Soundings was first published in 1969. It was intended as an 'interim' anthology of poetry for the Leaving Certificate until such time as a more permanent volume could be devised. Twenty six years later it was replaced. In the meantime it had passed through the hands of hundreds of thousands of students in Ireland. Soundings might have been replaced but it was never fully forgotten. Old copies ended up with an individual personality honed out of manual annotations and thoughts, not all of them provided by the teacher. Scrawls in biro or pencil testified to the thoughts and daydreams many users. A surprising number of copies ended up in attics only to be rediscovered with delight many years later and to be given treasured status in new homes. One former student recalled how Soundings was the first school book to treat her as an adult. It made no concessions to the 'teenager'. It didn't patronise. Its imagery was entirely in the poetry. The typography was appalling but the cover design still resonates. A decade after its demise, second hand copies of Soundings were fetching surprising prices. It was widely discussed in chat-rooms on the web. There were increasing demands for a reprint. So here is Soundings, in its original form just as you remember it. The same stony grey soil of Patrick Kavanagh's Monaghan; T.S.Eliot's same women who come and go talking of Michaelangelo. Please enjoy once more!

Giller Prize winner Austin Clarke’s memoirs provide insightful cultural observations by one of today’s most influential black writers.

Winner of the 2002 Scotiabank Giller Prize and of the 2003 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize: Best Book (Canada and the Caribbean) When an elderly Bimshire village woman calls the police to confess to a murder, the result is a shattering all-night vigil that brings together elements of the African diaspora in one epic sweep. Set on the post-colonial West Indian island of Bimshire in 1952, The Polished Hoe unravels over the course of 24 hours but spans the lifetime of one woman and the collective experience of a society informed by slavery. As the novel opens, Mary Mathilda is giving confession to Sargeant, a police officer she has known all her life. The man she claims to have murdered is Mr. Belfeels, the village plantation owner for whom she has worked for more than thirty years. Mary has also been Mr. Belfeels’ mistress for most of that time and is the mother of his only son, Wilberforce, a successful doctor. What transpires through Mary’s words and recollections is a deep meditation about the power of memory and the indomitable strength of the human spirit. Infused with Joycean overtones, this is a literary masterpiece that evokes the sensuality of the tropics and the tragic richness of Island culture.

This relates Clarke to the Irish Literary Revival and the cultural contexts of his time while tracing that "fine generosity, lavish colour and concrete imagery." Contents: Portrait; Introduction; (i) Austin Clarke (1896-1974), (ii) Contexts, (iii) Catholicism, (iv) The Irish Literary Revival, (v) The Gaelic League, (vi) The Worlds of Austin Clarke, (vii) A New Generation; Part I. Remembering Our Innocence; 1 Short Poems 1916-1925, 2 Epic Narratives 1916-1925, 3 Pilgrimage (1929), 4 Night and Morning (1938), 5 Three Prose Romances, 6 Plays, 7 Conclusion; Part II. Nothing Left to Sing?; 8 Poems and Satires 1955-1962: (i) Short Peoms, (ii) Long Autobiographical Poems; 9 Flight to Africa (1963), 10 Mnemosyne Lay In Dust (1966), 11 Last Poems 1967-1974, 12 Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index^R

"Austin Clarke's first book of poetry was published in 1917, his last in 1971. In a writing life spanning much of the twentieth century, Clarke created a poetry of passionate, idiosyncratic modernity, rooted in place and time, universal in its resonance. His is poetry, writes Christopher Ricks, of 'delicate and dancing interlacings' which is also 'simple as join-hands'. Clarke can be challengingly elliptical or as robust and earthy as folk tradition; he dares the terrors of the damaged soul. His later poems Thomas Kinsella described in The Dual Tradition as 'wickedly glittering narratives ... poetry as pure entertainment, serious and successful'." "An earlier Collected Poems of Austin Clarke appeared shortly after his death in 1974. Now, newly edited and corrected, with Clarke's original Notes restored, a bibliography and an illuminating introduction by Christopher Ricks, the poetry takes its place for a new generation of readers as one of the most compelling bodies of twentieth-century Irish poetry."--BOOK JACKET.