Oldal 25 [25]
OCR
Orientation: Approaches to Place in Northern Irish Poetry ] 23 beneficiary of the 1947 Butler Education Act he had access to secondary and later tertiary level education, opening the possibility of a different life from that of his forebears. Heaneys poetry was strongly anchored to specific places from the outset, with a strong regional affiliation", conducting enguiries into various aspects of his environment, with an increasingly explicit tribal element that would also open up the category of place for him. His concerns with place validate the claim of the poet as geographer,” and his examination of the heritage preserved in place names as well as his dialogue with the pastoral reflect his understanding of space as product and place as a complex of spatial and temporal constituents. By employing different approaches and tactics in handling place he also demonstrates a strong sense of self-reflection which becomes especially apparent when he returns to specific places in different contexts in different phases of his career. In addition to the importance of place in his own poetic practice, several of his essays deal with the concept both in general and in the particular context of poets, reflecting a life-long concern with the category and a willingness for reassessment in connection with it. The generic and formal variety of his poems that address place also indicate this openness to the concept of place. Michael Longley (1939-2025) hailed from a Protestant urban context, and as a child of English parents living in Belfast his background represents a different experience. As a Belfast resident, his sense of home appears solid, yet his act of establishing a home from home in the West of Ireland testifies to his understanding of the interrelation of places, with a special emphasis on their mutual role in their definition. In Longley’s poetry the observing speaker receives a major role in setting up and defining the relative position of places as well as in intimating the possibility of discovery and surprise in the process of contemplation. This openness is coupled with a preference for measured and disciplined forms in his poetry, which creates an intriguing dynamic relationship between speaker and utterance and results in a specific lyric voice. Derek Mahon (1941-2020) shares a Belfast Protestant background with Longley, although Mahon’s working-class family configuration and his suburban affiliation mark some differences from the experience of the other poet. Mahon’s ambivalent relation to his community is also well-documented as several poems express his uneasiness with the specific Protestant tradition that he comes from. This sceptical position coupled with his broad range of international experience results in his peculiar sense of place: he demonstrates the most apparent awareness of the dynamic nature of places, of the network or matrix of relationships between and among places as constitutive of their respective understanding. Several of his poems are built on the premise of the active relation between different places for their respective definition and description, and it is in his poetry that the notion of places as spatio-temporal events is demonstrated in the most salient way. Mahon’s impressive formal ™ cf. Richard Rankin Russell, Seamus Heaney’s Regions (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), 1-15 cf. Smyth, Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination, 65 75
