“Those events [of 1968], which began as a social protest and degenerated into a mere religious war, have become increasingly depressing in from and outcome; but this is only the start. Battles have been lost, but a war remains to be won. The war I mean is not, of course, between Protestant and Catholic but between the fluidity of a possible life (poetry is a great lubricant) and the rigor mortis of archaic postures, political and cultural.”Derek Mahon, 'Poetry in Northern Ireland', Twentieth Century Studies 4 (Nov 1970): 93.
