The Ulster Renaissance: Poetry in Belfast 1962-1972

by Heather Clark

This is the first full-length study of the extraordinary period of intense poetic activity in Belfast known as the Ulster Renaissance--a time when young Northern Irish poets such as Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, James Simmons, and Paul Muldoon began crafting their art, and tuning their voices through each other. Drawing extensively upon new archival material, as well as personal interviews and correspondence, The Ulster Renaissance argues that these poets' friendships and rivalries were crucial to their autonomous artistic development. The book also sheds new light on the idea of a collaborative Belfast coterie--often treated derisively by critics--and shows that the poets frequently engaged in efforts to promote a cohesive "Northern" literary community, distinct from that which existed in London and Dublin. It suggests that it was this cohesion, at turns inclusive and confining, which ultimately challenged the Belfast poets to find their individual voices.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published April 6, 2006

About the author

Dr. Heather Clark is an American writer, literary critic and academic.
Her biography of poet Sylvia Plath, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize.
Her recent awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism, the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize, a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholars fellowship, a New York Public Library Cullman Center Fellowship, and a Leon Levy Center for Biography Fellowship at the City University of New York.

She is also the author of The Grief of Influence: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (2011) and The Ulster Renaissance: Poetry in Belfast 1962–1972 (2006).

Her debut novel The Scrapbook will be published on 7 June 2025.

Heather Clark is currently working on a biography on Anne Sexton as well as on a group biography about the Boston years of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich and Maxine Kumin.