Chris Agee (Ed.)

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Biographical note:  Chris Agee was born in 1956 in San Francisco and grew up in Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island. He attended Harvard University and since 1979 has lived in Ireland. He is the author of two books of poems, In the New Hampshire Woods (The Dedalus Press, 1992) and First Light (The Dedalus Press, 2003). He edits Irish Pages, a journal of contemporary writing based at The Linen Hall Library, Belfast. He reviews for The Irish Times and has recently completed a new collection of poems, Next to Nothing (Salt, 2009), which will be published in Britain, Ireland and the United States in January 2009.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781907773037
ISBN:  9781907773037
Author:  Chris Agee
Title:  The New North
Series:  Anthologies and Gift Books
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  DCQ
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  15-Jan-11
Extent:  288pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  140 mm
Thickness:  20 mm
Weight:  432 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  NP
Price:  GBP 9.99
Price:  USD 15.95
Rights:  World

Short description/annotation:  This groundbreaking anthology combines well-established and much loved poets from Northern Ireland and introduces readers to the surprising new voices of fifteen younger poets, who “are much more likely to be interested in new technology, ecology, Eastern Europe or bilingualism, than in any expected manifestation of ‘the Northern issue’ as editor Chris Agee says “It is indeed the poetry of a new North.”

Main description:  The New North is a landmark anthology of contemporary poetry from Northern Ireland with a wide-ranging introduction that gives the reader valuable historical perspective into political and cultural contexts. A brief selection of classic poems by more established authors introduces the featured poets (born between 1956 and 1975); together they represent the past and the future of poetry in the small but fertile culture.

Through descent and pastiche, influence and departure, the younger poets respond to the North’s rich poetic tradition, as well as to previous political and social realities, yet reveal that other styles and subjects are equally important in their art.

“These poets are more likely to be interested in new technology, ecology, Eastern Europe or bilingualism, than in any expected manifestation of ‘the Northern Issue’ … It is indeed the poetry of a new North” —Chris Agee, from the ‘Introduction’.

Featuring poetry from Cathal Ó Searcaigh, Jean Bleakney, Chris Agee, Moyra Donaldson, Gary Allen, Andy White, Matt Kirkham, Geróid Mac Lochlainn, Frank Sewell, Paul Grattan, Sinéad Morrissey, Alan Gillis, Leontia Flynn and Nick Laird, as well as classic poems by Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Ciaron Carson, Paul Muldoon, Medbh McGuckian and Michael Longley.

Table of contents:
Contents
Preface
Introduction
i
ii
iii
iv
v
Classic Poems
Seamus Heaney
Bogland
Punishment
Postscript
Derek Mahon
In Carrowdore Churchyard
A Disused Shed In Co. Wexford
Courtyards In Delft
Michael Longley
The Butchers
Petalwort
Ceasefire
Cathal Ó Searcaigh
Caoineadh
Lament
Pilleadh An Deoraí
Triall
Exile’s Return
Will Travel
Do Isaac Rosenberg
For Isaac Rosenberg
Oíche
Night
I Gceann Mo Thrí Bliana A Bhí Mé
Clabber: The Poet At Three Years
Bean An Tsléibhe
Mountain Woman
Do Jack Kerouac
Let’s Hit The Road, Jack
An Tobar
The Well
Jean Bleakney
In Memoriam
The View From Carran West
Stargazing For Feminists
Always
From A Train In Hungary
The Fairytale Land Of Um
The Poet’s Ivy
Denaturation
Recuperation
Deduction
Chris Agee
Mushrooming
Loon Call
Port Of Belfast
At Bethlehem Nursery
Offing
First Light
Requiem
Sebald
Alpine Interlude
In Prvo Selo
Summer Plums
Moyra Donaldson
Infidelities
Out Of The Ordinary
Planter
’82–’89
The Straw
Ulster Says No
The Art Of Tying Flies
Words from the Other Side
Gary Allen
Born Again
Testament
The Cabinet Maker
Being
On The First Day
One Summer Evening
The Revival
Anniversary
Calypso
A Disused House on the Ballycowan Road
North of Nowhere
Andy White
The Street Symphony of Napoli
Hey Man, There’s an Ulster Poet
in the Hotel Lobby
One
The Dictatorship of Rhyme
Road to Zilina
The Country of Divis Flats
Night Falls On Vienna
Halle
Bread Roll
Airborne in Wartime
Pale Driver
Pipes Over Ardoyne
At the Forty Foot, 4 a.m.
Yellow Teapot of the World
Classic Poems
Ciaran Carson
Eesti
Belfast Confetti
The Irish for No
Medbh McGuckian
Tulips
The Flitting
On Ballycastle Beach
Paul Muldoon
Ireland
History
Hay
from Incantata
Matt Kirkham
The Museum Of Transport
The Museum Of Trash
The Museum Of The Afterlife
The Museum Of Extinct Species
A Blue Biro from the Museum
of Calligraphy
The Museum of Censorship
A Museum in Negative
John Stone
The National Paint Gallery
In the Tea Museum
The Circular Museum
The Chess Museum
The Computer Museum
Mary’s Consequences
Gearóid Mac Lochlainn
Sruth
Stream
First Steps
First Steps
Na Scéalaithe
The Storytellers
The Native Speaker
Cainteoir Dúchais
Teanga Eile
Second Tongue
Aistriúcháin
Translations
An Máine Gaelach
The Irish-Speaking Mynah
Patról
Patrol
Saturday Night On The Town
Oíche Shathairn Sa Chathair
Ag Firéadáil
Ferreting
Frank Sewell
Not Knowing Where You Stand
Triptych
Hands
Your Pelt Pyjamas
Crumlin
For Seán Ó Ríordáin
Paul Grattan
Middle
from The Municipal Family Revisited
Pipe Dream
Descartes At Ibrox
In Situ
A Little Night Music
No Second Fry, Cookstown,
February 24th 2000
The Seven Rabbie Burns’s
Bad Faith Come Back Tour
Maxim
Sinéad Morrissey
Hazel Goodwin Morrissey Brown
Leaving Flensburg
Restoration
1. Achill, 1985
2. Juist, 1991
In Belfast
The Inheriting Meek
February
Genetics
Lullaby
Contrail
The Gobi From Air
Advice
Zero
Alan Gillis
The Ulster Way
Traffic Flow
Last Friday Night
Deliverance
Under The Weather
Progress
Killynether
You’ll Never Walk Alone
Bob The Builder Is A Dickhead
Carnival
Morning Emerges Out Of Music
Driving Home
A Blueprint For Survival
Lagan Weir
Leontia Flynn
Eeps
The Miracle of F6/18
Without Me
My Dream Mentor
Snow
Nocturne
Without Me
A Pause
Perl Poem
April, 7 p.m.
Holland
These Days
Nick Laird
Remaindermen
Done
The Last Saturday In Ulster
A Guide To Modern Warsaw
Everyman
Light Pollution
Leaving the Scene of an Accident
Appraisal
Use of Spies
The Hall of Medium Harmony
Biographies
Permissions

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Excerpt from book:  

The Museum of Censorship
by Matt Kirkham

For black and white figures, before and after
they were airbrushed from their black and white photos,
we are keeping this gallery of spaces.

We are keeping this for the dust
from a statue of the Buddha, or maybe
for a woman’s face. To be a curator
you must be inspired by the beauty
of pieces that emphasise what is lost.

Though emphasise is wrong. For phalluses
chipped from Hindu or Egyptian statues—
look elsewhere for the statues themselves—
we are keeping this gallery of spaces.

We are in a cathedral after the civil war,
counting our places, in the absence of saints.

Unpublished endorsement:  The New North: Contemporary Poetry from Northern Ireland…. [T]he poems and poets offer an insightful, lyrical look into the psyche of 21st-century Northern Ireland.

Irish America Magazine

Unpublished endorsement:  American-born editor Chris Agee, who has lived in Northern Ireland for decades, provides a meticulous introduction with judicious context to explain the convoluted motives and historical betrayals that forged contemporary Northern Ireland.

Rain Taxi Review of Books

Review quote:  American-born editor Chris Agee, who has lived in Northern Ireland for decades, provides a meticulous introduction with judicious context to explain the convoluted motives and historical betrayals that forged contemporary Northern Ireland, suggesting as he does that the ‘creative interaction’ of poets working in a ‘damaged, and damaging, society’ has freed a previously ‘hidden’ and therefore distinctive contemporary ‘Ulster’ poetics set in a ‘post-imperial’ climate … Women’s voices are better represented in The New North than in any previous collections spotlighting Northern Irish poets published on either side of the Atlantic.

The gunfire and bombings are fading in these poems, but cultural troubles linger. These resonate with the most acute psychological complexity in the bilingual poets, from Cathal O Searcaigh’s ‘Caoineadh’ (‘Lament’) which (in its facing-page English rendition) tells us, ‘To-day it’s my language that’s in its throes, / The poets’ passion, my mothers’ fathers’ / mothers’ language, abandoned and trapped,’ to Gearoid Mac Lochlainn’s ‘Aistriuchain’ (‘Translations’) which (with its built-in devastating contradiction) refuses to convert its Irish original text into ‘hub-bubbly English / that turns the ferment of my poems / to lemonade’ to be condescended to by Anglophone readers who would ‘love to have the Irish’ but prefer the laziness of ‘cafe culture’ and ‘Seamus.’

Rain Taxi Review of Books