Speculating: Patrick McGuinness interviews Paul Muldoon

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Notes

1. ‘Ceangal translates as joining or connection in Old Irish and describes internal rhyme structures in the literary tradition. The word is also related to the envoi of a poem’ (Paul Muldoon).

2. Cynghanedd ‘(lit. “Harmony”) an intricate system of sound-chiming within a line of verse … found in rich complexity in the poetry of the medieval period [in Wales] … The system involves the serial repetition of consonants in precise relationship to the main accents in a line, together with the use of internal rhymes’(The New Companion to the Literature of Wales, ed. Meic Stephens (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1998), 139). A number of contemporary Welsh poets use cynghanedd in their work; indeed, there has been a marked revival in strict metre poetry in Wales during recent decades.