Constitutions of Self in Contemporary Irish Poetry : ‘Into the Light’

Constitutions of Self in Contemporary Irish Poetry explores the figure of the lyrical self in the work of six contemporary Irish poets: Paul Muldoon, Vona Groarke, Sinéad Morrissey, Caitríona O’Reilly, Alan Gillis and Nick Laird. By focusing on the self, this study offers the first sustained exploration of what is arguably one of the most distinctive features of Irish poetry. Readings utilise the latest theories of the lyric filtered through the work of such philosophers as Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Slavoj Žižek, Giorgio Agamben and Zygmunt Bauman, and connect an interdisciplinary approach with attention to the operations of the poetic text to bring out aspects of the self in Irish writing that have been given only cursory critical attention so far. Constitutions of Self in Contemporary Irish Poetry explores the figure of the lyrical self in the work of six contemporary Irish poets: Paul Muldoon, Vona Groarke, Sinead Morrissey, Caitriona OReilly, Alan Gillis and Nick Laird. By focusing on the self, this study offers the first sustained exploration of what is arguably one of the most distinctive features of Irish poetry. Readings utilise the latest theories of the lyric filtered through the work of such philosophers as Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Slavoj Zizek, Giorgio Agamben and Zygmunt Bauman, and connect an interdisciplinary approach with attention to the operations of the poetic text to bring out aspects of the self in Irish writing that have been given only cursory critical attention so far. Wit Pietrzak is a Professor of British and Irish Literature at the Institute of English Studies, University of odz, Poland. His main areas of interest are modernist and contemporary Anglophone poetry as well as theory and philosophy of literature. He has published The Critical Thought of W. B. Yeats (2017), and numerous essays on contemporary British and Irish poetry Acknowledgements Contents 1 The Figure of the Self in Contemporary Irish Poetry Notes 2 Between Detection and Deception: Paul Muldoon’s Why Brownlee Left Notes 3 The Self as Potentiality in Vona Groarke’s Four Sides Full and X Stability and Dissolution in Architectural Poems The Garden as Emergent Ground Potentiality in Visual Arts Notes 4 ‘Lady Other, Lady Mine’: Angles of Vision and the Materialist Self in Sinéad Morrissey’s Parallax Doubling the Perspective Donning Masks Poetry and Photography Notes 5 The Enduring Self: Caitríona O’Reilly’s Geis Notes 6 ‘Flurred and Flummoxed but Unbleared’: Revivification of the Self in Alan Gillis’s Scapegoat Notes 7 From Liquid Fear to Dull Love: Nick Laird’s Go Giants Subject in Language Liquid Anxieties I: Death and Faith Liquid Anxieties II: Love and Loneliness Liquid Anxieties III: ‘Progress’ Notes Bibliography Index of Names