Essay: Poets in the Ninth Circle. Host Publication: 'Poetry Ireland Review (Issue 113): A Seamus Heaney Special Issue'

No abstract available

Michael Allen: Close Readings: Essays on Irish Poetry

The late Michael Allen was a member of the famous Belfast Group, and one of the most authoritative critical voices on poetry from Northern Ireland, intimately part of the North’s poetic movement since the early 1960s. He taught at Queen’s University, where he was a colleague of Seamus Heaney and tutor to poets such as Paul Muldoon and Medbh McGuckian. Seamus Heaney called him ‘the reader over my shoulder’. Close Readings brings together interlinked critical writings which have crucially influenced approaches to Irish poetry during the last forty years. The book ends with an extended essay, hitherto unpublished: ‘Doubles, Twins and the Feminine: Development in the Poetry of Michael Longley’.

Close Readings contains a Foreword by Fran Brearton, which relates Michael Allen’s essays to continuing critical and cultural debates. Edna Longley’s Afterword offers a personal view of Allen’s involvement with poetry in Belfast.

Poetry With People With Dementia: An Evaluation of a Two Year Project Engaging in Poetry Activities With Older People in Residential and Nursing Homes.

This paper is a summary of an evaluation of the first two years of a three year poetry project for older people with dementia. The project was set up with a poet in residence who mentored six poets to deliver poetry activities to older people and those with dementia in residential and care homes in Herefordshire. The project was developed and run by the Courtyards Hereford. The evaluation was undertake through the use of questionnaires that were given to staff and carers undertaking training workshops and the poets, staff and carers in the homes who facilitated the activities and finally by the residents who took part in the project. The main findings were that participants that responded to the questionnaire for staff and carers it had increased confidence and assisted them in gaining more knowledge about the residents, whilst for residents it had a number of positive effects including enhanced communication, increased self-esteem and enhanced self-worth whilst making them feel less isolated.