This magnificent anthology presents the Irish tradition as a unity: verse in Irish and English, usually regarded separately, are shown as elements in a shared and often painful history. The selection begins in pre-Christian times and closes with nineteenth- and twentieth-century verse. Poets featured include Swift, Goldsmith, W. B. Yeats, Patrick Kavanagh, and Seamus Heaney.

Forty chapters, written by leading scholars across the world, describe the latest thinking on modern Irish poetry. The Handbook begins with a consideration of Yeats's early work, and the legacy of the 19th century. The broadly chronological areas which follow, covering the period from the 1910s through to the 21st century, allow scope for coverage of key poetic voices in Ireland in their historical and political context. From the experimentalism of Beckett, MacGreevy, and others of the modernist generation, to the refashioning of Yeats's Ireland on the part of poets such as MacNeice, Kavanagh, and Clarke mid-century, through to the controversially titled post-1969 'Northern Renaissance' of poetry, this volume will provide extensive coverage of the key movements of the modern period. The Handbook covers the work of, among others, Paul Durcan, Thomas Kinsella, Brendan Kennelly, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Michael Longley, Medbh McGuckian, and Ciaran Carson. The thematic sections interspersed throughout - chapters on women's poetry, religion, translation, painting, music, stylistics - allow for comparative studies of poets north and south across the century. Central to the guiding spirit of this project is the Handbook's consideration of poetic forms, and a number of essays explore the generic diversity of poetry in Ireland, its various manipulations, reinventions and sometimes repudiations of traditional forms. The last essays in the book examine the work of a 'new' generation of poets from Ireland, concentrating on work published in the last two decades by Justin Quinn, Leontia Flynn, Sinead Morrissey, David Wheatley, Vona Groarke, and others.

Works by more than 60 Irish poets, from 18th century to modern times, include poems by Swift, Goldsmith, Moore; Allingham, Yeats, Joyce; plus verses by lesser-known poets.

Works by more than 60 Irish poets, from 18th century to modern times, includepoems bySwift, Goldsmith, Moore; Allingham, Yeats, Joyce; plus verses by lesser-known poets."

Awake in America seeks to establish a conversation between Irish and Irish American literature that challenges many of the long-accepted boundaries between the two.