Cultural Crosscurrents: Poetry as a Dialogue Between Ireland and the United States

Abstract

This paper explores the evolving transatlantic dialogue between Irish and American poetry from the early twentieth century to the present, focusing on how shared experiences of migration, colonial history, and democratic aspiration have shaped their literary identities. It examines the influence of W.B. Yeats’s symbolism and nationalism on American modernists, and how Irish poets such as Seamus Heaney and Eavan Boland later engaged with American themes of individuality and self-expression. Through this lens, poetry emerges as a creative meeting ground where cultural displacement is transformed into dialogue and renewal. The study argues that both Irish and American poets turn to language and landscape to negotiate questions of belonging, history, and identity—transforming memory into a space of exchange rather than division. By reading these poetic traditions as mutually reflective, the paper reveals how transatlantic currents of imagination sustain an ongoing conversation between two nations bound by their struggles for voice, freedom, and artistic self-definition.