Resumen
This essay reads Harry Clifton?s poetry as a body of work that illustrates the poet?s engagement with and detachment from the poetry of his peers. It notes Clifton?s chosen routes of travel in Africa, Asia, and Europe, his interest in Ireland and its elsewheres and his endeavours to find an ideal distance to write from. It also elucidates his Irish subject matter, his involvement with journals, editors and publishers as well as his critical readings of 20th-century Irish poetry. The essay engages with important strands of current critical thinking that have sought to examine a post-nationalist Ireland with Clifton being seen as a bridge between an older and younger circle of writers. Neither hermetic nor sociable, Clifton emerges as a poet engaging with concentric circles of Irish poetry on his own terms.