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Chapter 13 - Poetry and Place

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2022

Malcolm Sen
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
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Summary

Irish poetry’s articulation of and emplotment within a spatial matrix is one of its governing rubrics, whether one tracks a literary-historical genealogy from medieval dinnseanchas poetry or contemporary reflexes of that tradition. This essay considers how Irish poets refract genres of English landscape and pastoral poetry and imagines a map of the island of Ireland as a contiguous or palimpsestic series of writerly domains – with Yeats hovering over Sligo, Ní Dhomhnaill over Kerry, Longley over Mayo, Meehan over Dublin, and so on. The chapter examines the poetics of space and place within particular rural, urban, domestic, or public contexts and reads Irish poetry’s emplacement within a regional, national, or colonial frame. Ireland has a long tradition of pastoral, topographical, and nature writings, but Eric Falci asserts that “this isn’t to suggest that all Irish poetry is topographically minded or concerned to locate itself with geographical precision.” Rather it is a call to recognize that “place” “exists both materially and conceptually in a ceaseless dialectical toggle with ‘space.’”

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Poetry and Place
  • Edited by Malcolm Sen, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
  • Book: A History of Irish Literature and the Environment
  • Online publication: 14 July 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108780322.014
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  • Poetry and Place
  • Edited by Malcolm Sen, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
  • Book: A History of Irish Literature and the Environment
  • Online publication: 14 July 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108780322.014
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Poetry and Place
  • Edited by Malcolm Sen, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
  • Book: A History of Irish Literature and the Environment
  • Online publication: 14 July 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108780322.014
Available formats
×