Chapter 23 - ‘A Song Said Otherwise’

Summary

Responses to experimental writing by Irish women poets have tended to be framed in terms of the American tradition. This has served to obscure the distinctiveness of these poets, both as a strand of the Irish tradition and among themselves, in the highly individual bodies of work produced by Susan Howe, Maggie O’Sullivan, and Catherine Walsh. The American-born Howe has been linked to the Language poets, but represents a complex intertwining of personal history and literary exchanges between Ireland and the United States. With its heavy use of parataxis and open-field poetics, Howe’s work opens itself up to wide historical vistas. O’Sullivan’s work, written from England, also stresses open-field forms while showing affinities with the sound poetry of Bob Cobbing and the ‘antiabsorptive’ poetics of Charles Bernstein. Nevertheless, the connection with the Irish tradition is strongly stressed, as is the case also with Catherine Walsh. Walsh’s writing on Dublin is unique in modern Irish writing, notably in its focus on minority and marginalised communities. In the ‘forms of attention’ required by all three writers, Irish women’s poetry remakes itself in unexpected and fascinating ways.