Abstract

The relationship between the poetic and the national is crucial to how war poetry is perceived and interpreted. This essay looks at Second World War (and wartime) poetry from Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland – and in particular at images of absence, cancellation, annulment and denial – to explore differences in each poetry between how the war and the role of the poet in the war are constructed.

Peter Mackay

Dr Peter Mackay is an expert on Scottish and Irish poetry – and Scottish Gaelic literature – from the eighteenth century onwards. Having completed a PhD on the poetry of William Wordsworth and Seamus Heaney, he has worked as a Research Fellow on the Irish-Scottish Poetry project at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Queen’s University Belfast, and lectured at Trinity College Dublin. His Introduction to Sorley MacLean (RIISS) will be published in 2010, as will a pamphlet of poems From Another Island (Clutag). He currently works as a broadcast journalist for BBC ALBA.