Reading Medbh McGuckian

Reading Medbh McGuckian is a highly original study of renowned Ulster poet Medbh McGuckian. Fellow poet Leontia Flynn offers close readings of McGuckian's early and mid-career work and sheds new light on the poet's complexities, while remaining clear, accessible, and insightful. Availing of valuable new research, the book suggests and illustrates that much of McGuckian's poetic language is gathered from an array of other sources. The book begins as a series of observational readings, analyzing the poems and textual materials from which the poetry has been developed, and goes on to suggest how this poetic technique is evident throughout her work. Assuming several critical perspectives, the book adopts an original - and at times unconventional - approach and gives a sense of the challenges McGuckian's poetry presents to readers. It examines the poet's evolving style over the last three decades in which she has published over a dozen poetry collections. It also shows how McGuckian persuades her readers to think differently about women, poetry, and tradition - constructing McGuckian's meanings where possible, but also insisting that the mysteries and pleasures of the poetry remain intact. *** "Whether or not you are interested in McGuckian's poetry, the book is valuable for the way that it teases apart the meaning of concepts like clarity and coherence, meaning and sense. If it is the job of poetry to blur such distinctions, it is the job of criticism to distinguish these elements so that they can be blurred." - Irish Literary Supplement, Vol. 35, No. 1, Fall 2015 Subject: Poetry, Literary Criticism, Irish Studies, Women's Studies]