Close to the Next Moment ─ Interviews from a Changing Ireland

A collection of interviews featuring Irish poets, artists, fiction writers, and playwrights, this record chronicles how these cultural leaders viewed their country in the first decade of the new millennium as economic collapse gathered pace and recurrent concerns gained a new urgency. Answering questions such as What are Irish values? How have they changed? and How do new cultural realities affect the old arts of language and image that have been so important in Irish tradition?, this account journeys across political divides and languages. Interviewees include Gerry Adams, Joyce Akpotor, Dorothy Cross, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, and Seamus Heaney, among many others.

Jody Allen Randolph is a former Mellon Fellow in the Humanities at the University College?Dublin; a former assistant dean of British Studies at St. John's College, Oxford; and a former professor at the University of California?Santa Barbara, the University College?Dublin, and Westmont College in Santa Barbara. She is the author of Eavan Bolan: A Critical Companion. She lives in Santa Barbara, California.