Contemporary Irish Poetry and the Pastoral Tradition

Potts examines the pastoral genre in the work of six Irish poets writing today: John Montague, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Eavan Boland, Medbh McGukian, and Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill. She reveals the wide range of purposes that pastoral poetry has served in both Northern Ireland and the Republic: a postcolonial critique of British imperialism; a response to modernity, industrialization, and globalization; a way of uncovering political and social repercussions of gendered representations of Ireland; and, more recently, a means for conveying environmentalism's more complex understanding of the value of nature. Potts concludes by speculating on the future of pastoral in contemporary Irish poetry through her examination of more recent poets--including Moya Cannon and Paula Meehan--as well as other genres such as film, drama, and fiction.