Chris Agee
Encyclopedia
Christopher Robert Agee (born 18 January 1956 in San Francisco) is a poet
, essayist and editor living in Ireland
. He holds dual American and Irish citizenship, and has spent most of his adult life in Ireland. He also spends part of each year at his house on the Dalmatian island of Korčula
, near Dubrovnik
, in Croatia
.
, New York
and Rhode Island
. During the last three years of secondary school, he attended Phillips Academy
(Andover), before spending a year of French language study at the Université d’Aix-en-Provence, in the South of France
. He then attended Harvard University
, where he studied with the poet and translator Robert Fitzgerald
, and the Brazilian philosopher Roberto Mangabeira Unger
. He took Fitzgerald’s renowned prosody seminar and wrote his senior thesis on W.H. Auden, also under the former’s supervision. His Harvard friends included Mira Nair
, Julie Agoos
and André Aciman
. During the summers of 1977 and 1978, he worked as a research assistant in Ireland for the American non-fiction writer Robert Coles
, who was preparing a series of articles on the Northern Troubles. In June 1979, he graduated cum laude with a BA in American Literature and Language. Since 1979, just after graduation, he has lived in Ireland
.
and Belfast
, but travelled widely throughout the island. After graduation from Harvard, Agee worked three months as a night watchman in a hotel on Block Island, Rhode Island
. He travelled to Ireland
, via London and Wales
, in late September, arriving in Dun Laoghaire
on the morning of 30 September, the day of John Paul II’s arrival in Ireland
and the subsequent huge mass in Phoenix Park
, which he attended with most of the rest of Dublin.
Agee intended to stay only a year or two in Ireland
, but by the mid-eighties his residence in Belfast had become permanent. Between 1979 and 1989, he worked as a Lecturer in Adult Literacy at a further education college in the city. From 1989 to 1992, he worked full-time for the Community Education Department of The Open University in Ireland; from 1988 to 2004, he also taught a number of arts and American studies courses in the Arts Faculty of The Open University, including individual tutorials, for ten years, with republican and loyalist prisoners at the Maze and Maghaberry Prisons. From 1992 to 2007, he was employed by the University of East London
(on a Senior Lecturer scale) to direct the Irish office of a British trade union education fund. Since 2007, when he resigned from that post, he has worked as the full-time Editor of Irish Pages
: A Journal of Contemporary Writing (based at The Linen Hall Library, Belfast
) as well as in a freelance literary capacity, including as a reviewer for The Irish Times
.
His wife, whom he married in 1990, grew up in Armagh
and studied art and design at the University of Ulster
in Belfast
. Their first child, Jacob Eoin, was born in 1993; their second, Miriam Aoife, in 1997. Miriam died suddenly in 2001, of complications following a volvulus of the fundus, after four days in intensive care. The poems in Agee’s third collection, Next to Nothing, were written in the aftermath of her death.
, England
, 2009).
Of the first, the American poet Devin Johnston wrote: “Agee’s careful documentation of nature, his eschewal of cleverness, his poetry’s modest refusal to be ‘about’ anything, will not be unfamiliar to readers of American poets such as Charles Wright
, Gary Snyder
or, most importantly, William Carlos Williams
”. Of the second, the Scots poet Don Paterson
wrote: “First Light is a very fine work indeed. Agee seems to have hit that fine balance between allusiveness and clarity, and formal control and spontaneity, that so few poets manage to achieve these days”. Of the third, the Irish poet John F. Deane
wrote: “Strong and real and thought-through … a masterful collection”.
Agee is currently finalizing a collection of non-fiction and critical essays, entitled Journey to Bosnia.
Agee’s work is included in seven anthologies of Irish poetry and one of American poetry. In general, he is considered both an American and an Irish poet, though there is some reluctance in essentialist quarters to include him under the latter rubric, despite his citizenship. Typically, the nationally ambiguous writer (of which, of course, there are numerous historical examples) falls between two stools, not unlike the “Anglo-Irish” writers of earlier generations, or even such Irish writers as Samuel Beckett
(also a French writer) and Brian Moore
(also a Canadian writer). As Agee has argued: “In the new Age of the Refugee that grows apace, it is perhaps no bad thing for a writer to be disabused somewhat of the enchantments of roots, and to feel in himself, as a distant echo, the fragility of the insular in the face of the global upheavals. In a critical sense, the danger is that you might seem to fall between two stools. In a creative sense, the bifocal reward is that you are bound by neither”.
Agee has read his poetry at many venues and festivals throughout Ireland
and further afield. His poems and translations have first been published in Times Literary Supplement, New Statesman, The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry (Chicago), The American Poetry Review, The Harvard Review, The Southern Review, Orion and many others. A Bosnian translation of Next to Nothing (Gotovo ništa), by Irena Žlof, is forthcoming in Sarajevo.
In 2001, he participated in the Struga Festival, Eastern Europe
’s most distinguished poetry festival, which that year awarded its “Golden Wreath” to Seamus Heaney
. In 2003, Agee was an International Writing Fellow at the William Joiner Center, University of Massachusetts, Boston. In 2007 and 2009, respectively, he was a writer-in-residence at the St James Cavalier Arts Centre in Malta, and at the Heinrich Boll Cottage, on Achill Island, Co Mayo. He has had many periods of residence at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, a workplace for artists at Annaghmakerrig, Newbliss, Co Monaghan.
Next to Nothing was shortlisted (from among 57 titles published in the United Kingdom in 2009) for the first Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, funded by the Poet Laureate and organized by the Poetry Society in London. The other shortlisted poets were Andrew Motion, Danny Abse, Jackie Kay, Alice Oswald, John Glenday and Paul Farley. Agee was the only Irish citizen shortlisted.
The collection was prominently reviewed in Ireland and Britain in 2009-2010, though no review has yet appeared in the United States.
Two of his Balkan essays, “The Stepinac File” (2000) and “A Week in Sarajevo” (1996), are widely known outside of Ireland
. The first, which explores the collaboration of the Catholic Church with the fascist Ustashe regime in Croatia
during the Second World War
, has been circulated extensively on the Internet
. The second, written at the end of the Bosnian war, achieved considerable civic renown when it appeared in translation in Sarajevo
some months later.
, Britain
and the United States
. He has edited Scar on the Stone: Contemporary Poetry from Bosnia (Bloodaxe Books, 1998, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation), Unfinished Ireland: Essays on Hubert Butler (Irish Pages, 2003) and The New North: Contemporary Poetry from Northern Ireland (Wake Forest University Press, 2008, commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts
in the US in collaboration with the Arts Council of Northern Ireland
). He was invited to guest-edit a “Special North American Issue” (Autumn 1994) for Poetry Ireland Review
and an “American Special Issue” (Summer 2000) for Metre, and to co-edit (with Joseph Parisi
) a “Special Double Issue on Contemporary Irish Poetry” (Oct-Nov 1995) for Poetry (Chicago) – the latter the best-selling issue in that journal’s 96-year history.
In 2002, Agee founded Irish Pages
, now widely considered Ireland’s premier literary journal. It has been variously described as “a wonderful achievement” (Michael Longley); “an important event in the history of Northern Ireland“ (Hilary Wakeman); “a major development in Irish literature” (John F. Deane); and “the most important cultural journal in Ireland at the present moment” (Jonathan Allison).
and Bosnia in particular. He spends two months each year at his house in Žrnovo, on the island of Korčula
, in the far south of Croatia
, and has visited Bosnia for substantial periods many times. His second collection, First Light, includes a suite of Balkan poems written in the mid- to late 1990s, and thus constitutes one of the very rare firsthand responses, from an English-language or Western poet, to the postwar aftermath in Bosnia and Kosova. During the same period, he wrote occasional articles on Western policy in the Balkans for Oslobodjene, the Sarajevo
daily.
In 1994, he put together, for the Bosnian Institute in London, a Special Irish Issue of Bosnia Report, which was circulated widely in Britain and Ireland, including to every member
of Dáil Éireann
(lower house of the Irish parliament
). Throughout much of the war, he was an active member of Ireland-Bosnia Solidarity. In early 1996, in recognition of his cultural activity in support of Bosnia’s survival, he was invited to participate in the Sarajevo Winter Festival
, the city’s first postwar arts festival. He chaired the Bosnia panel at the Queen's Belfast Festival 1997. He also subsequently edited an Irish issue of the Sarajevo literary journal Novine Zid in 1997, as well as In the Heart of Europe, a collection of poems by four Irish poets published in 1998 by a local branch of Amnesty International
for projects organized in Bosnia for children displaced from Srebrenica
.
Most importantly, Agee edited Scar on the Stone (1998), the first English-language anthology of Bosnian poetry published after the outbreak of the Bosnian war and the subsequent genocide and partition. It brings together fourteen of Bosnia's most distinguished poets and a selection of younger poets drawn from the country’s three main ethnic groups.
In his introduction Agee notes how the dearth and weakness of earlier translations of Bosnian literature influenced Western perceptions of the country and contributed to a lack of commitment on their part to the preservation of Bosnia's multi-ethnic culture. He also provides an account of the role of ultranationalist writers in the break-up of Yugoslavia. The anthology champions the cause of a common civic rather than a polarised tri-ethnic literature in Bosnia by assembling a group of leading poets and scholars from Britain, Ireland and America, Charles Simic
, Francis R. Jones, Ted Hughes
, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill
, John Hartley Williams
, Harry Clifton
, Ruth Padel
, Ken Smith
, Kathleen Jamie
and Ammiel Alcalay
, as translators. Hughes's translations of six poems by Abdulah Sidran
for the anthology were among the last works he completed before his death in 1998.
Stephen Schwartz
describes the anthology as one of the most important volumes in English brought into print as a result of the worldwide attention paid to the Bosnian war, observing how it reflects the issues embedded in the conflict through a comparison of the works by Abdulah Sidran and Izet Sarajlic
. Angus Calder
commends Agee's decision to include include not just "war poems" and "anti-war poems", only half of them written after the break-up of Yugoslavia
began in 1991, but also prose accounts including descriptions of Sarajevo
during the years of siege by the poet Semezdin Mehmedinovic
and a memoir from the death camps by Rezak Hukanovic.
, to William Herman Agee (1899–1954), of Shelbyville, Tennessee
, and Elsie Elizabeth Agee (1900–1988), née Burgess, of Manchester, Massachusetts. He attended Princeton University
, where he took (along with John McPhee
) Saul Bellow
’s first creative writing course, and wrote an unpublished novel, David. He also served in the US Navy’s Reserve Officer Training Corps, where he shipped for one summer with Donald Rumsfeld
. After pursuing a literary career for several years following graduation in 1954, he attended Harvard Law School
(1961–63), and practiced law in and around New York City until his death.
Agee’s mother, Anne Marie Agee (b 1930), née Stanford, was born in West Hollywood, California
, to Ralph Stanford (1903–1931) of Los Angeles
, and Ruth Stanford, née Inman, of Buffalo, New York
. She attended Stephens College
, Missouri, and the University of Southern California
. She worked periodically as a secretary and then a legal secretary.
Agee’s uncle, William Cameron Agee (b 1937), is a prominent art historian of twentieth-century American modernism. His sister, Elizabeth Macon Agee (b 1963), lives in Brooklyn
, New York.
Agee’s other uncle, Thomas Stanford (b 1928), is a world authority on the Mexican baroque in music and Mexico’s many indigenous musical traditions. He attended Juilliard in New York City, moving in 1955 to Mexico City
, where he still lives. Over 50 years, he conducted more than 250 field trips to indigenous Native American communities.
The surname Agee, apparently of American spelling, is of Huguenot origin and can be traced back to a direct ancestor, Mathieu Agé, who appears on a manifest of an immigrant ship from London, and who was one of a group of Huguenots who founded a French colony at Mannikintown, Virginia, then part of the frontier, in 1700. The name remains largely confined to Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama, and is now found equally among Americans of European and mainly African-American origin.
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, essayist and editor living in Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
. He holds dual American and Irish citizenship, and has spent most of his adult life in Ireland. He also spends part of each year at his house on the Dalmatian island of Korčula
Korcula
Korčula is an island in the Adriatic Sea, in the Dubrovnik-Neretva County of Croatia. The island has an area of ; long and on average wide — and lies just off the Dalmatian coast. Its 16,182 inhabitants make it the second most populous Adriatic island after Krk...
, near Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik is a Croatian city on the Adriatic Sea coast, positioned at the terminal end of the Isthmus of Dubrovnik. It is one of the most prominent tourist destinations on the Adriatic, a seaport and the centre of Dubrovnik-Neretva county. Its total population is 42,641...
, in Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
.
Early life
Chris Agee was born on 18 January 1956 in San Francisco and grew up in MassachusettsMassachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
and Rhode Island
Rhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...
. During the last three years of secondary school, he attended Phillips Academy
Phillips Academy
Phillips Academy is a selective, co-educational independent boarding high school for boarding and day students in grades 9–12, along with a post-graduate year...
(Andover), before spending a year of French language study at the Université d’Aix-en-Provence, in the South of France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. He then attended Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, where he studied with the poet and translator Robert Fitzgerald
Robert Fitzgerald
Robert Stuart Fitzgerald was a poet, critic and translator whose renderings of the Greek classics "became standard works for a generation of scholars and students." He was best known as a translator of ancient Greek and Latin...
, and the Brazilian philosopher Roberto Mangabeira Unger
Roberto Mangabeira Unger
Roberto Mangabeira Unger is a philosopher and politician. He has written widely on social, political, legal, and economic theory, much of which has laid the philosophical and theoretical groundwork for reimagining and remaking the social and political order...
. He took Fitzgerald’s renowned prosody seminar and wrote his senior thesis on W.H. Auden, also under the former’s supervision. His Harvard friends included Mira Nair
Mira Nair
Mira Nair is an Indian film director and producer based in New York. Her production company is Mirabai Films.She was educated at Delhi University and Harvard University. Her debut feature film, Salaam Bombay! , won the Golden Camera award at the Cannes Film Festival and also earned the nomination...
, Julie Agoos
Julie Agoos
-Life:Julie Agoos is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Above the Land and Calendar Year ....
and André Aciman
André Aciman
-External links:***...
. During the summers of 1977 and 1978, he worked as a research assistant in Ireland for the American non-fiction writer Robert Coles
Robert Coles
Martin Robert Coles is an American author, child psychiatrist, and professor at Harvard University.-Life and career:...
, who was preparing a series of articles on the Northern Troubles. In June 1979, he graduated cum laude with a BA in American Literature and Language. Since 1979, just after graduation, he has lived in Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
.
Life in Ireland
During the summers of 1977 and 1978, Agee was based in the Wicklow MountainsWicklow Mountains
The Wicklow Mountains form the largest continuous upland area in Ireland. They occupy the whole centre of County Wicklow and stretch outside its borders into Counties Carlow, Wexford and Dublin. Where the mountains extend into County Dublin, they are known locally as the Dublin Mountains...
and Belfast
Belfast
Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...
, but travelled widely throughout the island. After graduation from Harvard, Agee worked three months as a night watchman in a hotel on Block Island, Rhode Island
Rhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...
. He travelled to Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, via London and Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
, in late September, arriving in Dun Laoghaire
Dún Laoghaire
Dún Laoghaire or Dún Laoire , sometimes anglicised as "Dunleary" , is a suburban seaside town in County Dublin, Ireland, about twelve kilometres south of Dublin city centre. It is the county town of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County and a major port of entry from Great Britain...
on the morning of 30 September, the day of John Paul II’s arrival in Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
and the subsequent huge mass in Phoenix Park
Phoenix Park
Phoenix Park is an urban park in Dublin, Ireland, lying 2–4 km west of the city centre, north of the River Liffey. Its 16 km perimeter wall encloses , one of the largest walled city parks in Europe. It includes large areas of grassland and tree-lined avenues, and since the seventeenth...
, which he attended with most of the rest of Dublin.
Agee intended to stay only a year or two in Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, but by the mid-eighties his residence in Belfast had become permanent. Between 1979 and 1989, he worked as a Lecturer in Adult Literacy at a further education college in the city. From 1989 to 1992, he worked full-time for the Community Education Department of The Open University in Ireland; from 1988 to 2004, he also taught a number of arts and American studies courses in the Arts Faculty of The Open University, including individual tutorials, for ten years, with republican and loyalist prisoners at the Maze and Maghaberry Prisons. From 1992 to 2007, he was employed by the University of East London
University of East London
The University of East London is a university located in the London Borough of Newham, East London, England, based at two campuses in Stratford and Docklands areas...
(on a Senior Lecturer scale) to direct the Irish office of a British trade union education fund. Since 2007, when he resigned from that post, he has worked as the full-time Editor of Irish Pages
Irish Pages
Irish Pages: A Journal of Contemporary Writing is a literary magazine published in Belfast and edited by Chris Agee and Cathal Ó Searcaigh. It was launched in 2002 and appears biannually....
: A Journal of Contemporary Writing (based at The Linen Hall Library, Belfast
Belfast
Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...
) as well as in a freelance literary capacity, including as a reviewer for The Irish Times
The Irish Times
The Irish Times is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Kevin O'Sullivan who succeeded Geraldine Kennedy in 2011; the deputy editor is Paul O'Neill. The Irish Times is considered to be Ireland's newspaper of record, and is published every day except Sundays...
.
His wife, whom he married in 1990, grew up in Armagh
Armagh
Armagh is a large settlement in Northern Ireland, and the county town of County Armagh. It is a site of historical importance for both Celtic paganism and Christianity and is the seat, for both the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland, of the Archbishop of Armagh...
and studied art and design at the University of Ulster
University of Ulster
The University of Ulster is a multi-campus, co-educational university located in Northern Ireland. It is the largest single university in Ireland, discounting the federal National University of Ireland...
in Belfast
Belfast
Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...
. Their first child, Jacob Eoin, was born in 1993; their second, Miriam Aoife, in 1997. Miriam died suddenly in 2001, of complications following a volvulus of the fundus, after four days in intensive care. The poems in Agee’s third collection, Next to Nothing, were written in the aftermath of her death.
Published work and literary activity
Agee wrote his first poems during his last year at Harvard. The first to be published appeared in Irish periodicals in the late 1980s. He is now the author of three books of poems, In the New Hampshire Woods (The Dedalus Press, Dublin, 1992), First Light (The Dedalus Press, Dublin, 2003) and Next to Nothing (Salt Publishing, CambridgeCambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, 2009).
Of the first, the American poet Devin Johnston wrote: “Agee’s careful documentation of nature, his eschewal of cleverness, his poetry’s modest refusal to be ‘about’ anything, will not be unfamiliar to readers of American poets such as Charles Wright
Charles Wright
Charles Wright may refer to:*Charles Wright , American botanist*Charles Frederick Wright , U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania*Charles Wright , Nottinghamshire and England cricketer*C. S...
, Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...
or, most importantly, William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
”. Of the second, the Scots poet Don Paterson
Don Paterson
Don Paterson, OBE, FRSL is a Scottish poet, writer and musician.-Background:Paterson was born in Dundee. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 1990 and his poem A Private Bottling won the Arvon Foundation International Poetry Competition in 1993. He was included on the list of 20 poets chosen for the...
wrote: “First Light is a very fine work indeed. Agee seems to have hit that fine balance between allusiveness and clarity, and formal control and spontaneity, that so few poets manage to achieve these days”. Of the third, the Irish poet John F. Deane
John F. Deane
John F. Deane is an Irish poet and novelist. He founded Poetry Ireland and The Poetry Ireland Review in 1979.-Career:...
wrote: “Strong and real and thought-through … a masterful collection”.
Agee is currently finalizing a collection of non-fiction and critical essays, entitled Journey to Bosnia.
Agee’s work is included in seven anthologies of Irish poetry and one of American poetry. In general, he is considered both an American and an Irish poet, though there is some reluctance in essentialist quarters to include him under the latter rubric, despite his citizenship. Typically, the nationally ambiguous writer (of which, of course, there are numerous historical examples) falls between two stools, not unlike the “Anglo-Irish” writers of earlier generations, or even such Irish writers as Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
(also a French writer) and Brian Moore
Brian Moore
Brian Moore may refer to:*Brian Moore *Brian Moore *Brian Moore , Chief Constable of Wiltshire Police, England...
(also a Canadian writer). As Agee has argued: “In the new Age of the Refugee that grows apace, it is perhaps no bad thing for a writer to be disabused somewhat of the enchantments of roots, and to feel in himself, as a distant echo, the fragility of the insular in the face of the global upheavals. In a critical sense, the danger is that you might seem to fall between two stools. In a creative sense, the bifocal reward is that you are bound by neither”.
Agee has read his poetry at many venues and festivals throughout Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
and further afield. His poems and translations have first been published in Times Literary Supplement, New Statesman, The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry (Chicago), The American Poetry Review, The Harvard Review, The Southern Review, Orion and many others. A Bosnian translation of Next to Nothing (Gotovo ništa), by Irena Žlof, is forthcoming in Sarajevo.
In 2001, he participated in the Struga Festival, Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
’s most distinguished poetry festival, which that year awarded its “Golden Wreath” to Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...
. In 2003, Agee was an International Writing Fellow at the William Joiner Center, University of Massachusetts, Boston. In 2007 and 2009, respectively, he was a writer-in-residence at the St James Cavalier Arts Centre in Malta, and at the Heinrich Boll Cottage, on Achill Island, Co Mayo. He has had many periods of residence at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, a workplace for artists at Annaghmakerrig, Newbliss, Co Monaghan.
Next to Nothing (2009)
In his one statement on the collection, Agee has written:In addition to individual poems and several sequences, Next to Nothing includes a section entitled “Heartscapes”, which consists of 59 “micro-poems”, as I call them. Many of these are extremely short; most were written during the very bleak and soul-sick year of 2003; and the whole section (with one poem per page) will take no more than thirty minutes to read, and indeed can be read with ease by any general intelligent reader, whatever their familiarity with or experience of poetry. Swiftness of effect was, in fact, part of the intention and fidelity; the challenge here as throughout the book was to record true and deep “heart-feeling” (as opposed to the “feeling” of sensibility, apperception, historical moment, etc.) – that most delicate of poetic material, owing to the swiftness of emotion itself. For once, I think I can say that these poems wrote themselves, in the sense of my being a quite passive amanuensis caught up in pain rather than any sort of instigator – drawing on the habit of technique belonging to what had become a previous life, whilst suddenly also bereft of belief in the poetic outcome compared to the apocalypse of the loss itself – that is to say, the textual as “next to nothing”, in several distinct senses, like Matisse’s sparest line-drawings in a sea of blank space . . .
Next to Nothing was shortlisted (from among 57 titles published in the United Kingdom in 2009) for the first Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, funded by the Poet Laureate and organized by the Poetry Society in London. The other shortlisted poets were Andrew Motion, Danny Abse, Jackie Kay, Alice Oswald, John Glenday and Paul Farley. Agee was the only Irish citizen shortlisted.
The collection was prominently reviewed in Ireland and Britain in 2009-2010, though no review has yet appeared in the United States.
"It is a profound and exceptionally moving book. I haven’t read anything so powerful for a long time. I was left with a sense of both the fragility and the huge importance of the here and now, as well as with an expanded sense of poetry’s capacity."
-Hugh Dunkerley, The London Magazine (March–April 2009)
"The death of a child is every parent’s most unthinkable nightmare, from which there can be no relieved awakening. Chris Agee’s poems for the death of his young daughter Miriam in Next to Nothing are remarkable not only for their beauty but their control. Gently ironic when friends try to ‘make good’ his loss, Agee’s touch is painstakingly delicate. He imagines his daughter’s presence at Quaker meeting “like light/trembling inside/on the meeting-house’s/jambs and sills and sashes”. Astonishing for having been written at all, Next to Nothing is both a commemoration of his daughter’s life and a masterpiece of elegy, as here in the achingly short ‘Beautiful little violets’: ‘heart-shaped leaves/ shamrocks/of deepest mauve/whose time/is brief/but even so/perennial.'"
-Jane Holland, Poetry Review (Summer 2010)
"Next to Nothing chronicles the years after the death of his four-year-old daughter, Miriam Aoife in a series of episodic, technically perfect and pitch-reticent lyrics. For this poet, grief crashes upon the shore of language in three distinct waves: a series of brilliant couplets, a series of minimalist, impressionistic lyrics and a series of more discursive, muscular stanzas. The whole enterprise adds up to something beyond lyric poems … a work that breaks through the barriers of literature to become something more, a palliative journal, a chronicle of the heroism of lost parenthood, a handbook for the bereaved."
-Thomas McCarthy, The Irish Times (11 April 2009)
"[It] is the most compelling book of poems I have read for years … a very significant, permanent tribute to Miriam, and representation of her. She joins the son who was Ben Jonson’s best piece of work."
-Bernard O’Donoghue, Wadham College, Oxford
"2009 has given us some terrific poetry, but the book I will remember most from this year is Chris Agee’s Next to Nothing. A profoundly personal response to the death of Agee’s four-year-old daughter in 2001, Agee’s sparse, careful, disciplined word-choices unite technical brilliance with emotional intensity; the work echoes with a sense of loss, but it is anything but Nothing. In fact, I think, Next to Nothing bears close comparison, in both subject matter and execution, to CS Lewis’s A Grief Observed."
-William Crawley, BBC
Essays and criticism
Agee is also a noted essayist and critic within Ireland especially. His forthcoming collection of prose, Journey to Bosnia, brings together essays and reviews on a variety of Irish, Balkan, literary and ecological topics written since 1986. He reviews mainly poetry for The Irish Times.Two of his Balkan essays, “The Stepinac File” (2000) and “A Week in Sarajevo” (1996), are widely known outside of Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
. The first, which explores the collaboration of the Catholic Church with the fascist Ustashe regime in Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
during the Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, has been circulated extensively on the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
. The second, written at the end of the Bosnian war, achieved considerable civic renown when it appeared in translation in Sarajevo
Sarajevo
Sarajevo |Bosnia]], surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans....
some months later.
Editorial work
Agee is also widely known as an editor in IrelandIreland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. He has edited Scar on the Stone: Contemporary Poetry from Bosnia (Bloodaxe Books, 1998, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation), Unfinished Ireland: Essays on Hubert Butler (Irish Pages, 2003) and The New North: Contemporary Poetry from Northern Ireland (Wake Forest University Press, 2008, commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
in the US in collaboration with the Arts Council of Northern Ireland
Arts Council of Northern Ireland
The Arts Council of Northern Ireland is the lead development agency for the arts in Northern Ireland....
). He was invited to guest-edit a “Special North American Issue” (Autumn 1994) for Poetry Ireland Review
Poetry Ireland Review
Poetry Ireland Review is a journal of Irish poetry published quarterly by Poetry Ireland, the national Irish poetry organization.Poetry Ireland Review publishes the work of both emerging and established Irish and international poets. In line with keeping the journal fresh, vibrant and progressive...
and an “American Special Issue” (Summer 2000) for Metre, and to co-edit (with Joseph Parisi
Joseph Parisi
Joseph Parisi may refer to:*Joe Parisi, Wisconsin politician*Joseph Parasi , former editor of Poetry...
) a “Special Double Issue on Contemporary Irish Poetry” (Oct-Nov 1995) for Poetry (Chicago) – the latter the best-selling issue in that journal’s 96-year history.
In 2002, Agee founded Irish Pages
Irish Pages
Irish Pages: A Journal of Contemporary Writing is a literary magazine published in Belfast and edited by Chris Agee and Cathal Ó Searcaigh. It was launched in 2002 and appears biannually....
, now widely considered Ireland’s premier literary journal. It has been variously described as “a wonderful achievement” (Michael Longley); “an important event in the history of Northern Ireland“ (Hilary Wakeman); “a major development in Irish literature” (John F. Deane); and “the most important cultural journal in Ireland at the present moment” (Jonathan Allison).
Balkan connections
Chris Agee has close connections with the Balkans, CroatiaCroatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
and Bosnia in particular. He spends two months each year at his house in Žrnovo, on the island of Korčula
Korcula
Korčula is an island in the Adriatic Sea, in the Dubrovnik-Neretva County of Croatia. The island has an area of ; long and on average wide — and lies just off the Dalmatian coast. Its 16,182 inhabitants make it the second most populous Adriatic island after Krk...
, in the far south of Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
, and has visited Bosnia for substantial periods many times. His second collection, First Light, includes a suite of Balkan poems written in the mid- to late 1990s, and thus constitutes one of the very rare firsthand responses, from an English-language or Western poet, to the postwar aftermath in Bosnia and Kosova. During the same period, he wrote occasional articles on Western policy in the Balkans for Oslobodjene, the Sarajevo
Sarajevo
Sarajevo |Bosnia]], surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans....
daily.
In 1994, he put together, for the Bosnian Institute in London, a Special Irish Issue of Bosnia Report, which was circulated widely in Britain and Ireland, including to every member
Teachta Dála
A Teachta Dála , usually abbreviated as TD in English, is a member of Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas . It is the equivalent of terms such as "Member of Parliament" or "deputy" used in other states. The official translation of the term is "Deputy to the Dáil", though a more literal...
of Dáil Éireann
Dáil Éireann
Dáil Éireann is the lower house, but principal chamber, of the Oireachtas , which also includes the President of Ireland and Seanad Éireann . It is directly elected at least once in every five years under the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote...
(lower house of the Irish parliament
Oireachtas
The Oireachtas , sometimes referred to as Oireachtas Éireann, is the "national parliament" or legislature of Ireland. The Oireachtas consists of:*The President of Ireland*The two Houses of the Oireachtas :**Dáil Éireann...
). Throughout much of the war, he was an active member of Ireland-Bosnia Solidarity. In early 1996, in recognition of his cultural activity in support of Bosnia’s survival, he was invited to participate in the Sarajevo Winter Festival
Sarajevo Winter Festival
The International Festival Sarajevo “Sarajevo Winter” is a cultural festival held annually since the winter of 1984/1985.The “Sarajevo Winter” Festival has traditionally been held under the auspices of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, European Union, UNESCO, The Presidency of B&H,...
, the city’s first postwar arts festival. He chaired the Bosnia panel at the Queen's Belfast Festival 1997. He also subsequently edited an Irish issue of the Sarajevo literary journal Novine Zid in 1997, as well as In the Heart of Europe, a collection of poems by four Irish poets published in 1998 by a local branch of Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
for projects organized in Bosnia for children displaced from Srebrenica
Srebrenica
Srebrenica is a town and municipality in the east of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska. Srebrenica is a small mountain town, its main industry being salt mining and a nearby spa. During the Bosnian War, the town was the site of the July 1995 massacre,...
.
Most importantly, Agee edited Scar on the Stone (1998), the first English-language anthology of Bosnian poetry published after the outbreak of the Bosnian war and the subsequent genocide and partition. It brings together fourteen of Bosnia's most distinguished poets and a selection of younger poets drawn from the country’s three main ethnic groups.
In his introduction Agee notes how the dearth and weakness of earlier translations of Bosnian literature influenced Western perceptions of the country and contributed to a lack of commitment on their part to the preservation of Bosnia's multi-ethnic culture. He also provides an account of the role of ultranationalist writers in the break-up of Yugoslavia. The anthology champions the cause of a common civic rather than a polarised tri-ethnic literature in Bosnia by assembling a group of leading poets and scholars from Britain, Ireland and America, Charles Simic
Charles Simic
Dušan "Charles" Simić is a Serbian-American poet, and was co-Poetry Editor of the Paris Review. He was appointed the fifteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2007.-Early years:...
, Francis R. Jones, Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Edward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...
, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill is an Irish poet.Born in Lancashire, England in 1952, of Irish parents, she moved to Ireland at the age of 5, and was brought up in the Dingle Gaeltacht and in Nenagh, County Tipperary. Her uncle is Monsignor Pádraig Ó Fiannachta of An Daingean, the leading authority alive on...
, John Hartley Williams
John Hartley Williams
John Hartley Williams is a British poet who was born in Cheshire and grew up in London. He studied at Nottingham University and later at the University of London. His poetry book Blues was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. He was a judge of the 2007 Poetry on the Lake poetry competition...
, Harry Clifton
Harry Clifton
Harry Clifton is an Irish poet. He was born in Dublin, but has lived in Africa and Asia, as well as more recently in continental Europe...
, Ruth Padel
Ruth Padel
Ruth Sophia Padel is a British poet, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Zoological Society of London. She also writes non-fiction and more recently fiction, broadcasts on wildlife, poetry and literature for BBC Radio 3 and 4, and is Writer in Residence at The Environment Institute,...
, Ken Smith
Ken Smith (poet)
Ken Smith was a British poet.-Life:He was son of a farm labourer, and he had an itinerant childhood...
, Kathleen Jamie
Kathleen Jamie
Kathleen Jamie FRSL is a Scottish poet, raised in Currie, Edinburgh. She gained an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh....
and Ammiel Alcalay
Ammiel Alcalay
Ammiel Alcalay is an American poet, scholar, critic, translator, and prose stylist. Born and raised in Boston, he is a first-generation American, son of Sephardic Jews from São Tomé and Príncipe...
, as translators. Hughes's translations of six poems by Abdulah Sidran
Abdulah Sidran
Abdulah Sidran , often referred to by his nickname Avdo, is a Bosnian writer and poet who is renowned for his screenplays and dramas.-Works:...
for the anthology were among the last works he completed before his death in 1998.
Stephen Schwartz
Stephen Schwartz
Stephen Schwartz may refer to:*Stephen Schwartz , American musical theater and film lyricist and composer*Stephen Suleyman Schwartz , journalist, political author, and historian...
describes the anthology as one of the most important volumes in English brought into print as a result of the worldwide attention paid to the Bosnian war, observing how it reflects the issues embedded in the conflict through a comparison of the works by Abdulah Sidran and Izet Sarajlic
Izet Sarajlic
Izet Sarajlić was a Bosnian historian of philosophy, essayist, translator and poet. Sarajlić was Bosnia and Herzegovina's best-known poet after World War II, and the former Yugoslavia's most widely translated poet....
. Angus Calder
Angus Calder
Angus Lindsay Ritchie Calder was a Scottish academic, writer, historian, educator and literary editor with a background in English literature, politics and cultural studies.-Education:...
commends Agee's decision to include include not just "war poems" and "anti-war poems", only half of them written after the break-up of Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
began in 1991, but also prose accounts including descriptions of Sarajevo
Sarajevo
Sarajevo |Bosnia]], surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans....
during the years of siege by the poet Semezdin Mehmedinovic
Semezdin Mehmedinovic
Semezdin Mehmedinović is a Bosnian writer, filmmaker, and magazine editor.After studying Librarianship and Comparative Literature in Sarajevo, he worked as an editor of "Lica" and "Valter" magazines, which served as a voice of opposition to the ruling Communist regime...
and a memoir from the death camps by Rezak Hukanovic.
Family background
Chris Agee’s father, Robert Cecil Agee (1932–2002), was born in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, to William Herman Agee (1899–1954), of Shelbyville, Tennessee
Shelbyville, Tennessee
Shelbyville is a city in Bedford County, Tennessee, United States. It had a local population of 16,105 residents at the 2000 census. Shelbyville, the county seat of Bedford County, was laid out in 1810 and incorporated in 1819...
, and Elsie Elizabeth Agee (1900–1988), née Burgess, of Manchester, Massachusetts. He attended Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, where he took (along with John McPhee
John McPhee
John Angus McPhee is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, widely considered one of the pioneers of creative nonfiction....
) Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
’s first creative writing course, and wrote an unpublished novel, David. He also served in the US Navy’s Reserve Officer Training Corps, where he shipped for one summer with Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Henry Rumsfeld is an American politician and businessman. Rumsfeld served as the 13th Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford, and as the 21st Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He is both the youngest and the oldest person to...
. After pursuing a literary career for several years following graduation in 1954, he attended Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...
(1961–63), and practiced law in and around New York City until his death.
Agee’s mother, Anne Marie Agee (b 1930), née Stanford, was born in West Hollywood, California
West Hollywood, California
West Hollywood, a city of Los Angeles County, California, was incorporated on November 29, 1984, with a population of 34,399 at the 2010 census. 41% of the city's population is made up of gay men according to a 2002 demographic analysis by Sara Kocher Consulting for the City of West Hollywood...
, to Ralph Stanford (1903–1931) of Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, and Ruth Stanford, née Inman, of Buffalo, New York
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
. She attended Stephens College
Stephens College
Stephens College is a women's college located in Columbia, Missouri. It is the second oldest female educational establishment that is still a women's college in the United States. It was founded on August 24, 1833 as the Columbia Female Academy. In 1856, David H. Hickman turned it into a college,...
, Missouri, and the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
. She worked periodically as a secretary and then a legal secretary.
Agee’s uncle, William Cameron Agee (b 1937), is a prominent art historian of twentieth-century American modernism. His sister, Elizabeth Macon Agee (b 1963), lives in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York.
Agee’s other uncle, Thomas Stanford (b 1928), is a world authority on the Mexican baroque in music and Mexico’s many indigenous musical traditions. He attended Juilliard in New York City, moving in 1955 to Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
, where he still lives. Over 50 years, he conducted more than 250 field trips to indigenous Native American communities.
The surname Agee, apparently of American spelling, is of Huguenot origin and can be traced back to a direct ancestor, Mathieu Agé, who appears on a manifest of an immigrant ship from London, and who was one of a group of Huguenots who founded a French colony at Mannikintown, Virginia, then part of the frontier, in 1700. The name remains largely confined to Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama, and is now found equally among Americans of European and mainly African-American origin.
Poetry
- In the New Hampshire Woods, (The Dedalus Press, 1992) ISBN 9781873790212
- First Light (The Dedalus Press, 2003) ISBN 1904556027
- Next to Nothing (Salt PublishingSalt PublishingSalt Publishing is an independent publisher whose origins date back to 1990 when poet John Kinsella launched Salt Magazine in Western Australia. The journal rapidly developed an international reputation as a leading publisher of new poetry and poetics...
, 2009) ISBN 9781844714896 (shortlisted for the Ted HughesTed HughesEdward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...
Award for New Work in Poetry)
Criticism
Further Reviews
It is due to the skill of the poet that one feels at one with the grief in these poems; but the theme and structure of this book, as well as the humanity within, will ensure that Next to Nothing breaks the boundaries of mere literary work. Here, Chris Agee the poet has moved beyond the realm of poetry to embrace a wider audience.
Wake Forest University Press continues its impressive dedication to Irish poetry ... with The New North: Contemporary Poetry from Northern Ireland. ...[T]he poems and poets offer an insightful, lyrical look into the psyche of 21st-century Northern Ireland.
Global attention to the Bosnian war has brought a number of other useful volumes into print in English. Perhaps the most important among such titles is Scar On the Stone, edited by Chris Agee, which includes an excellent and representative selection of recent Bosnian poetry, much of it directly influenced by the 1992-95 war. I would recommend the book, which includes excerpts and commentaries by Mak and by Francis R. Jones, without qualification, and will only indicate two writers I believe deserve special attention, in that they represent two sides of Sarajevo literary life.
External links
- Review in World Literature Today
- Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment
- Aspects 2009 Irish Literature Festival
- Franco-Irish Literary Festival
- Poetry and War (Eurozine)
- "Under Empty Skies Falconers Weep" II. Modern Bosnian literature (Contemporary Poetry Review)
- Scar on the Stone: Contemporary Poetry from Bosnia, a review originally published by Publishers Weekly (Amazon)
- Irish Pages
- Goodreads Profile