The Poetry of Derek Mahon

Leading Irish poet Derek Mahon has written some of the key poems of our age. In this landmark study, Hugh Haughton opens up Mahon's work before our eyes, balancing critical overview with illuminating close readings. It will be come to be seen not only as the standard work on Mahon but as one of the critical cornerstones for the understanding of Northern Irish poetry. Derek Mahon is one of the leading poets of his time, both in Ireland and beyond, famously offering a perspective that is displaced from as much as grounded in his native country. From prodigious beginnings to prolific maturity, he has been, through thick and thin, through troubled times and other, a writer profoundly committed to the art of poetry and the craft of making verse. He has also been no-less a committed reviser of his work, believing the poem to be more than a record in verse, but a work of art never finished. This virtuoso study by Hugh Haughton provides the most comprehensive account imaginable of Mahon's oeuvre. Haughton's brilliant writing always serves and illuminates the poetry, yielding extraordinary insights on almost every page. The poetry, its revisions and reception, are the subject here, but so thorough is the approach that what is offered also amounts indirectly to an intellectual biography of the poet and with it an account of Northern Irish poetry vital to our understanding of the times. ...excellently done... exact and unpretentious criticism. - Literary Review;The study as a whole is a masterpiece of overview combined with detailed attention. I have no doubt that it will come to be seen as not merely the standard work on Mahon, but one of the critical cornerstones for the understanding both of Northern Irish Poetry and of contemporary poetry in English in general, on both sides of the Atlantic. - Bernard O'Donoghue

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Keywords: Northern Irish Poetry, contemporary poetry, intellectual biography