'Every move is punctuated': Writing identity and space in Irish poetry 1963-2016

Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland underwent political, social, and economic changes in the late twentieth century that resulted in changing relationships between self, place, and space. I read poets from across Ireland and analyze how representations of space relate to cultural and individual identity. I argue that poetry can define space without establishing boundaries and while allowing for, and even depending upon, the experience of simultaneous and contradictory meaning. My project purposefully looks at poets from the North and the Republic---Ciaran Carson, Eavan Boland, Tom French, and Leontia Flynn---to suggest that the socio-political and socio-economic events, such as the Troubles and the Celtic Tiger, influence poetry across the island. Reading poetry with close attention to national, cultural, and spatial boundaries can obscure rather than reveal meaning, however, attention to such boundaries is common in studies of Irish literature and indeed, studies of Irish politics and social life in the twentieth century. In my analysis of the relationship between place and self in Irish poetry, I note the diminishing importance of borders and boundaries and trace a shift from a place-based identities to identities based in mobility.