproportionate for a small damp teddy-bear-shaped island?  – which Irish poetry has earned throughout the Anglophone world. 

Also – and this may not be such a good thing – the selection shows a remarkable degree of cultural cohesion. These poems, though they are by no means uniform, clearly share a tradition. They may be written in New England or eastern Europe but they are meant to be understood in Cork and Galway, and vice versa. They assume familiarity with our history; with our bogs and weather; and that we’ve all read our Yeats. There is indeed an assumption that Ireland has established a demotic culture and therefore we can project confidently into the world. This gives these poems a directness, energy and agility drawn from the vigour of vernacular language – whereas in the past, Irish poetry often suffered from stylistic eccentricity. It found a virtue in a distinctive Irishness (Austin Clarke) or a resolute non-Irishness (Brian Coffey), and in both cases poetry was practised as a rather highbrow art – whereas today’s poets have a welcome sense of audience.

The danger with such confidence is complacency. I confess that in my reading I found a lot that was garrulous and predictable, and noted a pretty generous tolerance among editors to put up with it. So, in making my selection, I was undoubtedly drawn to poems that do their job without too much fuss or sweat.

Some of those included are young enough to be my children. Several others are poets I grew up under: literary ‘godfathers’ whose work formed my taste in the 1970s. So, in a sense, this book – though strictly a snapshot of one year’s work – is also a reflection of Irish poetry over half a century, a period when (to state the obvious) the country changed. I leave to readers to decide to what extent these poems measure up to the scale and pace of those changes. But, for me, the book was worth the effort alone just to come across ‘Superfresh’ by Thomas Kinsella – who was on the Leaving Certificate curriculum by the time I left school. This encounter, literally both brief and touching, with a Russian immigrant in a supermarket renews one’s belief in poems as the best means by which the strangeness of experience is registered.

I have limited myself to one poem from each poet. Given the hundreds now publishing, this seemed a necessary restriction – but one which I suspect, say, thirty years ago might not have been as rewarding. A smaller roster with more poems per person would have worked better then. Also, one would have been hard put to find many women. Although the balance in this selection is still numerically in favour of the men, I’d suggest it may be a closer call in terms of weight.

But I didn’t worry much whether a poem was by a man or a woman, or by someone famous or one I hadn’t heard of. And I didn’t think about the type of poems I was choosing or what they were about. I acted more like someone who climbs a small hill every morning and builds a cairn with those stones that catch the eye along the way. I didn’t work towards an overall shape, convinced that an assortment is interesting for its variety. The contrast between poems, the way they rub against each other, can bring out their characteristics, the uniqueness of shape and sound that makes them memorable.

© Patrick Cotter & Maurice Riordan
Source: Best Of Irish Poetry 2007 published on December 14th by Southword Editions ISBN-13: 9781905002238 ISBN-10: 1905002238
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