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Orientation: Approaches to Place in Northern Irish Poetry | 27 relationship between the two that shapes the representation of place in the poetry. Heaney defends the necessary presence of that mental other by insisting on its role as an aesthetic principle and not a tactics of evading the actual as he also acknowledges the political status of the poet.®? His position shows an understanding of place as being a highly important part of that complex matrix that Northern Ireland represents, and there is the awareness of the complexity of the concept of place itself with its spatial and temporal constituents. This complexity requires an approach that is capable of demonstrating a sufficient degree of openness and flexibility for addressing it in addition to a strong sense of a referential framework that marks the field in which that addressing and assessment are played out. This leads to active dialogue with established traditions, involving the revision, refining, readjustment or eventual rejection of those traditions as the interaction between those two senses of location is explored. Just as poetry itself requires the simultaneous presence and interaction of the principles of discipline and flexibility, place in poetry is also examined, assessed and represented in the active and dynamic relationship of these two principles. 8 cf. Heaney, “Place and Displacement”, 163-164
