Cambridge Introduction to Contemporary British Poetry

Cambridge Introductions to Literature

by David Wheatley

The Cambridge Introduction to Contemporary British Poetry offers readers a detailed introduction to the rich variety of traditions and individual talents that make up British poetry since the Second World War. It combines an overview of post-war literary history with detailed readings of the major poets of the period, such as Philip Larkin, Basil Bunting, Stevie Smith, Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney. Beginning with the transition from modernism and the 1930s, it charts developing concepts of Britishness and the British poem through various groups and schools, paying careful attention to the distinctiveness of Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish writing and the shaping influence of social and political contexts. The primary focus throughout is on close readings of the most important poems of the period, and their dynamic and central contribution to twentieth-century poetry in English. This is a book that students and teachers alike will find invaluable.

260 pages, Hardcover

First published June 30, 2011

About the author

David Wheatley (born 1970) is an Irish poet and critic. He was born in Dublin and studied at Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited Icarus. Wheatley is the author of four volumes of poetry with Gallery Press, as well as several chapbooks. He has also edited the work of James Clarence Mangan, and features in the Bloodaxe anthology The New Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2005), and the Wake Forest Irish Poetry Series Vol. 1 (Wake Forest UP, 2005).

He teaches at the University of Aberdeen, having previously taught at Hull. He has been shortlisted twice for the Poetry Now Award (2007, 2018), and was awarded The Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize, in 2008.

He lives in Kemnay in Aberdeenshire.