Abstract
The monograph examines the transactions between the two main languages of Irish literature, English and Irish, and their formative role in contemporary poetry by Irish women (Eavan Boland, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Biddy Jenkinson, Medbh McGuckian, Vona Groarke, Caitríona O'Reilly, Sinéad Morrissey, Ailbhe Darcy, and Aifric Mac Aodha). By highlighting these writers' uneasy poetic and linguistic identity, this book proposes a fundamental critical reconsideration of major late-twentieth-century Irish women poets, and, by extension, the nation's canon.