By Denis Devlin

Translations into English

Edited by Roger Little, this is a comprehensive overview of Denis Devlin’s versions from a variety of languages

Description

Edited by Roger Little, this is a comprehensive overview of Denis Devlin’s versions from a variety of languages

“Denis Devlin’s poetry was formed in the Modernist mould, self-aware and kaleidoscopic. An aesthetics of fragmentation encouraged diversity which remained diversity despite the necessary process of defining a poetic identity. Integrating components from many sources did not imply assimilation to the point of blandness but a delight in provocative and frequently ironic juxtapositions.” So begins Roger Little’s Introduction to this collection of the translations from French, German and Italian made by the Irish poet Denis Devlin whom John Montague has called “the most resolutely cosmopolitan of recent Irish poets”. First published in 1992, Irish poet Denis Devlin’s Translations into English, edited by Roger Little, is reissued now in conjunction with Collected Poems of Denis Devlin, edited by JCC Mays (first published in 1989). In making these two major collections of Devlin’s work available again, Dedalus hopes to introduce a new readership to the work of one of the most influential and, according to Samuel Beckett, along with Brian Coffey “without question the most interesting of the youngest generation of Irish poets”.

ISBN 9781873790182
140 x 216 mm, 353 pp

1992

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About The Author

Author

Denis Devlin was born in Greenock, Scotland in 1908 and died in Dublin in 1959. One of the major figures, and major influences, of modern and modernist Irish poetry, alongside Brian Coffey he was described by Samuel Beckett as "without question the most interestering of the youngest generation of Irish poets". Like Coffey, Devlin too produced a large volume of work in translation (collected as Translations into English Dedalus, 1992) while the poems brought together in Collected Poems (1989) include 'Intercessions', 'Uncollected Early Poems and Translations', 'Lough Derg and Other Poems', 'Translation of Exile and Other Poems of St John Perse' and 'Later Poems and Translations'. Introduced by JCC Mays, who regards Devlin's poems as "constructs in which an idea is worked through" (while offering a fascinating insight into the work, including the way in which "lines that push beyond rhyme extend into rhythmical prose"), Collected Poems is an extraordinary book which has, unsurprisingly, become something of a collector's item.