Soundings: Leaving Certificate Poetry Interim Anthology

by Augustine Martin (Editor)

Soundings was first published in 1969. It was intended as an interim anthology of poetry for the Irish Leaving Certificate until such time as a more permanent volume could be devised. Twenty six years later it was replaced. In the meantime it had passed through the hands of hundreds of thousands of students in Ireland. Soundings might have been replaced but it was never fully forgotten. Old copies ended up with an individual personality honed out of manual annotations and thoughts, not all of them provided by the teacher. Scrawls in biro or pencil testified to the thoughts and daydreams many users. A surprising number of copies ended up in attics only to be rediscovered with delight many years later and to be given treasured status in new homes. One former student recalled how Soundings was the first school book to treat her as an adult. It made no concessions to the teenager. It didn't patronize. Its imagery was entirely in the poetry. The typography was appalling but the cover design still resonates. A decade after its demise, second hand copies of Soundings were fetching surprising prices. It was widely discussed in chat-rooms on the web. There were increasing demands for a reprint. So here is Soundings, in its original form just as you remember it. The same stony grey soil of Patrick Kavanagh's Monaghan; T.S. Eliot's same women who come and go talking of Michelangelo. Please enjoy once more!

Genres: Poetry, Ireland, Irish Literature

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

Reviews

[Trish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Macbeth, Soundings & Hard Times the memories of the BIG LC of '95 come flooding back.

[Rona · Rating 4 out of 5]

Along with Hamlet, This was one of my favorite text books from Secondary School.
I still have my school copy, complete with handwritten notes at the side of the pages. There are some wonderful poetry contained within.

[Eithne Searson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A trip down memory lane.

[Peter Donovan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Biased towards English classics but for many teenagers their first taste of the Dead Poets society that is the literary poetic canon.

[Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book about the weight and importance of poetic writing. For Irish school kids of a certain age it is both nostalgic and informative - a rare combination

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, what can you say about Soundings? Reading it again after all these years brought back a flood of memories of my old school, the wind whistling in through the draughty windows while our Leaving Cert English teacher tried to get us to grasp what Yeats meant by "beauty like a tightened bow." The collection definitely betrays the biases of its compiler - it's a scandal that there's only a single female poet, for example - but it's a relatively solid introduction to English-language poetry nonetheless, and I especially appreciate the inclusion of Thomas Kinsella who I still think is criminally underrated. Anyway, I think it was a great idea to republish the collection (complete with reproduction doodles on the cover!) and I look forward to popping in and out of it, and the memories it invokes, for a long time.

[Gerard Hoey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Soundings was an anthology of English litrature poetry first published in 1969 for the Irish Leaving Certificate (Second Level Education) . In the early part of the 21st Century, it was replaced when English as a subject was sadly dumbed down.
For those of us lucky to have experienced the beauty and depth of such variety of English language poets, it was a treasure! Who could forget: Miltons "Paradise Lost" Gerard Manley Hopkins "The Windhover" or Kavanagh's "Stony Grey Soil"? Magical.

[Annette Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great walk down memory lane, one of the few school books that I know I will return to again and again. This is a wonderful anthology of poetry encompassing everyone from Shakespeare to Patrick Kavanagh. Even now many years later reading the familiar words and lines I memorised takes me back.

[Rory · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the greatest anthologies of poetry ever compiled anywhere. Pity most of my teachers for Leaving Cert were never up to the job.

[Kieran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Painful at the time, but nostalgia has given it a certain glow :)

[Trena · Rating 4 out of 5]

How lovely it was to get my hands on this book .It was so nice to relive my past. I so love Irish poets.