Derek Mahon is one of the leading poets of his time, both in Ireland and beyond, famously offering a perspective that is displaced from as much as grounded in his native country. From prodigious beginnings to prolific maturity, he has been, through thick and thin, through troubled times and other, a writer profoundly committed to the art of poetry and the craft of making verse. He has also been no-less a committed reviser of his work, believing the poem to be more than a record in verse, but a work of art never finished. This virtuoso study by Hugh Haughton provides the most comprehensive account imaginable of Mahon's oeuvre. Haughton's brilliant writing always serves and illuminates the poetry, yielding extraordinary insights on almost every page. The poetry, its revisions and reception, are the subject here, but so thorough is the approach that what is offered also amounts indirectly to an intellectual biography of the poet and with it an account of Northern Irish poetry vital to our understanding of the times.

About the Author
Hugh Haughton was born in Cork, and is currently Senior Lecturer in English at the University of York. He has published widely on modern poetry and has edited many books, including The Chatto Book of Nonsense Poetry (1988), Second World War Poems (2004), and Freud's The Uncanny. He is co-editor (with Valerie Eliot) of The Letters of T. S. Eliot.

Reviews
Review from previous edition With its bibliographical thoroughness, attention to biography, manuscripts friendships, and politics, its coverage of Mahon's journalism, reviews and translations as well as the poetry, and its extended close readings The Poetry of Derek Mahon is the model of what a book on a single poet out to be * Lucy McDiarmid, Times Literary Supplement *
...a valuable book of evidence about one of the most gifted and complex poets of his generation that no one wil be able, in future debates, to ignore. * Fran Brearton, The Review of English Studies *
generous, intelligent, lucidly written, bright and brimming with insights and information... [a] welcome, admirably achieved book * Eamon Grennan, Irish Times *
excellently done... exact and unpretentious criticism. * Literary Review *
The study as a whole is a masterpiece of overview combined with detailed attention. I have no doubt that it will come to be seen as not merely the standard work on Mahon, but one of the critical cornerstones for the understanding both of Northern Irish Poetry and of contemporary poetry in English in general, on both sides of the Atlantic. * Bernard O'Donoghue *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199592623
Author Hugh Haughton
Format Paperback
Page Count 414
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 716g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 157mm * 21mm