Chapter 13 - Poetry and Its Audiences: Club, Street, Ballad

Summary

Nineteenth-century Irish poetry, particularly ballad poetry, was often performed indoors and out as recitation or song. Audiences and readers varied and publications ranged from cheap broadsheets to expensive journals, edited collections or slim volumes published by Irish, English or Scottish publishers. Following the example of Moore’s popular Irish Melodies, theme, rhythm and verse-form, celebratory or nostalgic, could be shaped by older poems in Irish or by traditional tunes, many of them collected and published, and adapted to express differing personal, political and religious sentiments. Poets responsive to classical models, European Romanticism and English poets such as Tennyson could incorporate ballad forms and traditional and popular themes into a more ambitious poetics, aiming at a wider audience. Young Ireland balladists and generous-spirited journal and anthology editors, Catholic and Protestant, sensitive to sectarian and poetic diversity and different audiences, attempted to bring their readers together in a shared national culture.