Irish Poetry since 1950 is a survey of poetry, from Northern Ireland, the Republic, Britain, and the US. The five chapters of the book cover the 1950s, the 1960s, the early troubled period to 1976, the 1980s and the 1990s. Each poet is placed firmly within his or her historical and social contexts, with an emphasis on the response to the processes of modernization, the representation of violence, poetic form, and gender.