This is the first full-length study of the period of intense poetic activity in Belfast known as the Ulster Renaissance. It is a readable, jargon-free literary history which investigates the early friendships of poets Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, James Simmons, and Paul Muldoon - commonly referred to as the 'Belfast Group' - in the years before the major onset of violence in Northern Ireland. - ;This is the first full-length study of the extraordinary period of intense poetic activity in Belfast known as the Ulster Renaissance - a time when young Northern Irish poets such as Se