Medbh McGuckian
I believe wholly in the beauty and power of language, the music of words, the intensity of images to shadow-paint the inner life of the soul. She was compared by critics to
,
, and
. In the course of her career a strong strain of the political emerged among her personal topics, and she has become both historian of and elegist for Ireland's violent story. She has published poetry in volumes and in periodicals, as well as broadsides and essays.
, who lives in Northern Ireland, is well-regarded among contemporary poets writing in English. She began by writing a very private and reserved poetry. Using images from the home and from nature, she explored the female body and the female psyche, and strove to access the intimacy of a woman's spirit through the concrete aspects of a woman's life: