James Joyce is commonly known as an innovator of both the short story and the novel, while his verse writings have received scarce critical attention. Actually, Joyce composed poetry during his whole literary life, although with variable intensity: it might be noticed that his artistic vocation found its first expression precisely in poetry, with “Et tu, Healy” (see Ellmann 1982, p. 33), and the first work he published was a collection, Chamber Music.

Joyce’s production in verse was constant even during the composition of his novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Thirteen lyrics, written between 1904 and 1924, were collected under the title

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