The Watchful Heart - A New Generation of Irish Poets - Poems and Essays
Edited and presented by JOAN McBREEN

“Well-planned and carefully assembled, The Watchful Heart adds to the pleasures of all good collections a distinctive bonus: as readers we get to hear each poet’s voice in, so to speak, two mediums: poetry and reflective prose. It gives a fascinating cross-section of Irish poetry at the present time.”

Patricia Coughlan
School of English,
University College, Cork

The Watchful Heart – A New Generation of Irish Poets – Poems and Essays is an anthology of the work of twenty-four Irish poets born in the last fifty years. It contains biographical and bibliographical details of each contributor, together with photographs. All poets included have published at least two collections of poetry. Poetry in Irish with translations is also included. None of the poetry in this anthology has previously been published in collection form and most of the essays are published here for the first time. McBreen’s anthology The White Page/ An Bhileog Bhán: Twentieth-Century Irish Women Poets (Salmon Poetry, 1999) is now in its third reprint.

The poets featured in The Watchful Heart are:

Pat Boran, Mary Branley, Patrick Chapman, Louis de Paor, Anne Fitzgerald, Leontia Flynn, Margaret Galvin, Alan Gillis, Kevin Higgins, Gearóid Mac Lochlainn, John McAuliffe, Mary Montague, Kate Newmann, Nuala Ní Chonchúir, John O’Donnell, Mary O’Donoghue, Paul Perry, Justin Quinn, Eileen Sheehan, Peter Sirr, Cherry Smyth, Damian Smyth, David Wheatley, and Joseph Woods.

Joan McBreen is from Sligo. She divides her time between Tuam and Renvyle, County Galway. Her poetry collections are: The Wind Beyond the Wall (Story Line Press, 1990), A Walled Garden in Moylough (Story Line Press and Salmon Poetry, 1995), Winter in the Eye – New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry, 2003) and Heather Island (Salmon Poetry, 2009). She was awarded an MA from University College, Dublin in 1997. Her anthology The White Page / An Bhileog Bhán – Twentieth-Century Irish Women Poets was published by Salmon in 1999 and is in its third reprint. Her poetry is published widely in Ireland and abroad and has been broadcast, anthologised and translated into many languages. Her CD The Long Light on the Land – Selected Poems, read to a background of traditional Irish airs and classical music, was produced by Ernest Lyons Productions, Castlebar, County Mayo in 2004. She has given readings and talks in many universities in the USA including Emory, Villanova, De Paul (Chicago), Cleveland, Lenoir Rhynne, N.C. and the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Together with her ongoing involvement with Irish literary festivals such as the Yeats Summer School, Clifden Arts Week, Listowel Writers’ Week and The Cúirt International Festival of Literature, since 2007 she has been Literary Advisor and co-ordinator of the Oliver St. John Gogarty Literary Festival at Renvyle House Hotel, Connemara, Co. Galway.