The comparative study of the literatures of Ireland and Scotland has emerged as a distinct and buoyant field in recent years. This collection of new essays offers the first sustained comparison of modern Irish and Scottish poetry, featuring close readings of texts within broad historical and political contextualisation. Playing on influences, crossovers, connections, disconnections and differences, the 'affinities' and 'opposites' traced in this book cross both Irish and Scottish poetry in many directions. Contributors include major scholars of the new 'archipelagic' approach, as well as leading Irish and Scottish poets providing important insights into current creative practice. Poets discussed include W. B. Yeats, Hugh MacDiarmid, Sorley MacLean, Louis MacNeice, Edwin Morgan, Douglas Dunn, Seamus Heaney, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Michael Longley, Medbh McGuckian, Nuala ni Dhomhnaill, Don Paterson and Kathleen Jamie. This book is a major contribution to our understanding of poetry from these islands in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

This invaluable collection traces the work of nearly a hundred writers over one of the most eventful periods in Scottish literary history. An extensive introduction sets the scene for the growth of women writers from Scotland throughout the whole of the twentieth century. With over 200 poems—from Naomi Jackson, Carol Ann Duffy, Dilys Rose, Kathleen Jamie, Meg Bateman, Jackie Kay, Liz Lochhead and many others—this collection celebrates the exceptional power and range of Scottish women poets.

Although the number of Gaelic speakers has declined during the twentieth century, the last forty years have seen an astonishing flowering of Scottish Gaelic poetry, much of it in the modern idiom. This bilingual anthology provides a selection of the best work of poets who have contributed most to that revival--Sorely Maclean, George Campbell Hay, Derick Thomson, Iain Crichton Smith, and Donald MacAulay.

Although Scottish poetry gained an increasingly high profile towards the end of the twentieth century, this groundbreaking work is the first book length study of the field.

Throw a stone in Edinburgh or Glasgow today and you'll hit a poet. The Scottish spoken word scene has exploded, reaching a level of popularity last seen in the late 1970s, another era, coincidentally, when the issue of Scottish self-determination was in the air. A generation of poets has emerged who have grown up in an age of change, political and technological, with the internet providing them not only with new ways of sharing writing - through their websites, podcasts, Twitter - but also in some cases with a subject too. It's a scene where you are just as liable to encounter ancient gods as you are video game characters. This book is a survey, a yearbook, a celebration, and a promise of things to come.

Scotland has a long history of producing outstanding poetry. From the humblest but-and-ben to the grandest castle, the nation had a great tradition of celebration and commemoration through poetry. 100 favourite Scottish poems - incorporating the nation's best-loved poems as selected in a BBC Scotland listeners poll - ranges from the ballads of Burns from Proud Maisie to The Queen of Sheba, and from Cuddle Doon to The Jeelie Piece Song.

The most wide-ranging anthology of twentieth-century poetry in English and Scots available.