Irish poetry

The history of Irish poetry is complicated by the fact that it has
been the history of two poetries, one in Gaelic and the other in
English. The complex interplay between these two traditions, and
between both of them and other poetries in English, has produced a
body of work that is both rich in variety and difficult to categorise.
The earliest surviving poems in Irish date back to the 6th century and
the first known poems in English from Ireland date from the 14th
century. Although some cross-fertilisation between the two language
traditions has always happened, the final emergence of an
English-language poetry that had absorbed themes and models from Irish
did not appear until the 19th century. This culminated in the work of
the poets of the Celtic Revival at the end of the 19th and beginning
of the 20th century. Towards the last quarter of the century, modern
Irish poetry has tended to a wide range of diversity, from the poets
of the Northern school to writers influenced by the modernist
tradition and those facing the new questions posed by an increasingly
urban and cosmopolitan society.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_poetry

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