Thomas Kinsella – författare

The Táin Bó Cuailnge, centre-piece of the eighth-century Ulster cycle of heroic tales, is Ireland's greatest epic. It tells the story of a great cattle-raid, the invasion of Ulster by the armies of Medb and Ailill, queen and king of Connacht, and their allies, seeking to carry off the great Brown Bull of Cuailnge. The hero of the tale is Cuchulainn, the Hound of Ulster, who resists the invaders single-handed while Ulster's warriors lie sick. Thomas Kinsella presents a complete and living version of the story. His translation is based on the partial texts in two medieval manuscripts, with elements from other versions, and adds a group of related stories which prepare for the action of the Táin. Illustrated with brush drawings by Louis le Brocquy, this edition provides a combination of medieval epic and modern art.

This anthology presents the Irish tradition as a unity: verse in Irish and English, usually regarded separately, are shown as elements in a shared and often painful history. The selection is in three parts: it begins with earliest, pre-Christian times and the first poetry in English from the fourteenth century; moves on to Irish bardic poetry and English poetry in the era of Swift and Goldsmith; and closes with nineteenth- and twentieth-century poets, from Davis, Mangan, Yeats, and Ferguson to Austin Clarke, Patrick Kavanagh, and Seamus Heaney.

To mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday and its commemoration in Derry in January 2022, Carcanet is proud to publish a new edition of Thomas Kinsella's Butcher's Dozen, with a prologue from the Saville Report, an epilogue from the Prime Minister's House of Commons apology, and a new author's note.

Thomas Kinsella stands apart in modern Irish poetry. His work, employing traditional and modernist elements in individual poems and open sequences, deals in a range of subjects from the most intense and psychic privacy to political satire and social commentary, from love and the enabling feminine to metaphysical speculation in a variety of earthly settings. Kinsella is a city poet. Born in Dublin in 1928, he attended University College, and entered the Irish Civil Service, but resigned from the Department of Finance in 1965 for a career in poetry in the United States. He published from the beginning with the Dolmen Press, later co-publishing his poetry and translations with Oxford University Press. His translations from the Irish include the Iron-Age prose epic "The Tain" and "Poems of the Dispossessed: 1600-1900". He is editor of the "New Oxford Book of Irish Verse".

Thomas Kinsella is among the most distinguished modern poets. His work over fifty years has challenged and enriched the poetic landscape. Rooted in locality, Kinsella's poetry employs myth and modernism in explorations that range from intense lyricism to political satire and social commentary. This representative selection of the poetry he has published from 1956 to 2006 invites readers to explore the range of his poetic world.