Openness and Light in the Dialogue between the North and the South: Selected Poems by Contemporary Irish and Greek Poets

Abstract

The chapter investigates two references of contemporary Irish poets to the work of the Modern Greek Nobelist poet, George Seferis: Seamus Heaney's "To George Seferis in the Underworld" (from "District and Circle" 2006) and Derek Mahon's "A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford" (from "Snow Party" 1975). Delving into the relations between poetry, politics (the military junta in Greece and the Northern Irish conflict), biographies of the poets in question, and the comparative landscapes of both countries, the article analyses Heaney's and Mahon's engagement with the Greek material and the reasons for which they draw on Seferis's poetry.