• An historical overview and critical introduction to the poetry published in Britain and Ireland over the last half-century
• Introduces students to figures including Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, and Andrew Motion
• Takes an integrative approach, emphasizing the complex negotiations between the British and Irish poetic traditions, and pulling together competing tendencies and positions
• Written by critics from Britain, Ireland, and the United States
• Includes suggestions for further reading and a chronology, detailing the most important writers, volumes and events

Nigel Alderman is Associate Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College

C. D. Blanton is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley

Notes on Contributors ix

Acknowledgments xii

Chronology xv

Introduction 1
Nigel Alderman and C. D. Blanton

1 Poetic Modernism and the Century’s Wars 11
Vincent Sherry

2 The Movement and the Mainstream 32
Stephen Burt

3 Myth, History, and The New Poetry 51
Nigel Alderman

4 Region and Nation in Britain and Ireland 72
Michael Thurston

5 Form and Identity in Northern Irish Poetry 92
John P. Waters

6 Poetry and Decolonization 111
Jahan Ramazani

7 Transatlantic Currents 134
C. D. Blanton

8 Neo-Modernism and Avant-Garde Orientations 155
Drew Milne

9 Contemporary British Women Poets and the Lyric Subject 176
Linda A. Kinnahan

10 Place, Space, and Landscape 200
Eric Falci

11 Poetry and Religion 221
Romana Huk

12 Institutions of Poetry in Postwar Britain 243
Peter Middleton

References 264

Index 285