Ep. 15 - Panel 3B - Part 2 - ‘An island at the centre of the world?' - Ellen Howley (DCU)

NPPSH Conference

Kristin Morrison, lamenting the amnesia surrounding Ireland’s “ancient nautical heritage” (111), asks, “how does the fact that Ireland is surrounded by water manifest itself in contemporary fiction? […] how does that fiction conceive of a ‘mainland’?” (111). Critical attention towards the representation of Ireland as an island in literature has been lacking until relatively recently. Scholars from many disciplines have begun to redress this through a consideration of Irish coasts in projects such as UCC’s Deep Maps and UCD’s Cultural Value of Coastlines. This paper continues some of these conversations by turning specifically to contemporary Irish poetry and interrogating how Ireland figures as an island in the work of important poets. Using recent work published in Island Studies Journal which posits that islands are presented through sensory and spatial experiences (Graziadei et al.), this paper examines the work of Seamus Heaney and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin within a framework which analyses the effects of these sensory and spatial cues. It provides a new perspective on two canonical writers, shifting attention from a land-based, rural outlook by situating Heaney’s and Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry within important conversations around the study of islands. It will discuss, visual, aural and spatial conceptions of islands in the work of these two poets to come to an understanding of how Ireland’s ‘islandness’ is presented. Crucially, in asking these questions of Heaney’s and Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry, larger questions about the island itself are implicitly addressed. Ireland is the world’s 20th largest island and in examining what its island status means, we can begin to see and hear Ireland anew. - Graziadei, Daniel et al. ‘On Sensing Island Spaces and the Spatial Practice of Island-Making: Introducing Island Poetics, Part I’. Island Studies Journal 12.2 (2017): 239–252. Print. - Morrison, Kristin. ‘Ireland and the Sea: Where Is the “Mainland”?’ Back to the Present, Forward to the Past: Irish Writing and History since 1798. Ed. Patricia A. Lynch, Joachim Fischer, and Brian Coates. Vol. 2. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006. 111–123. Print. Ellen Howley is a PhD student in the School of English at Dublin City University. She has previously studied in UCD, the Sorbonne, Paris and the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on contemporary Irish and Caribbean poetry and is concentrated on the work of Nobel Laureates Seamus Heaney (Ireland) and Derek Walcott (St. Lucia) as well as current Professor for Poetry Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin (Ireland) and Poet Laureate Lorna Goodison (Jamaica). She has published in the Irish Literary Supplement.