McGuckian is still actively writing and a very interesting person to meet. She will be reading at the afore mentioned QUB conference and usually hangs around. The last conference I heard her read at was the Louis MacNeice conference at QUB and she really entertained there; she is very straight forward and says whatever is on her mind no matter where she is or whom is listening which can make for some very interesting moments at an academic type event. Her poetry is very oblique and relies heavily on intertextual references. I recommend Shane Alcobia-Murphy's essays and book on the subject: http://www.fortnight.org/archive/july2008/articles/articled.html
The obliqueness in Heaney is interesting when you take into consideration the nature of Irish historical revisionism in the 1960s and 70s and the kind of collective will in the south of Ireland to ignore the trouble to the north in order to continue the overdue process of economic modernization. Heaney was writing to that audience as well and when you examine the response to Kinsella's Butcher's Dozen with its direct attack on Lord Widgery's Report (http://nuigalway.academia.edu/AndrewBrowne/Papers scroll down for an essay on this subject if you are interested) you can see how easy it was for a writer to fall out of favour in Ireland when they refuse to confront the northern issue obliquely (consider Edna Longley's 1975 essay 'Searching the Darkness').
Andrew Browne, AA(Pen. Coll.), BA(DCU), MPhil(DU)
Department of English
National University of Ireland, Galway
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From: British & Irish poets [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Robin Hamilton [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 26 March 2010 05:08
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Northern Irish Poets?
Interesting point about the obliqueness, Tim. It plays out in Heaney, with
the Bog poems in _North_ preceeding a more direct or overt engagement. But
am I right in thinking that some of the poems where Heaney talks directly
about the situation were written earlier than they were published? Might be
wrong on this ...
It's always seemed to me that, for whatever reasons (generational? spending
more of his life in England than the others? Tom himself?) Tom Paulin's
work is much the most direct in dealing with the political situation.
Robin
<<
It is, but obliquely, like most of them. It might indeed look as if
McGuckian's work is even more oblique regarding this than the others but in
actual fact (what a lovely phrase) her work is, in my opinion, deeply
entrenched in that experience of being Catholic in the Ulster of the 60's
and 70's.
Tim A.
>>
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