Dear Colleagues -
Brendan Whyte asked for more examples of border literature, particularly
poems. How about this one? By the Irish poet Paul Muldoon (to be found
in his collection 'Why Brownlee Left', London: Faber and Faber, 1980,
p.15.
The Boundary Commission
You remember that village where the border ran
Down the middle of the street,
With the butcher and baker in different states?
Today he remarked how a shower of rain
Had stopped so cleanly across Golightly's lane
It might have been a wall of glass
That had toppled over. He stood there, for ages,
To wonder which side, if any, he should be on.
There's a wealth of literature focusing on the Irish Border, which I
deal with in 'From "Partition" to "At the Black Pig's Dyke": The Irish
Border Play', in Malcolm Anderson and Eberhard Bort (eds), THE IRISH
BORDER: HISTORY, POLITICS, CULTURE - which should be out any day now
from Liverpool University Press.... Poems by Seamus Heaney and john
Montague, novels by Patrick Quigley (BORDERLANDS) or Maurice Leitch,
plays by Frank McGuinness (BORDERLANDS), Vincent Woods (AT THE BLACK
PIG'S DYKE), Michael Harding (HUBERT MURRAY's WIDOW) and plenty more.
Martin Pratt pointed out Spike Milligan's PUCKOON a while back...
There's also shane Connaughton's BORDER DIARY, and Colm Toibin's BAD
BLOOD: WALKING ALONG THE BORDER....
But there's also Carlos Fuente's new novel, featuring the US-Mexican
border, or Thomas Coraghessan Boyle's THE TORTILLA CURTAIN (his monicker
for same border), etc Peter Schneider had some success with DER
MAUERSPRINGER, a novel about a guy crisscrossing the Berlin Wall (filmed
by Reinhard Hauff)... And there's more...
Cheers -
Paddy
-------------------------
Eberhard "Paddy" Bort
Associate Director
International Social Sciences Institute (ISSI)
University of Edinburgh
Chisholm House
1 Surgeon Square
High School Yards
Edinburgh EH1 1LZ
Scotland
ph +44 (0)131 650 2458
fax +44 (0) 131 650 6345
email [log in to unmask]
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