This text provides a discussion of poetry's relation to place, and its role in the self-definition of communities as the monolithic ideologies of the nation-states fragment into a mosaic of peoples, languages, cultures and between-cultures. The text ranges from the Elizabethan period to the 1990s.
Part 1 Centre and periphery in historical perspective: topos, locus, place - the rhetoric, poetics and politics of place 1500-1800, Lothar Fietz; at the margins - outside figures in 19th-century poetry, Robin Young; province and metropolis, centre and periphery - some critical terms re-examined, Hans-Werner Ludwig. Part 2 The places of contemporary poetry: "the centre cannot hold" - place in modern English poetry, Jeremy Hooker; prints of Wales - contemporary Welsh poetry in English, M. Wynn Thomas; the multi-screen cinema - poetry in Welsh 1950-90, Gareth Alban Davies; beyond the Caledonian antisyzygy - contemporary Scottish poetry in between cultures, Ursula Kimpel; poetry in Scottish Gaelic 1945-92, Derick S. Thomson; the place of writing and the writing of place in contemporary Irish poetry in English, Robert F. Garratt; and not just for Pharaoh's daughter - Irish language poetry today, Sabina Sharkey. Part 3 Five poets: Charles Tomlinson - an Eden in Arden, Rainer Lengeler; Tony Harrison and the poetry of Leeds, Raymond Hargreaves; Waldo Williams - in two fields, Ned Thomas; the poetry of Gillian Clarke, K. E. Smith; "The binding breath" - island and community in the poetry of George Mackay Brown, David Annwn.