This fascinating series of literary views and interviews illuminates the coming of age of Belfast-born poet Gerald Dawe during the fifties and sixties in Northern Ireland, the literary and political worlds he discovered on moving to the Republic of Ireland in the early seventies, and his travels since, in Europe and other parts of the world, shadowed by the violent closing decade of the twentieth century and the beginning of the new century. Gerald Dawe has published seven collections of poetry, including The Morning Train, Lake Geneva, and Points West.

Ethna MacCarthy (1903-59) was a Scholar and a First-Class Moderator at Trinity College Dublin where she taught languages in the thirties and forties before studying medicine. Perhaps best known to posterity for her relationship with Samuel Beckett and appearance in several of his writings, including the play Krapp's Last Tape, she also had a remarkable influence on a number of writers such as Denis Johnston and Con Leventhal, who she later married. Found among Leventhal's papers when he died were MacCarthy's overlooked work, revealing a highly intelligent and culturally sophisticated poet. This collection, published here for the first time, unearths an exceptionally rich and intriguing body of work by a remarkable woman who was ahead of her time. MacCarthy played an important and creative part of a cosmopolitan and free-thinking post-Independence Dublin, publishing translations from Spanish and German poets before developing a highly distinctive style of her own. Her poetry contains exposed lunar and death-haunted landscapes, tales of multifaceted women, and subversive ideas around femininity. Her work highlights a gifted translator who artfully captures the feeling evoked by the original languages. According to Denis Johnston `she has never been shy, can be frank, and outspoken to a degree, is absolutely fearless, intolerant of mediocrity and finds it difficult to suffer fools gladly'. MacCarthy merits reappraisal as an intellectual presence in an age that did not often promote, if acknowledge at all, the woman's voice. This unique collection of Ethna MacCarthy's poems is published as an innovative first step in establishing her as one of the outstanding Irish poets of the mid-20th century.

The Cambridge Companion to Irish Poets offers a fascinating introduction to Irish poetry from the seventeenth century to the present. Aimed primarily at lovers of poetry, it examines a wide range of poets, including household names, such as Jonathan Swift, Thomas Moore, W. B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney, Patrick Kavanagh, Eavan Boland and Paul Muldoon. The book is comprised of thirty chapters written by critics, leading scholars and poets, who bring an authoritative and accessible understanding to their subjects. Each chapter gives an overview of a poet's work and guides the general reader through the wider cultural, historical and comparative contexts. Exploring the dual traditions of English and Irish-speaking poets, this Companion represents the very best of Irish poetry and highlights understanding that reveals, in clear and accessible prose, the achievement of Irish poetry in a global context. It is a book that will help and guide general readers through the many achievements of Irish poets.

The Cambridge Companion to Irish Poets offers a fascinating introduction to Irish poetry from the seventeenth century to the present. Aimed primarily at lovers of poetry, it examines a wide range of poets, including household names, such as Jonathan Swift, Thomas Moore, W. B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney, Patrick Kavanagh, Eavan Boland and Paul Muldoon. The book is comprised of thirty chapters written by critics, leading scholars and poets, who bring an authoritative and accessible understanding to their subjects. Each chapter gives an overview of a poet's work and guides the general reader through the wider cultural, historical and comparative contexts. Exploring the dual traditions of English and Irish-speaking poets, this Companion represents the very best of Irish poetry and highlights understanding that reveals, in clear and accessible prose, the achievement of Irish poetry in a global context. It is a book that will help and guide general readers through the many achievements of Irish poets.

Of War and War's Alarms is a unique study of war and revolution and their impact on the writing lives of Irish poets and novelists from WW1 and the Easter Rising through the War of Independence to the Spanish Civil War, WWII and the Northern 'Troubles'.These timely reflections on literature in wartime include such figures as W B Yeats, Thomas MacGreevy, Seamus Heaney along with Francis Ledwidge, Charles Donnelly and Padraic Fiacc, Benedict Kiely, William Trevor, John Hewitt and Christabel Bielenberg. Of War and War's Alarms is a fascinating narrative that builds upon Gerald Dawe's achievement in his original ground-breaking anthology of Irish war poems, Earth Voices Whispering.

In the first half of the 20th century, the men and women of Ireland experienced the brutal realities of a succession of wars - from the unrelenting casualties of WW1, to the domestic upheavals of the 1916 Rising and the Irish Civil War; from the romantic idealism of the Spanish Civil War, to the unimaginable horrors of WW2. Earth Voices Whispering gathers together, for the very first time, a wide range of poetic voices that chart the human experiences of these wars, compiled and edited by Belfast-born poet and senior lecturer in Trinity College Dublin, Gerald Dawe. Featuring over three hundred poems by celebrated poets such as C.S Lewis, AE, W.B. Yeats, Patrick Kavanagh and Seamus Heaney, and including new poems by Derek Mahon and Eilean Ni Chuilleanain, the anthology records the thoughts and experiences of poets as soldiers, patriots, observers, protestors, medics and mourners. From patriotism to anger, passion to compassion, hope to regret, this groundbreaking new anthology embraces the complex reality of a rich, unique and historically overlooked period in Irish poetry.

'Salvatore Quasimodo was born-and lived-through historical tragedies which impressed his mind for ever. What one hears in his lines are the tears of mankind and its wail. Sonzogni and Dawe have captured the singular strength of Quasimodo and heard the penetrating voices of humanity. Their translations of this particular poet are a beautiful work of rendering history in rhyme and do more than justice to the art and the feelings of Salvatore Quasimodo. "The Night Fountain" should be read and re-read, learned and re-learned, and must be at hand to every reader who can only gain from its penetrating elegy' - Allen Mandelbaum, Kenan Professor of Humanities, Wake Forest University, USA.'"The Night Fountain" discloses a great poet in the making, now veering into Expressionism, now surreal, but always with an imaginative prosody and a voice that admits us into its intimacy. There is at once abundance and refinement here, and many of the elements that go into his great work. The translations are resourceful and inventive, keeping faith with the movement of the originals' - Michael Schmidt, Professor of Poetry, University of Glasgow.

Northern Windows/Southern Stars is a valuable, accessible and thought-provoking gathering of essays by the distinguished Irish poet and Professor Emeritus, Gerald Dawe. Re-tracing the issues and questions of poetry and politics in the Ireland of the 1980s and 1990s, the collection provides energetic and unexpected views of one poet's critical readings, including the work of several overlooked poets of the time. While offering fascinating insights into the early processes of reimagining the canon of Irish poetry, Northern Windows/Southern Stars is full of thoughtful and telling reports from a very different Ireland at the point of significant transition by the turn of the millennium.