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 a number of shorter volumes of poems, and is widely...

Derek Mahon's "Journalism: Selected Prose, 1970-1995" shows the poet's allegiance to the irony and his intrigue with the past. In the poems, "A Stone Age Figure Far Below," "The Last of the Fire Kings," "Heraclitus on Rivers," and "Death and the Sun" the past's...

The life and works of Irish poet Derek Mahon are examined. Topics discussed include Mahon's influences, his witty and hard-edged style, and several of his poems. Ireland over the past few decades has been the breeding ground for a dozen or so notable...

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,” Redmond contends that Mahon's efforts to seem casual or self-effacing are undermined by their apparent artfulness.

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.

In the following essay, Steele emphasizes Mahon's relationship to other poets and the role of art in his poetry.