From the domestic upheavals of the 1916 Rising and the War of Independence, to the thwarted idealism of the Spanish Civil War and the unrelenting casualties of two World Wars. Ireland was embroiled in a brutal succession of conflicts in the first half of the twentieth century. Gathering together over three hundred poems by writers such as Francis Ledwidge, W.B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney, this groundbreaking anthology records the thoughts and experiences of Ireland's poets as soldiers, observers, protestors, and mourners. From patriotism to anger, passion to compassion, hope to regret, Earth Voices Whispering embraces the complex reality of a rich and unique period in Irish poetry.