Derek Mahon Summary

Derek Mahon is one of a significant number of poets from Northern Ireland who came to prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He has published five full collections of verse to date, as well as ... Read more

In the following essay, Donnelly suggests that Mahon's poetic talent lies in his ability to merge lightness with serious subjects and technical and formal brilliance. Donnelly emphasizes Mahon&... Read more

In the following essay, Clutterbuck interprets Mahon's position on the link between art and reality as negative and sometimes cynical, doubting the existence of meaning in either art or life. A... Read more

In the following essay, Redmond compares Mahon's verse-letters to the work of W. H. Auden to highlight his use of a casual tone. Also drawing from Auden's essay on “Light Verse,&#... Read more

In the following excerpt, McDonald notes the influence of Irish poet Louis MacNeice on Mahon's work, particularly in the themes of loneliness and alienation. He highlights the younger poet�... Read more

In the following essay, Bakken reflects on Mahon's attitude toward work in his Collected Poems. Bakken sees in Mahon's verse a strong sense of irony and a critical nature, both of which ... Read more

In the following essay, Frazier suggests that The Hunt by Night reflects a change in Mahon's work, away from regionalism, and away from attention-seeking tricks of poetic form and style. In a r... Read more

In the following essay, Taylor addresses Mahon's relation to Ireland, suggesting that Mahon's position as detached artist allows him to revisit the realities of past and current strife w... Read more

In the following essay, Mullaney links Mahon's observations on silence to his relationship to the violence in Ireland. Mullaney reads silence as a representation of oppressed voices, as a comme... Read more

In the following essay, Tinley emphasizes Mahon's connections to poets including Gérard de Nerval, Philippe Jaccottet, François Villon, Bertolt Brecht, and others to highlight the... Read more

Critical Essay by Peter Porter It is especially good to have Mahon's carefully edited 'selected collected' [Poems: 1962–1978]. It may be a little dismaying to find a poet u... Read more

Critical Essay by Jack Holland Since the mid-1960s, several Northern Irish poets have made their presence felt in the English literary world. The most praised, Seamus Heaney, has been hailed by some c... Read more

Critical Essay by John Mole Derek Mahon's new collection [The Hunt by Night] contains several poems good enough to place alongside his "A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford", a justly ce... Read more

Critical Essay by Alan Brownjohn Between Night Crossing in 1968 and his new collection, Lives, Derek Mahon produced a very promising … pamphlet called Ecclesiastes. It now looks like a bridge b... Read more

Critical Essay by Douglas Dunn If events in Ireland have been thought malefic in their relations to the art of poetry (as they are to almost everything else) then that may be the reason why Heaney and... Read more

Critical Essay by Terence Brown In Derek Mahon's poetry it is possible to see what can be made of the Irish urban and suburban experience…. [Mahon] has produced a small body of remarkabl... Read more

Critical Essay by Brian Donnelly With three published volumes of poetry behind him—Night-Crossing (1968), Lives (1972), The Snow Party (1975)—Derek Mahon has now clearly emerged as one o... Read more