Elizabeth Bishop

One of the most popular and absorbing writers on our Leaving Certificate course is the American poet Elizabeth Bishop (the selection includes 'The Fish', 'Filling Station', 'Sestina' and 'The Bight'). A fascinating recent book edited by Alice Quinn, Edgar Allan Poe & the Juke-Box, is in our Library and puts together many of her uncollected poems, drafts and fragments. It is reviewed interestingly by Gillian White in the London Review of Books here. As White writes, 'Bishop could mull over a draft for more than a decade in wait for the right line or word,' and 'as Bishop says in one of her prose drafts, "it takes great skill to make poetry seem natural".'