Northern Irish Poetry and Theology

Gail McConnell is Lecturer in English at Queen's University Belfast, UK. She has published in The Irish Review and contributed to The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry.

• Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction 1. Religion and Identity Politics in Contemporary Northern Irish Poetry: The Critical Landscape 2. 'Its flesh was sweet / Like thickened wine': Iconography and Sacramentalism in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney 3. 'A hole / In the cathedral wall': Iconoclasm and Catechism in the Poetry of Michael Longley 4. 'The only way out of 'the tongue-tied profanity'': Calvinism, Rupture and Revision in the Poetry of Derek Mahon Bibliography Index

“McConnell skilfully provides a compelling analysis of a wide range of poetry from each of the writers, contrasting and comparing their diverging approaches to writing, to theology, and to their position within their own histories. Northern Irish Poetry and Theology is an important and challenging document within contemporary criticism which will provoke as many questions as it answers and which clearly situates Gail McConnell as a key figure within upcoming Northern Irish criticism.” (Kirsten Kearney, Literature and Theology, Vol. 30 (1), March, 2016)