Scholarcast 21: Scottish and Irish Second World War Poetry

UCD Scholarcast - Series 4: Reconceiving the British Isles: The Literature of the Archipelago

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.