The Poetry of Ireland Audiobook

About the Authors

Jacques Roy is a audio narrator and actor, known for The Lower Angels and Room and Board.

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) was an Anglo-Irish priest, author, journalist, political pamphleteer, and poet. He is primarily known as a prose satirist for such works as “A Modest Proposal.” The dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral from 1713, he was considered Dublin’s foremost citizen.

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) was an Irish poet and dramatist. Born and educated in Dublin, he studied poetry in his youth and, from an early age, was fascinated by Irish legend and the occult. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival. He is generally considered one of the twentieth century’s key English language poets. He was a Symbolist poet, in that he used allusive imagery and symbolic structures throughout his career. In 1923 he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as “inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation.” He was the first Irishman so honored. He is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929).

John Millington Synge (1871—1909) was a poetic dramatist of great power and a leading figure in the Irish literary renaissance. After studying at Trinity College and at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin, he pursued further studies from 1893 to 1897 in Germany, Italy, and France. His travels along the Irish west coast inspired his most famous play, The Playboy of the Western World.