Contemporary Irish Poetry, the Penguin Book of

This is a good book to use in tandem with Muldoon's Faber Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry and Crotty's Modern Irish Poetry for the understanding of contemporary Irish poetry. It allocates its main space to Kinsella, Heaney, Montague, Mahon, Muldoon and Durcan, in that order. Some of the poets may hold the substantial space allotted to them because they were important two and three decades ago, but this anthology nonetheless sparkles in the selections it makes from these poets, and in the inclusion of Deane, Grennan, Mathews and Sirr. The editor Mahon has made an outstanding selection from his own work, and the book is a good introduction to the important, mischievous work of Michael Hartnett. As an anthology it has a unified and valid character all its own in the presentation of contemporary Irish poetry.