Brendan Kennelly is one of Ireland's most popular and prolific poets. Over the past five decades he has written thousands of poems published in over 30 books of poetry, including three previous editions of Selected Poems. Published on his 75th birthday, this new selection presents just over a hundred of Kennelly's most essential poems, accompanied by an audio CD of his own readings drawn from two classic recordings made in Dublin in 1982 and 1999. The Essential Brendan Kennelly has been edited by two lifelong admirers of his work. Like Kennelly, Terence Brown, Emeritus Professor of...

One of Ireland's foremost literary and cultural historians, Terence Brown's command of the intellectual and cultural currents running through the Irish literary canon is second to none, and he has been enormously influential in shaping the field of Irish studies. These essays reflect the key themes of Brown's distinguished career, most crucially his critical engagement with the post-colonial model of Irish cultural and literary history currently dominant in Irish Studies. With essays on major figures such as Yeats, MacNeice, Joyce and Beckett, as well as contemporary authors including Seamus...