Reading trauma in contemporary Northern Irish & Irish poetry

Abstract

This dissertation will examine the works of five contemporary Northern Irish poets who lived through the Troubles, a period of intense sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted about thirty years from the late 1960s until the late 1990s. Ciaran Carson, Medbh McGuckian, Paul Muldoon, Colette Bryce, and Leontia Flynn each write in different experimental modes to express the traumatic experiences of the Troubles. Through a discussion of selected works by these poets, this dissertation will develop a revision of established trauma theory and suggest a mode of reading works about trauma that emphasizes the generative potential of writing about trauma with non-normative narrative styles and poetic techniques. Carson’s middle-era poetry transposes post-traumatic responses into poetry, using poetic form and atemporal narrative to draw the reader in. McGuckian’s deeply interior poems initially seem to resist interpretation, but ultimately, the reader as witness plays an important role in processing traumatic experiences. Muldoon’s playful and allusive poetry reflects on traumatic experiences without becoming stuck in any repeating narrative, emphasizing the generative potential for using poetry to transform the past into infinite imaginative possibilities. Colette Bryce and Leontia Flynn, writing in the “post-Agreement” era after the ceasefire, each seek distance and alternate perspectives that allow them to both look back at the past and look forward into the future.