Irish Poetry & Drama

The Poetry Book Society Summer Choice 2026 Drunken Driving is the funny and subversive sequel to Martina Evans’s narrative poem The Coming Thing, set ten years on. Imelda, now a young mother, is married to Carl. When she gets a jo…

Declan Ryan's Crisis Actor chronicles various kinds of failures and farewells. It is peopled by faded heroes and deferential devotees, a hanged donkey and a bloated rat, solitary bachelors and disillusioned youths-these are the wa…

This collection of masterful poetry demonstrates the extraordinary range and beautiful lyricism of Ireland's most accomplished poet, William Butler Yeats. The poems selected here cover love and regret, Irish folktales, beauty, pol…

The centenary of Patrick Kavanagh's birth in 2004 provides the ideal opportunity to reappraise one of modern Ireland's greatest poets. From a harsh, humble background that he himself described so brilliantly, Kavanagh burst throug…

First published in 1984, Paul Muldoon's The Faber Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry sought to establish a canon of Irish Poetry since the death of Yeats. Here the reader can explore substantial selections of the poetry of ten of t…

This Selected Poems gathers together work published between 1991 and 2016 from collections that have been lauded, awarded and widely translated, collections that have gained a large audience and a considerable reputation, national…

Jiving with Wasps is a new retrospective from Rita Ann Higgins drawing on a dozen books of poetry published over four decades, from Goddess on the Mervue Bus (1986) to The Long Weekend (2024), in addition to new poems appearing he…

Blue Parting is a collection of twenty-four short poems, which deal with universal themes of love, death, loneliness and despair. Written over the course of a two year period, the poems comprise the author's attempts to create mea…

Ethnology draws on the mystical cry for the dead of Cathy Galvin's Irish-speaking ancestors. Within an epic narrative she reclaims place, people and language, creating a bridge between our own times and a Connemara community on th…

Paul Muldoon has been interested in writing for music for at least twenty years, over which time he has collaborated with composers as various as Mark-Anthony Turnage, Warren Zevon, and Wayside Shrines, the Princeton-based musical…

Since his 1973 debut, New Weather, Paul Muldoon has created some of the most original and memorable poetry of the past half century. Joy in Service on Rue Tagore sees him writing with the same verve and distinction that have consi…

In Neanderthal Boy, Colm Scully's latest poetry collection, history - both personal and political - unfolds through the lens of myth and memory. With a masterful touch, Scully intertwines the past and present, drawing connections …

This is the long-awaited, definitive edition of Seamus Heaney's poetry. It encompasses all the poems Heaney published in his lifetime as well as the small number that appeared after his death: twelve single volumes, from Death of …

Dean Browne arrives at the After Party with the maturity and style of an altogether more seasoned poet. In a debut collection of standout and stand-alone poems, each tests the boundaries of its unique universe. Browne is a mesmeri…

Jessica Traynor’s New Arcana explores grief, bad boyfriends and the power of female friendship through readings of the Tarot and Tim Burton movies. Moving from teenage friendship and destructive relationships towards a tangling wi…

This collection of masterful poetry demonstrates the extraordinary range and beautiful lyricism of Ireland's most accomplished poet, William Butler Yeats.From the beautiful musicality of 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' to the politic…

This edition of Seamus Heaney's seminal fourth collection North, reproduced in its elegant first setting and in its original jacket, marks fifty years since first publication in 1975. By conjuring aspects of a shared Northern Euro…

Poetry of how we shape what is lost or past, and how it shapes us. Bernard O'Donoghue investigates anchorage as a place we build for ourselves out of memory and story. The Ireland of his youth is rich in colour and precise in deta…

“The Risen Tree” is Bernadette Gallagher's debut poetry collection. It is thought-provoking contemplative poetry that touches upon themes of nature, growth, and human connection. The poems are inspired by and reference psalm verse…

Care is the debut collection by Cork-based poet Jennifer Horgan. Through her work born of personal experience and characterised by arresting imagery, Horgan calls on us to reconcile and to unite, to care. This is a hopeful collect…

In this delightful collection, some of Ireland’s most celebrated writers capture the joy and pain of romantic love. Featuring Oscar Wilde and James Joyce, George ‘AE’ Russell and Ethna Carbery, Thomas Moore and Lady Gregory, Jonat…

A new collection of expert lyric poems from Bernard O'Donoghue, which movingly animates the characters of his childhood in County Cork. Shortlisted for the 2016 T. S. Eliot Prize, this new collection of expert lyric poems from Whi…

Another wild, expansive collection from the eternally surprising Pulitzer Prize–winning poetSmuggling diesel; Ben-Hur (the movie, yes, but also Lew Wallace's original book, and Seosamh Mac Grianna's Gaelic translation); a real tri…

From the New York Times best-selling author of Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín’s first collection of poetry explores sexuality, religion, and belonging through a modern lensFans of Colm Tóibín’s novels, including The Magician, The Master, a…

You can paint your placards ‘til the cows come home, but until you have marched through this town in five inch heels and fishnets, you will never know what it is to truly be a faggot on the front line. Told against the backdrop o…

In 100 Poems, readers will enjoy the most loved and celebrated poems, and will discover new favorites, from "The Cure at Troy" to "Death of a Naturalist." It is a singular and welcoming anthology, reaching far and wide, for now an…

The Cure at Troy is Seamus Heaney's version of Sophocles' Philoctetes. Written in the fifth century BC, this play concerns the predicament of the outcast hero, Philoctetes, whom the Greeks marooned on the island of Lemnos and forg…

In this outstanding new translation, commissioned by Ireland's renowned Abbey Theatre to commemorate its centenary, Seamus Heaney exposes the darkness and the humanity in Sophocles' masterpiece, and inks it with his own modern and…

A new selection of Paul Durcan's finest poems, published in celebration of his 80th birthday'He has written immortal poems. I revere him' Michael LongleyFor fifty years the poet Paul Durcan has explored and questioned a world both…

Rita Ann Higgins’ poetry became a national salve during the pandemic, uniquely capturing the mood of the country as read live on radio from RTÉ’s Brendan O’Connor Show. This collection of poetry, containing the bank holiday poems …