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Friday 24th May 2013 at 12pm
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Northern Ireland is renowned throughout the world for its contribution to poetry, with poets such as Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and Ciaran Carson established at the very forefront of contemporary poetry.
Seamus Heaney, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, Paul Muldoon (Pulitzer Prize 2003), Tom Paulin, Derek Mahon, Ciaran Carson (Professor of Poetry at Queen’s University, Belfast) and Michael Longley (The Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, 2001; Ireland Professor of Poetry, 2007-10), all came to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s and established themselves in the front rank of international contemporary poetry. Medbh McGuckian rose to prominence the following decade following the publication of her first major collection, ‘The Flower Master’, in 1982.
The talents of the poets who have emerged onto the poetry scene today are a testament to the continued vibrancy of Northern Ireland’s prestigious poetic traditions. Leontia Flynn, Sinéad Morrissey, Colette Bryce, Gearóid Mac Lochlainn, Alan Gillis and Nick Laird are amongst the leading lights of the current generation.
Promising poets who are breaking through to publication include Paula Cunningham, Stephen Connolly, Nathaniel Joseph McAuley and Erin Halliday.