Rann: The Ulster Quarterly of Poetry and Comment

(1948-53), a quarterly of Ulster poetry issued in Lisburn; edited by Roy McFadden with Barbara Edwards, it changed its subtitle to ‘an Ulster quarterly of poetry and comment’ with Issue 13. A strongly liberal, cultural, and regionalist impulse informed the magazine. Contents incl.

McFadden, Editorial, Rann, No. 4 (Spring 1949), pp.1-2; McFadden, ‘Review of Collected Poems [1949] by Louis MacNeice and The Edge of Being by Stephen Spender’, in Rann, No. 7 (Winter 1949-50), p.11; McFadden, ‘Review of Poetry Ireland’, Rann, No. 8 (Spring 1950), p.1; J. J. Campbell, ‘Four Ulster Poets of the Seventeenth Century’, Rann, No. 13, 11-15; Hewitt, ‘Ancestral Voices’, Rann, No. 13 [Spring 1951], pp.21-4; W. R. Rodgers, ‘Balloons and Maggots’, Rann, No. 14 [Autumn 1954], 11; Greacen, ‘The Poetry of W. R. Rodgers’, Rann, No. 14, p.14-18; letter from Mercury McGurk, ‘The Pseudonymous Generation,’ Rann, No. 15 (Spring 1952), p.25-6; Padraic Colum, ‘I Remember Joseph Campbell’, Rann, No. 17 (Autumn 1952), p.10-12; Greacen, ‘On Being Young and Foolish in Belfast’, Rann, No. 17 (Autumn 1952), p.13-17; Greacen, ‘One Day Last August’, Rann, No. 18, p.1; Howard Sergeaunt, ‘Ulster Regionalism’, Rann, No. 20 (June 1953), p.3-7; ‘The Course of Writing in Ulster’, Rann, No. 20 (June 1953), p.44; Hewitt, ‘The Course of Writing in Ulster’, Rann, No. 20, pp.43-52; Daphne Fullwood and Oliver Edwards, ‘Ulster Poetry Since 1800’, Rann (20 June I 953), p.21. [All as per pages quoted in Terence Brown, Northern Voices, 1975, Notes.]

A Welsh Special Issue, remarked by Meic Stephens; and also: ‘Ulster Books and Authors: 1900-1053’, Rann 20 (June 1953), pp.55-73; also ; Hewitt, ‘The course of writing in Ulster’, Rann, no. 20 (June 1953), pp. 43-52; reprinted in Ancestral Voices, pp. 64-76 [Ormsby, 1990].

‘Winter’ by James Orr, collected by Hewitt in Rann (Lisburn), winter 1950, p.6. [Cited in Padraic Colum, Treasury (1967).

Gerry Smyth, Decolonisation and Criticism: The Construction of Irish Literature (London: Pluto Press 1998), discussing the origins of Ulster regionalistm as a ‘recent importation’ from the United States: ‘The question of finding some idea of community into which literary phenomena could intervene was also one which greatly exercised writers from the six-county statelet of Northern Ireland during this time.’ (p.119); and further remarking that ‘[w]hereas Envoy attempted to offset the debilitating effects of a calcified nationalism by denying the culture/nation nexus and retreating into pure literary affiliation, Rann attempted to reformulate that link as ‘culture/region’, a tactic which left the journal in the curious tradition of having to invent and defend a living tradition simultaneously’. (p.120.)

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