Between The ‘Planter & The Gael:’ A Cross-Community Education In Poetry

This 4-article dissertation mines the sources and outworking’s of my position as a scholar-poet, one who has attempted to steer a dissenting course between the twin pillars of Ulster Protestant Unionism and Irish Catholic Nationalism - between ‘The Planter & The Gael’ - the Scylla and Charybdis of the Troubled sectarian divide in my native Northern Ireland. In so doing, this dissertation focuses on the work of some of the key cross-community poet-mentors whose personal lives and written works, especially their poems, have been a (quite literal) education for me, both inside and outside the classroom, thereby influencing my own professional and published work.