Poems

The poems published in Joyce's own lifetime are collected in a new edition, with an introduction and notes by scholar Clare Hutton.

It is only James Joyce's towering genius as a novelist that has led to his comparative neglect as a poet. And yet his poems not only occupy a pivotal position in Joyce's career, they are also magnificently assured achievements in their own right. Chamber Music is an extraordinary debut, fusing a broad swathe of styles with characteristically sharp irony and joyful verbal exuberance. Pomes Penyeach confronts painful personal issues of adultery, jealousy and betrayal and so paves the way for the more detached and fully realised treatment of these feelings in Joyce's masterpiece, Ulysses.

Also included here is Ecce Puer, written for his new-born grandson, as well as juvenilia, satires, translations, limericks, and a parody of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.