Ulster’s Other Poetry proves that the people of Ulster have never been humourless or dour. Far from it. With its sparkling variety of rhymes, songs and humorous poems from every tradition of the province, the book demonstrates that those who dwell in the northern quarter of Ireland have their own unique take on the strange ways of the world, coupled with a whole-hearted appreciation of good fun.

Spanning over three centuries of Ulster’s past, this anthology is full of comic pleasures. In its pages, country ballads jostle with city satires, songs aimed at children meet jingles advertising bread, and university light verses encounter the folk-poems of the Antrim weavers.

Each poem comes with background information about its origins, and each page is illuminated by Hector McDonnell’s wonderful, witty drawings. This book is destined to become a much-thumbed, much-loved companion.

JOHN WYSE JACKSON and HECTOR McDONNELL have also worked together on Ireland’s Other Poetry: Anonymous to Zozimus and Ulster’s Other Poetry: Rhymes and Songs of the Province, both published by The Lilliput Press.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

John Wyse Jackson, for years a director of John Sandoe’s Bookshop in London’s Chelsea, now lives in County Wexford with his family. His books include John Stanislaus Joyce: The Life of James Joyce’s Father (with Peter Costello), Flann O’Brien at War and We All Want To Change the World: A Life of John Lennon.

Hector McDonnell is one of Ireland’s leading artists, exhibiting in New York and Hong Kong, as well as in Ireland, England, Germany and France, with museum retrospectives in Belfast and Darmstadt. He has illustrated several books of Irish ballads, most notably Ireland’s Other Poetry and the prizewinning The Night Before Larry Was Stretched. His original passion, however, was for history and archaeology, ignited by an excavation on the island of Kythera in Greece, sketching reconstructions of decorated Minoan pottery on site. He has since published several books of drawings and etchings, including A Journey to Tsaparang and A Chinese Journey.
He is also author of The Wild Geese of the Antrim MacDonnells (1996), and an illustrated series, The Holy Hills and Sacred Places of Ireland, The Irish Round Towers and St Patrick. Ireland’s Other History was conceived soon after Lilliput’s publication of Ireland’s Other Poetry in 2007.