This Landscape’s Fierce Embrace

The poet and playwright Francis Harvey, born in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, has spent most of his life in County Donegal, where he has published an extraordinary range of poetry and served as a mentor for many other poets. This book serves as a tribute to him and his literary achievement. His admirers from Ireland and around the world have collaborated in a collection that includes paintings and photographs of the Donegal landscape about which he writes so movingly, personal essays and poems celebrating his poetry, and critical essays that explore Harvey’s major themes in greater depth. Although Harvey’s poems have received critical acclaim – his poem, ‘Heron’ won the 1989 Guardian and World Wildlife Fund Poetry Competition; he was the recipient of the Peterloo Poets Prize; and went on to be elected to the prestigious affiliation of Irish artists, Aosdána – this is the long overdue first book-length critical study of his work.