Further Reading
- Benjamin, Bret, “Dirty Politics and Dirty Protest: Resistance and the Trope of Sanitation in Northern Ireland,” Literature Interpretation Theory 10, no. 1 (1999): 63-86. (Interprets Mahon's “Courtyards in Delft” in terms of the contrast between filth and cleanliness; links those categories to various communities in Ireland.)
- Byrne, John, “Derek Mahon: A Commitment to Change,” The Crane Bag 6, no. 1 (1982): 62-72. (Focuses on instances of ambivalence in Mahon's poetry, highlighting tensions between the individual, solitude, and the unique on one hand, and society, community, and the mundane on the other.)
- Haughton, Hugh, “On Sitting Down to Read ‘A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford’ Once Again,” The Cambridge Quarterly 31, no. 2 (June 2002): 183-98. (Revisits Mahon's best-known poem through the lens of Mahon's 30-year career. Haughton contends that the poem has increased in resonance and notes that Mahon's later work demonstrates the poet's development of similar themes.)
- Haughton, Hugh, “‘The bright garbage on the incoming wave’: Rubbish in the Poetry of Derek Mahon,” Textual Practice 16, no. 2 (summer 2002): 323-43. (Reads the trope of garbage or waste in Mahon's poetry as a reflection on literary recycling, as a symptom of his concern for the marginalized, and as an indication of his interest in the distinction between the transient and the transcendent.)
- Kendall, Judy, “Looking at Derek Mahon from Japan,” P. N. Review 29, no. 1 (September-October 2002): 12-13. (Compares Mahon's poem “The Snow Party” to the actual practices of Japanese tea ceremonies, finding several factual inaccuracies but a correctness in sensibility.)
- Marten, Harry, “‘Singing the darkness into the light’: Reflections on Recent Irish Poetry,” New England Review 3, no. 1 (autumn 1980): 141-51. (Considers the poetry of Seamus Heaney, Thomas Kinsella, Michael Longley, and Mahon as examples of Irish modern poetry; notes Mahon's attention to craft and his frequent use of juxtaposition.)
- McElroy, James, “Derek Mahon's ‘Rage for Order,’” Northwest Review 24, no. 1 (1986): 93-101. (Discusses the connection between place and time in Mahon's poetry, and the cycle of violence that continues throughout history.)
- McGuinness, Arthur E., Review of Poems: 1962-1978, Eire-Ireland 16, no. 1 (1981): 135-40. (Sees in Mahon's revisions and new works from Poems: 1962-1978 a movement toward greater optimism and smoother verse.)
- McGuinness, Arthur E., “Cast a Wary Eye: Derek Mahon's Classical Perspective,” Yearbook of English Studies 17 (1987): 128-42. (Highlights Mahon's debt to Augustan aesthetics of the early eighteenth century, both formally, with respect to Mahon's attention to poetic technique, and philosophically, as reflected in Mahon's suspicion of modern culture and distrust of the modern emphasis on self.)
- Scammell, William, “Derek Mahon Interviewed,” Poetry Review 81, no. 2 (summer 1991): 4-6. (Asks Mahon about his early influences, education, relationship to Northern Ireland, and work in journalism and the theater.)
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