Thomas Kinsella

The Collected Poems, 1956-94 Thomas Kinsella

"The Collected Poems" of the distinguished poet Thomas Kinsella contains virtually all his own poems, written over the past 40 years. The early books, of the 1950s and 1960s, include occasional poems, lyrics, and historical and political sequences. Then follow poems of local and family settings, with a growing mythical and allegorical element. Later comes a more public poetry ("Butcher's Dozen", for instance, on the Bloody Sunday shootings in Derry in 1972.) Thomas Kinsella is also well-known for his translations from Irish literature, such as "The Tain" and he has made a continuing, and often controversial, study of Ireland's dual tradition in English and Irish literature.