In the first half of the 20th century, the men and women of Ireland
experienced the brutal realities of a succession of wars - from the
unrelenting casualties of WW1, to the domestic upheavals of the 1916
Rising and the Irish Civil War; from the romantic idealism of the
Spanish Civil War, to the unimaginable horrors of WW2.
Earth Voices Whispering gathers together, for the very first time, a
wide range of poetic voices that chart the human experiences of these
wars, compiled and edited by Belfast-born poet and senior lecturer in
Trinity College Dublin, Gerald Dawe. Featuring over three hundred poems
by celebrated poets such as C.S Lewis, AE, W.B. Yeats, Patrick Kavanagh
and Seamus Heaney, and including new poems by Derek Mahon and Eilean Ní
Chuilleanain, the anthology records the thoughts and experiences of
poets as soldiers, patriots, observers, protestors, medics and mourners.
From patriotism to anger, passion to compassion, hope to regret, this
groundbreaking new anthology embraces the complex reality of a rich,
unique and historically overlooked period in Irish poetry.