THOMAS MacGREEVY (1893-1967) “Homage to Hieronymus Bosch” [9]; “Recessional” [11].

AUSTIN CLARKE (1896-1974) “The Lost Heifer” [13]; from “The Young Woman of Beare” [14]; “The Planter’s Daughter” [16]; “Celibacy” [17]; “Martha Blake” [18]; “The Straying Student” [20]; “Penal Law” [21]; “St Christopher” [21]; “Early Unfinished Sketch” [21]; “Martha Blake at Fifty-one” [22]; from “Tiresias II” [27].

PATRICK KAVANAGH (1904-1967) “To the Man After the Harrow” [31]; “Stony Grey Soil” [32]; from The Great Hunger, I [33], III [36], XIV [36]; “The Twelfth of July” [39]; “Tarry Flynn” [39]; “A Christmas Childhood” [40]; “Father Mat” [42]; “Elegy for Jim Larkin” [46]; “Epic” [47]; “Innocence” [48]; “Kerr’s Ass” [48]; “The Hospital” [49].

PADRAIC FALLON (1905-1974) “A Flask of Brandy” [50]; “Kiltartan Legend” [51]; “Years at Athenry Perhaps” [52]; from “Three Houses”, I: “Gurteen” [55]; “A Bit of Brass” [57].

BRIAN COFFEY (1905-1995) from “Death of Hektor”, 6 [59]; from “For What for Whom Unwanted” 1, 8” [60].

SAMUEL BECKETT (1906-1989) “Cascando” [62]; “my way is in the sand flowing” [63]; “what would I do without this world faceless incurious” [64]; from Words and Music [64]; “Roundelay” [65].

JOHN HEWITT (1907-1987) from Freehold, II: “The Lonely Heart” [66]; “The Ram’s Horn” [68]; “The Colony” [69]; “Substance and Shadow” [73]; “An Irishman in Coventry” [73]; “A Local Poet” [74].

LOUIS MAcNEICE (1907-1963) “Mayfly” [77]; “Snow” [78]; from “Autumn Journal” - XVI [78]; “Meeting Point” [82]; “Autobiography” [83]; “The Libertine” [84]; “Western Landscape” [85]; from “Autumn Sequel”, Canto XX [88]; from A Hand of Snapshots: “The Once-in-Passing” [91]; “House on a Cliff” [92]; “Soap Suds” [92]; “The Suicide” [93]; “Star-gazer” [94].

DENIS DEVLIN (1908-1959) “Ank’hor Vat” [95]; “Little Elegy” [96]; from Memoirs of a Turcoman Diplomat: “Oteli Asia Palas, Inc.” [98]; “Renewal by her Element” [99].

W.R. RODGERS (1909-1969) “Snow” [101]; “Lent” [103]; “The Net” [104]; “Stormy Night” [105].

MAIRTIN Ó DÍREAIN (1910-1988) “Deireadh Ré” [108]; trans. by Patrick Crotty as “Era’s End” [109]; “Cuirahne an DomImaigh” [108], trans. by Patrick Crotty as “Memory of Sunday ” [109]; “Cranna Foirtil” [110], trans. by Patrick Crotty as “Strong Beams ” [111].

SEAN Ó RÍORDAIN (1917-1977) “Adhlacadh Mo Mháthar” [114], trans. by Patrick Crotty as “My Mother’s Burial” [115]; “Malairt” [116]; trans. by Patrick Crotty as “Switch ” [117]; “Cnoc Melleri” [118], trans. Patrick Crotty as “Mount Melleray” [119]; “Siollabadh” [124]; trans. by Patrick Crotty as “Syllabling” [125]; “Claustrophobia” [124], trans. by Patrick Crotty as “Claustrophobia” [125]; “Reo” [126], trans. by Patrick Crotty as “Frozen Stiff ” [127]; “Fiabhras” [126]; trans. by Patrick Crotty as “Fever ” [127].

VALENTIN IREMONGER (1918-1991) “This Houre Her Vigill” [130]; “Clear View in Summer” [131]; “Icarus” [132].

FERGUS ALLEN (b.1921) “Elegy for Faustina” [134]; “The Fall” [135].

MÁIRE MHAC AN TSAOI (b.1922) “Caoineadh” [138], trans. by Patrick Crotty as “Lament ” [139]; “Ceathrúntí Máire Ní Ógain” [138], trans by Patrick Crotty as “. Mary Hogan’s Quatrains” [139]

PEARSE HUTCHINSON (b.1927) “Milaga” [146]; “Gaeltacht” [147]; “Sometimes Feel” [148].

RICHARD MURPHY (b.1927) “Sailing to an Island” [150]; “The Poet on the Island” [152]; from The Battle of Aughrim: “Casement’s Funeral” [153]; “Seals at High Island” [154]; “Stormpetrel” [155]; “Morning Call” [156]; from The Price of Stone: “Roof-tree” [156], “Convenience” [157], “Kylemore Castle” [157], “Natural Son” [158].

THOMAS KINSELLA (b.1928) “Chrysalides” [160]; from Notes from the Land of the Dead: “Hen Woman” [160], “Ancestor” [163], “Tear” [164]; from One: “38 Phoenix Street” [167], “His Father’s Hands” [168]; from Anniversaries, “1956” [172]; from The Messenger [173]; from Out of Ireland, “Harmonies” [174]; from “One Fond Embrace” [174].

JOHN MONTAGUE (b.1929) “Like Dolmens Round My Childhood, the Old People” [179]; “The Trout” [180]; “A Drink of Milk” [181]; from A Chosen Light, 1: “11 rue Daguerre” [182]; “Family Conference” [183]; “The Same Gesture” [183]; “Last journey” [184]; “Small Secrets” [185]; “Dowager” [187]; from The Cave of Night, III: “Cave” [188]; “Herbert Street Revisited” [188].

JAMES SIMMONS (b.1933) “One of the Boys” [191]; “West Strand Visions” [192]; “From the Irish” [193].

BRENDAN KENNELLY (b.1936) “from Cromwell: “Three Tides” [194], Vintage” [195].

SEAMUS HEANEY (b.1939) “Churning Day” [198]; “Broagh” [199]; “The Tollund Man” [199]; from Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication: “Sunlight” [201]; “Funeral Rites” [202]; “Casualty” [205]; “Badgers” [208]; “The Harvest Bow” [209]; “The Birthplace” [210]; from Sweeney Redivivus: “The Cleric” [211]; from “The Frontier of Writing” [212]; from “The Canton of Expectation” [213]; “Wheels within Wheels” [215]; from “Lightenings”: VIII [216], IX [217]; “Keeping Going” [217].

MICHAEL LONGLEY (b.1939) “In Memoriam” [220]; “Caravan” [222]; “Wounds” [223]; “Ghost Town” [224]; “Man Lying on a Wall” [225]; “Wreaths: The Civil Servant [225]; The Greengrocer [226]; The Linen Workers” [226]; from “Mayo Monologues”, “Self-heal” [227]; “The Linen Industry” [227]; “Between Hovers” [228]; Homeric Poems: “Laertes” [229], “Argos”, “The Butchers” [230], “Phemios & Medon” [231]; “River & Fountain” [231].

MICHAEL HARTNETT (b.1941) “Bread” [236]; “I have exhausted the delighted range” [236]; “For My Grandmother, Bridget Halpin” [237]; from “A Farewell to English”, 1” [237]; “Lament for Tadgh Cronin’s Children” [238]; “The Man who Wrote Yeats, the Man who Wrote Mozart” [239]; “Sneachta Gealaí ’77” [246], trans. by Hartnett as “Moonsnow ’77 ” [247].

EAMON GRENNAN (b.1941) “Totem” [248]; “Four Deer” [249]; “Breaking Points” [250].

DEREK MAHON (b.1941) “A Dying Art” [253]; “Ecclesiastes” [254]; “An Image from Beckett” [254]; “Lives” [256]; “The Snow Party” [258]; “A Refusal to Mourn” [259]; “A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford” [261]; “Courtyards in Delft” [263]; “Rathlin” [264]; “Tractatus” [265].

EILÉAN NÍ CHUILLEANÁIN (b.1942) “The Second Voyage” [266]; “Deaths and Engines” [267]; “The Informant” [268]; “The Real Thing” [269]; “Saint Margaret of Cortona” [270].

“EAVAN BOLAND (b.1944) “Listen. This Is the Noise of Myth” [272]; “Fond Memory” [275]; “The Black Lace Fan My Mother Gave Me” [276]; “The Latin Lesson” [277]; “Midnight Flowers” [278]; “Anna Liffey” [279].

PAUL DURCAN (b.1944) “The Hat Factory” [286]; “Tullynoe: Tête-à-Tête in the Parish Priest’s Parlour” [289]; “The Haulier’s Wife Meets Jesus on the Road Near Moone” [290]; “Around the Corner from Francis Bacon” [295]; “from Six Nuns Die in Convent Inferno”, 1 [297]; “The Late Mr Charles Lynch Digresses” [301]; “The Levite and His Concubine at Gibeah” [301].

BERNARD O’DONOGHUE (b.1945) “A Nun Takes the Veil” [304]; “The Weakness” [305].

FRANK ORMSBY (b.1947) “Passing the Crematorium” [306]; “Home” [306]; from “A Paris Honeymoon: L’Orangerie” [307].

CIARAN CARSON (b.1948) “Dresden” [308]; “Cocktails” [313]; “The Mouth” [313]; “Hamlet” [314]; “Ovid: Metamorphoses, V,” [529-550” [317]; “Bagpipe Music” [317].

TOM PAULIN (b.1949) “Pot Burial” [321]; “Where Art Is a Midwife” [322]; “Desertmartin” [322]; “Off the Back of a Lorry” [323]; “A Written Answer” [324]; “The Lonely Tower” [324].

BIDDY JENKINSON (b.1949) “Cáitheadh” [328], trans. by Alex Osborne as “Spray” [329].

MEDBH McGUCKIAN (b.1950) “The Seed-picture” [330]; “The Flower Master” [332]; “The Sitting” [332]; “Marconi’s Cottage” [333]; from “Porcelain Bells”, 3: “Speaking into the Candles” [334].

PAUL MULDOON (b.1951) “Lunch with Pancho Villa” [338]; “Cuba” [339]; “Anseo” [340]; “Gathering Mushrooms” [341]; “The More a Man Has the More a Man Wants” [343]; “Something Else” [361]; “Cauliflowers” [362].

NUALA Ní DHOMHNAILL (b.1952) “Scéala” [366], trans. by Michael Hartnett as “Annunciations ” [367]; “Féar Suaithinseach” [366]; trans. by Seamus Heaney as “Miraculous Grass” [367]; “An Bhábóg” Bhriste” [370]; trans. by John Montague as “The Broken Doll” [371]; “Fáilte Bhéal na Sionna don Iasc” [372], trans. by Patrick Crotty as “The Shannon Estuary Welcomes the Fish” [373]; “An Bhean Mílidhílis” [372], trans. by Paul Muldoon as “The Unfaithful Wife” [373]; “Ceist na Teangan” [376], trans. by Paul Muldoon as “The Language Issue” [377]; “Caitlin” [378];, trans. by Paul Muldoon as “Cathleen” [379].

MATTHEW SWEENEY (b.1952) “To the Building Trade” [382]; “Tube Ride to Martha’s” [383].

MAURICE RIORDAN (b.1953) “Milk” [384]; “Time Out” [385]; “A Word from the Loki” [387].

THOMAS McCARTHY (b.1954) “State Funeral” [390]; “Mr Nabokov’s Memory” [391]; “Persephone,” [1978” [392]; “The Standing Trains” [393].

IAN DUHIG (b.1954) “I’r Hen Iaith A’i Chanction” [395]; “Reforma Agraria” [396].

PAULA MEEHAN (b.1955) “The Pattern” [398]; “Child Burial” [401]; “Laburnum” [402].

SEAN DUNNE (1956-1995) from “Sydney Place”: “Beans”, “The Mobile”, “Railings” [404]; “The Dead Pianist, The Bus Station, The Poet Upstairs”, “Tea” [405], “The Lost Wife”, “The Old School”, The Night Sky” [406].

CATHAL Ó SEARCAIGH (b.1956) “Bó Bhradach” [408], trans. by Patrick Crotty as “A Runaway Cow” [409]; “Na Píopaí Créafóige” [408], trans. by Seamus Heaney as “The Clay Pipes” [409]; “Caoineadh” [412], trans. by Seamus Heaney as “The Clay Pipes” [413].

PETER SIRR (b.1960) “A Few Helpful Hints” [414].

PETER McDONALD (b.1962) “Sunday in Great Tew” [416]; “Peacetime” [419]

MARTIN MOONEY (b.1964) “Anna Akhmatova’s Funeral” [421].

Acknowledgements [423]; Index of Poets and Translators [429]; Index of Titles [430]; Index of First Lines [433].