Antigone: a new version

After the death of Oedipus, his sons turn on each other. When both are killed, the inflexible Creon becomes King of Thebes. While the loyal Eteocles is buried with due honour, Creon orders that the body of his rebellious brother Polyneices should be left to rot. But his sister Antigone refuses to let this happen. Sophocles’ great play dramatises the resulting conflict, a battle of wills which leads to inevitable tragedy. Antigone was a set text on the new Leaving Certificate syllabus in Ireland. This edition includes short essays by Brendan Kennelly, Terence Brown and Kathleen McCracken. This edition is now out of print but it is included in full in When Then Is Now: Three Greek Tragedies.

About the Author :
Brendan Kennelly is one of Ireland’s most distinguished and best loved poets, as well as a renowned teacher and cultural commentator. Born in 1936 in Ballylongford, Co. Kerry, he was Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College, Dublin for over 30 years, and retired from teaching in 2005. He now lives in Listowel, Co. Kerry. He has published more than 30 books of poetry, including Familiar Strangers: New & Selected Poems 1960-2004 (2004), which includes the whole of his book-length poem The Man Made of Rain (1998). He is best-known for two controversial poetry books, Cromwell, published in Ireland in 1983 and in Britain by Bloodaxe in 1987, and his epic poem The Book of Judas (1991), which topped the Irish bestsellers list: a shorter version was published by Bloodaxe in 2002 as The Little Book of Judas. His third epic, Poetry My Arse (1995), did much to outdo these in notoriety. All these remain available separately from Bloodaxe, along with his more recent titles: Glimpses (2001), Martial Art (2003), Now (2006), Reservoir Voices (2009), The Essential Brendan Kennelly: Selected Poems, edited by Terence Brown and Michael Longley, with audio CD (2011), and Guff (2013). His Journey into Joy: Selected Prose, edited by Åke Persson, was published by Bloodaxe in 1994, along with Dark Fathers into Light, a critical anthology on his work edited by Richard Pine. John McDonagh’s critical study Brendan Kennelly: A Host of Ghosts was published in The Liffey Press’s Contemporary Irish Writers series in 2004.

Review :
Brendan Kennelly’s new version of Sophocles’ Antigone is probably the most substantial Irish drama since W.B. Yeats was writing…This is, of course, a political tragedy. Antigone, in deciding to bury her disgraced dead brother, is playing true to the laws of the gods and to the instincts of the family. But she is playing against the man-made law of Creon, who believes, as he must, that civil law and order must be the saving of society in Thebes.