The finest music - Maurice Riordan

In a series of timeless and modern-day renditions, Maurice Riordan brilliantly introduces us to the poems that founded Ireland's rich literature. Memorable and accessible, these early lyrics are presented in their classic incarnations by literary giants from both sides of the Irish Sea: in examples by W. H. Auden, Flann O'Brien, Alfred Lord Tennyson, John Montague, Robert Graves and Frank O'Connor. But the anthology is much more than a survey of canonical texts; through a series of specially commissioned poems, fresh eyes are brought to bear on these ancient poems: by Seamus Heaney and Eilan N Chuilleanin, by Paul Muldoon and Kathleen Jamie, by Ciaran Carson and Christopher Reid, and many others. The experience is enhanced still further by the enabling hand of Riordan himself, in a sweep of exquisite translations of his own made especially for this publication. Unforgettable and inspirational, a book for giving and for keeping: The Finest Music by some of the art-form's finest players.

Maurice Riordan was born in 1953 in Lisgoold, Co. Cork. His first collection, A Word from the Loki (1995) was nominated for the T. S. Eliot Prize, as was his most recent, The Water Stealer (2013). Floods (2000) was a Book of the Year in both the Sunday Times and Irish Times, and The Holy Land (2007) won the Michael Hartnett Award. He lives in London and has taught at Imperial College and Goldsmiths College, and is currently Professor of Poetry at Sheffield Hallam
University. In 2013 Riordan was appointed Editor of Poetry Review.