Overview

Soundings was first published in 1969. It was intended as an ‘interim’ anthology of poetry for the 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 patronise. 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 Michaelangelo. Please enjoy once more!

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Augustine Martin was one of a small handful of pioneers who revolutionised the teaching of English in the 1960. His energy and enthusiasm as an educator were imparted originally as a secondary teacher at Mount St Joseph’s in Roscrea and later as lecturer, subsequently as professor of Anglo Irish Literature at Unversity College Dublin. Throughout his life he encouraged his students to commit to their own intellectual freedom. His ambition in Soundings was, he wrote, ‘to appeal to every teacher’s core and every student’s potential’. Soundings has endured beyond its editor’s early death in 1995.

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