‘No future in this. Alas yes’ (Beckett, Worstward Ho). The deaths in recent years of Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Ciaran Carson, Eavan Boland, Thomas Kinsella and John Montague represent a moment of dramatic generational change in Irish poetry. What manner of landscape do the departed poets leave behind? Who are the dominant figures today, who are the younger figures staking a claim? Recent landmarks in Irish poetry include The Poems of Seamus Heaney and Eric Falci’s Cambridge History of Irish Poetry, but what is the everyday life of Irish poetry far from these monumental gestures? Alas Yes is a conference devoted to the present and future of Irish poetry in the light of its storied recent past. Among the themes on which papers are invited are: poetic generations and reputations reconsidered; centres and regions; translation and the languages of Irish poetry; the persistence of the avant-garde; lost traditions and their recovery; Irish poetry on and off the page; the state of Irish poetry criticism. We invite abstracts to be be sent for papers exploring these and other related themes to David Wheatley (d.wheatley@abdn.ac.uk) by Friday 30 October 2026.
Call for Papers: Alas Yes: Irish Poetry After Heaney, 20-21 February 2027