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18 | Péter Dolmanyos Due to this ambivalent position of history, more attention is paid to spatial elements, and as Kirkland concludes, “the landscape becomes a mode of redemption through which the writer can mediate the politics of identity to his/her community.” This points beyond the concern with the immediate physical reality of space and suggests the approach to space as a product, which in turn attributes a significant position to experience and the person of the observer: Just as perspective, experience and training can determine the meaning that a viewing subject will draw from a particular landscape, so perspective, experience and training may also determine what kinds of spatial practices are considered worthy of the subject’s gaze in the first place that is, what is inherently relevant and/or meaningful and what, by virtue of its invisibility or incoherence, is ‘obviously’ neutral and/or existentially vacant. ‘Space’ in this sense is both the reality to be engaged (what kinds of space is the poet going to write about) and a metaphor for envisaging how the poetic subject locates itself in terms of an already inhabited poetic landscape.*’ The gaze of the subject and his location of himself in the poetic landscape also contribute to the understanding of space as product, thus poetic practice does not only reflect the spatial emphasis but has an active role in constituting it and making it a central concern in the specific context of Northern Ireland. Although several sceptical or outright dismissive opinions have been formulated about a distinct Northern Irish tradition of poetry," there is a general acknowledgement of a “well-established North-South divide” to suggest different centres of poetry. Indeed, the “particular geographical, historical and cultural matrix”°° of Northern Ireland offers a legitimate claim for a specific Northern tradition. That particular matrix includes elements that relate it to the broader Irish and/or British literary tradition but at the same time it points towards a position beyond either or both, without a claim for clear-cut absolute positioning. As a consequence of its particular context, “Northern Irish poetry complicates and enriches itself through cross-cultural bricolage and hybridity”*! as well as it “struggles to preserve a sense of unique identity and local attachment in the face of globalisation, interstitial migrancy and postmodern scepticism.”** This dynamism of centripetal and centrifugal 16 Kirkland, Literature and Culture in Northern Ireland Since 1965, 33 4” Smyth, Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination, 72 18 cf. Thomas Kinsella (ed), The New Oxford Book of Irish Verse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), xxx; Peter Fallon and Derek Mahon (eds), The Penguin Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1990), xx; Montague, The Figure in the Cave, 15 Jerzy Jarniewicz and John McDonagh, “Scattered and diverse: Irish poetry since 1990. In: Scott Brewster and Michael Parker (eds.) Irish literature since 1990. Diverse voices (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 137 Elmer Kennedy-Andrews, Northern Irish Poetry. The American Connection (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 1 Kennedy-Andrews, Northern Irish Poetry, 2 Kennedy-Andrews, Northern Irish Poetry, 2 49
