humanities Article ‘I see where I stand’ Detachment and Engagement in Harry Clifton’s Poetry Benjamin Keatinge School of English, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland;
[email protected] Received: 27 November 2019; Accepted: 11 February 2020; Published: 16 February 2020 Abstract: This essay reads Harry Clifton’s poetry as a body of work that illustrates the poet’s engagement with and detachment from the poetry of his peers. It notes Clifton’s chosen routes of travel in Africa, Asia, and Europe, his interest in Ireland and its elsewheres and his endeavours to find an ideal distance to write from. It also elucidates his Irish subject matter, his involvement with journals, editors and publishers as well as his critical readings of 20th-century Irish poetry. The essay engages with important strands of current critical thinking that have sought to examine a post-nationalist Ireland with Clifton being seen as a bridge between an older and younger circle of writers. Neither hermetic nor sociable, Clifton emerges as a poet engaging with concentric circles of Irish poetry on his own terms. Keywords: Ireland; migration; engagement; circles; travel; detachment; poetry In a cluster of poems that conclude Harry Clifton’s Comparative Lives (1982), the poet’s troubled relationship to Ireland comes into particular focus. The poet takes stock of his relations with his contemporaries in Dublin while reflecting on recent experiences in Asia finding himself alienated from the dysfunctional city he has returned to. This was the year of the GUBU bother when, in the summer of 1982, Irish society and politics veered in the direction of the grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented (GUBU).