Dodging Around the Grand Piano

Sex, Politics, and Contemporary Irish Women 'S Poetry

by Ailbbe Smytb Some things insist on becoming enter how and where we will. lost, There seems to be an agreed terrain like the be-ribboned straw hat withinwhich criticism- L hutcure examine &S reprisentations the girl waved over the bridge including, perhaps ironically, thevery snnrelks et h smu~lfitidam h poisie to me. lately included feminist kind--can fhninine a2 I'Irhndr contemporaine et be exercised. I am not saying it's a How ridiculous it fixed terrain, once and for all, because looked, in the last decade or so its borders 22e preoccupation with Zrbbness as the prima y floating on the have been shifted in more ways than terrain of criticism has disturbing repercussions water one, and by feminists more than most. between two But it isn't entirely open either. There fbrpoetry, because poems wbicb do not nourish these swans is an agenda of acceptable topoi, of critical concerns are considered as either not who were coaxing critical and discursive priorities, be- reafly I&, or not redypoems. one another to yond which you venture at your own love. risk and peril. The risk being ob- livion, no-critics land.2 To be sure, it remeten question I'Pternel&azsomption Although I tried to reach it, is difficult, given the political geogra- chez &Scritiques litthaires que hpoksie it was swept away. phy and socio-historical circum- irlandaise est prioritairement pri- "Sit still in the boat, you fool," stances, to write outside the terrain of ocrupk par &S mythes, I'histoire et she called, "sit still Ireland and Irishness-because that, I'identitk nationale et rulturelle. or you'll fall into the river." I think, is what it is. Irish poetry -Joan McBreen, criticism is (still) hyper-concerned She told the one "The Straw Hat" with questions of myth and history, who was beyond saving with national and cultural identity.3 to have a nice day Silences This preoccupation with Irishness (she said it twice for effect) as the primary terrain of criticism has There has been very little written disturbing repercussions for poetry, I will, she assured, about sex-and-poetry critically, theo- because poems which do not nourish I'll have a bastarding ball retically, historically, or in any way these critical concerns are considered dodging the Gods at a1l.l Now, it is absolutely not the as either not really Irish, or not really around the grand piano case that there is nothing on what poems-or remain entirely uncon- that isn't really there at all Irish women poets are on about (in sidered. Clair Wills, for example, in -Rita Ann Higgings, Irish poems). There are essays and her study of politics and sexuality in from "God Dodgers articles, journal special issues, and Northern Irishpoetry, devotes achap- Anonymous" multiple theses on Irish women's ter to a discussion of contemporary poetry, on Irish women poets. Not Irish women's poetry, which she spe- Knowledge is limited by the scope of enough, yet, and not necessarily in cifically construes as questioning "cur- the eye, the acuity of the ear, the all the best places. But that's another rent definitions of cultural and na- accuracy of memory. Human, not debate, and another day. Men critics tional identity in Ireland, in particu- godly. Even interpreters, explicators, say very little about women's poetry, lar the repeated association of the use extricators. What can I know if I do and when they do, they still say re- of myth and the writer's attempt to not look, if1 do not listen, if I do not markably little, although often at link himself with, to repossess, a his- remember? length and damagingly. women crit- tory and a community." Her analysis Entree en matiere: how to enter ics, and often poets, make the run- is instructive, but given her defini- without breaking?We are locked and ning and the openings, not always to tion, I wonder if it doesn't keep out a barred against entries of all kinds. Or loud acclaim (or any at all). But the good deal more than it allows in?* maybe just we who have lost our important thing is, the great con- What about poems not determined innocence. Who has not? Lost, sto- spiracy of silence around the fact of by "debates over the figure of the len, aged away. What is the matter of Irish women's poetry has been ex- motherland?" What about poems sex, of ~oetry,or sex and poetry and posed, and broken. Which does not which explore areas of experience the spaces between? mean, however, that we are free to expressly suppressed by the myth-

76 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME makers and law-makers of the moth- I have seen mad women in my as mad what is necessary for survival. erland? time, The edge defines the centre; the edge Certainly, I agree with Eavan I have seen them waiting row on is where you go when there is no- Boland (and thus with Clair Wills) row, where else to be. It is at least in part that "a 'nation' is a potent, impor- I have seen the stripped flesh, about the eccentricity of women's tant image" (qtd. in Somerville-Arjat the abandoned eye, symbolic place, and the physical and and Wilson 84). But, however pow- I have seen the frothing mouth psychic cost of that displacement. erful/disempowering an image and heard the cries, But it is not a victim poem. There is Mother Ireland has been for many I have seen mad women in my no resignation here. The "peculiar Irish women poets, it is not the only time angle of the head," in ~rincipleanti- one and some have chosen to disre- -I have never seen them mad thetical to both sanity and poetry, is gard-discard it through poetic re- enough. here repositioned to become a differ- location (from "contemporary Irish ent angle of sight and of hearing, poetry" to the "women's poetry In the city of Boston I once saw enabling us to make sense of the cries, movement," in the English-speak- a woman the shrill screams of a mad woman in ing West). Poetic emigration moves and she was mad-as mad as the city of Boston, not as "other," but in much the same direction as the they come as connected with our selves: economic kind ("go west, young (and oh do they come, mad woman"), and is likewise not always women, I have seen the abandoned faces experienced (or represented) as nega- as often as the rest?) row on row, tive. It can be an experience of open- I have seen mad women in my ing up, where, liberated from the She walked the street in broad time particular burdens and boundaries daylight, -I have never seen us mad of the "nation," the world becomes neat as a pin-a lady no doubt enough. a bigger place and can be, may be, in blue coat, blue hat, blue purse differently phrased. blue shoes-the only note 'We can never say it often enough. Irish critics need to acknowledge out of place in it all The repetition with its strategic re- that Irish poets-especially wo- was her face-the peculiar angle placing of the pronoun makes this men--do not necessarilywrite"Irish" of her head; thrown back, jaws clear: survival requires that we refuse poems, given the strength ofthe pres- wide to be ordered, that we creatively em- sures to discard tradition and the and a scream so shrill poured out brace the madness of our anger, even marked opportunities for poetic and it lifted birds from her feet. though there is not, anywhere, any political migration to a more welcomingly open terrain.5 "In theCityofBostonnis theopen- Irish &tics need to acknowledge that Irish poets- ing poem in Mary Dorcey's collec- especially women-do not necessarily write '!Irish" tion, Mowinginto thespace Clraredby OurMothm. This is terrain unmarked poems, given the strength of the pressures to discard by history or tradition, transnational, tradition and the marked opportunities for poetic open, spacious. But movement to- andpolitical migration to a more open terrain. wards implies at thesame time move- ment away from: the collection title, the title and positioning of the first This magnificently angry poem guarantee that it will be enough. For poem, decisively accentuate a self- strips away, line by incantatory line, a poem is a delicate instrument and conscious distancing from Ireland the layers of decorum which, sealed may not, after all, be able to provide and the man-made canonical Irish tightly in place, keep the world neatly us with either a sense of (erotic) con- poem. "In the City of Boston" cuts us in order, insanity. It exposes, in broad nection or an answer to our futures: loose from what we know too well to daylight, the agonizing irony and lit- see clearly, places us in a new relation erally maddening dislocation of (and oh do they come, mad to both lived experience and poetic women in a world which defines as women, vision. It re-locates us: sane what is experienced as mad, and as often as the rest?)

VOLUME 17, NUMBER 3 Irish women's poetry is no more ing through my blood educational materials (although not confined to, within, or by national1 like wolves. in school curricula), in church and historical borders than sexuality -Moya Cannon, "Hills" parliament and law and fiction.9 In- within motherhood, or sex by love, or deed, we (i.e., Irish) talk so much Irish women within the jurisdiction It is low-minded, not quite about the silence about sex in Ireland, ofIreland by legal prohibitions against "lit.crit,"and (worse) unsophisticated that there comes a point when you abortion. This is part of my point. to seek out sex in poems. This has realize that talking about the silence Poems by Irish writers continue to be partly to do with the current bent of is a crucial way of actually talking read through narrow gauge tracks of literary theory, partly with notions of about sex. convention and tradition where lesser poetic decorum, and also of course (or no) value is accorded to poems with the historical and socio-political I've already had my fill of ser- not in thrall to the nation. When I regulation of sex and sexuality. mons against sex. In the Belfast read many Irish critics, I am depressed Women are so much more amenable mission-halls of my youth, I re- by their introversion, by the limited to control in the lowlands. But si- member the sex-haters with their range of their interests, and I am lences echo one another, howling needy wrathhl eyes and anor- bothered by the absence of sex on through our lives, like wolves. The aked bumptiousness. their critical agenda.' This bothers social conventions ofsex-talkand the I have a theory of my own: me, among other critical silences, aesthetic conventions of poem-talk fleeing from sex is just another because it is certainly in the poems, at place each in frigidly separate spaces way ofbeing caught by it. (Linda least in poems by women, although and we are, mostly, governed by strict Anderson, "Private Dancer") not always where, when, or how you rules ofpropriety in their observance, might expect: rarely broken.' There is no denying So, when sex occurs in a poem, we that Irish society has a highly flee, turning a critically coy blind eye, My wild hills come stalking dishonorable history of sexual repres- as if the poetic solecism had never Did I perhaps after all, in spite of sion, which continues to reverberate happened. As if the poem simply did all in the present. Sex is unspeakable in not exist.10 try to cast them off, scholarly company in Ireland.8 More Who do we think we are fooling? my dark blue hills, significantly and not at all surpris- The odd thing is that so many of a denunciation no less real ingly, the unspeakability of sex has the poems I have been reading really for all its refinement? been constructed (can you construct are so much braver and bolder, ven- have I dissembled, a silence? most assuredly) through turing into territories untouched by cast myself in the role of a dis- the control of women's sexuality, criticism. Or is it so odd? Perhaps the cerning mountain lover, unthinkable because unspeakable (or relation between poetry and criticism my acceptance of these as opti- vice versa), outside the domain of is not unlike that between sexual be- mal hills reproduction. It is equally undeni- haviour and the law: at odds with one being based upon the most im- able that contemporary Irish wom- another, much of the time, the law peccable of aesthetic criteria? en's rehsal to b; regulated out of restraining and~ontainin~whattrans- Have I stooped so low mind and body, our insistence on the gresses the boundaries, the limits set as to l~ricizeabout heather, right to sexual autonomy, are a cru- by convention, demanded by deco- adjusting my love cial element in the social, political, rum. Whatever. to fit elegantly and cultural disruptions which are within the terms ofdisinterested re-defining the realities of Irish soci- It's difficult to talk about them discourse? ety and culture (see Smyth 1995a). [my erotic poems], because The audibility of women's breaking they're about the zones between Who do I think I'm fooling? of sexual silences-literally and sym- what is acceptable socially and I know these hills better than bolically, politically and culturally- what is not. It's not a favourite that. is unmissable. Although it continues topic in this country. (Mary I know them blue, like delicate to be ignored. O'Donnell in Somerville-Arjat shoulders, But contradictions and double-talk and Wilson 23) I know the red grass that grows (ambiguous and ambivalent) seem in high boglands almost inevitable the moment you Yet a giddily ungodly reading of and the passionate brightnesses step on sex. Even in godly Ireland, we poems by Irish women turns up far and darknesses do talk and write about sex, not al- more of "alla this foolishness," in of high bog lakes ways euphemistically, in private and Notzake Shange's memorable (and and I know too how in public, in bed and in the media, in quite un-Irish) phrase, than lurks in the murk of winter, pornography (which circulates, de- within the terms of (disinterested) these wet hills will come howl- spite its regulation), in medical and critical discourse.11

CANADIAN WOM L4N STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME Women talkabout sexual things little award for either of her two po- astonishing continuity for a consid- much more. This is something etry collections. You won't find much erable time (see Donoghue 1993), very new in Irish poetry. You in the line ofsexual explicitness in the although Irish lesbians' struggle for would have been excommuni- poems by women included in an- rights, freedom, and social and cul- cated for masturbation at one thologies of "new Irish poetry." You tural visibility has been slow, ardu- time. Now it's much broader will need to go to anthologies edited ous, and fraught with humiliation and more honest, not before by women, to the collections by and silent pain: time. (Eithne Strong in Somer- women (see Hooley; Archer 1986; ville-Arjat and Wilson 1 14) Kelly; Smyth 1989; Smy-th 1995b), Have you ever made love in which women choose not to un- with the TV on Yes, although forms of critical ex- sex themselves. -to spare the neighbours communication still operate. And you Which is not to say the sexing (of landlady, lord- do have to go looking for the grand the writing) is easy.13 the embarrassment; piano. Which means clearly identify- the joy undisguised ing the silencers, reading beyond the She was important enough of two people academic criticism, beyond the re- to be left out especially women views, beyond the mainstream an- powerful enough (imagine the uproar!) thologies of"1rish Poetry." Now, with to be hidden away coming together? less than half a dozen exceptions alive enough which prove this general rule, you to be killed Come quietly have to do this anyway to know any- poet or the neighbours will hear. thing about what women are writ- enough -Mary Dorcey, from ing.12 Women poets who write about to be censored "Come quietly or the sex, for specific example, rarely get -Nuala Archer, from neighbours will hear" reviewed, or if and when they do, the "Sheela-Na-Gigging sexy poems are politely not men- Around," 1994 Mary Dorcey was the first Irish tioned. Rita Ann Higgins is a stun- poet to make no secret ofthe fact that ning case in point, as is Maighread Subversions she is lesbian, the first to use women- Medbh, in another idiom. Mary embracingpronouns, and nouns, one Dorcey received the Rooney Prize for If the representation of women's of the first women poets to write heterosexual experience can be explicitly about sex, certainly the first 1 "outed only with difficulty from the to brave, and name, the "uproar" shadows and secrecy surrounding it, about lesbian sex-more a roaring consider how much more powerfully silence of dismissal and disregard- for the prohibitions apply to lesbian sexu- many years. Her first collection of ality. It is not that lesbianism is for- poems was published in 1982-in bidden, as a practice, by Irish law. But Britain, her short stories similarly in that it is not, is a sign of its absolute 1989. In 1991, Salmon Press became unthinkability. When male homo- the first Irish press to publish a collec- sexuality was effectively defined as tion by Mary Dorcey.14 unlawhl under the (British) Offences Her poems do not deal with ques- Against the Persons Act of 1861, les- tions of "national identity," although bianism was so utterly taboo that they do indeed explore other aspects legislative measures to prevent its oc- of identity, relations to place and to currence were simply unnecessary. myriad "other." It strikes me that, ironically, one of the greatest dangers When and where did your lesbi- facing a lesbian poet writing in a anism last occur? Last month? milieu where such work is excep- Last year? At home? In bed? At tional, is the insidious expectation school? In front of the neigh- that her work will always be sexual bours? Please write clearly, pref- (even "sexy"), artd always centred on erably in bold, to make yourself "lesbian issuesv-however defined. as conspicuously different as An Irish poet is always and ever (still) possible. (Smyth, forthcoming) defined by (his) "Irishness," but a 4. lesbian poet in Ireland does not fit Gertrude Degentrardt, "Vagabondage-Women in Music," Yet ~utbreaksof lesbianism have within the given meanings of Leaf 11, drypoint etching been occurring, even in Ireland, with "Irishness" and her work thus cannot

VOLUME 17, NUMBER 3 be categorized as anything other than There is no forgiveness munal" one. Now, while I am as wary lesbian. For escaping the rity of match as the next (white academic) woman Mary Dorcey is no longer the only and hatch. of metonymy, of presuming that my "out" Irish lesbian writer, although "No sign of a wee wedding ring part is women's whole, I am not there are still extraordinarily few po- slipping on your finger?" they prepared to be so separated from other ets. Nuala Archer's work has been ask. women that solidarity becomes ahnc- published in the U.S. and in Ireland, The spinster is come home with tional impossibility. Division isastrat- but she is only partly Irish, and thus her fancy airs egy of the powerful, and connection different standards are applied-sexu- And graces and new-fangled still seems to me a more effective way ally and canonically. Cherry Smyth ideas. of thwarting it than any other (what writes explicitly and sensuously about -Cherry Smyth, from other is there?). Making and main- lesbian desire and pleasure (interalia), "Coming Home" taining the connections is about want- but her work rarely ever appears in ing to do so, about imagining how Irish publications. Smyth, who was There is then no "tradition" ofles- they can solder what has been torn brought up in Northern Ireland and bian poetry-making in Ireland at this willfully asunder, about finding the now lives. in London, inflects the stage-although the trail-blazing of delicate language to meld the tenu- ambivalence of emigration with a Dorcey, Archer, and Smyth, in their ous links. powerfully sexual intensity: very different ways, is crucial in diver- Apolitical activist directs her anger sifying the mono-directional assump- towards actions whose objective is to I unpackclothes smelling of Lon- tions ofheterosexual writers and read- eradicate the source of women's op- don, ers, and in giving voice to truths and pression, to change the system that Lulled by the tease of familiar visions for lesbians in Ireland. Per- allows, or at the very least does not voices haps the wonder is not that there is so formally prohibit, sex and gender- I still yearn for the anonymity of little, but rather that it is there at all. based exploitation and abuse. An ac- city. tivist poet17 may direct her anger Peace to read, think, eat, not eat, But it's astonishing! towards realizing an intensity of vi- to sweat, That kindofbreathing, that kind sion, a clarity and concentration, Clutter, clatter, stay in bed all of force. which enables articulation of wom- day If we could breathe, en's unspeakable sexuality-publicly With the one I love really breathe in perpetration andlor privately in And talk about her openly. we'd know annihilation. Both kinds of activism what it'd be like to have a voice actlspeak out of the need, passion- of infinite colours, a ately experienced because cruelly de- ladder, nied, to inhabit our own bodies, a blood route beyond this de- minds, souls, lives. Granted, activism spair.. .. is not poetry, but it does not therefore -Nuala Archer, from follow that poetry cannot (must not) "Flaneurs," 1992 be political, not that anger dilutes the aesthetic.18 So much subversion is needed to I do not accept that rage is Ajni- shake this country by the roots of its tionally irrational, and therefore aes- orthodoxies.15 There is the vast do- thetically disabling. Poetry which main of women's "privatized" sexual finds the words to speak what has pain which urgently needs to be spo- been stifled by history and culture is ken. Irish women poets are doing so, bound to seem different, because it is. not because anger has become "al- It mina3 the anger, in every sense, most an axiom of feminist poetry,"l6 giving it its due weight of passion, proofofone's bona fides as a "woman alongside reflection, analysis, and vi- poet," but quite simply because sion. Passionate conviction is never women, who may or may not be enough to make a "good" poem, but it poets, are angry. Because there are is absurd to assume it is therefore an events so shocking that we cannot impediment. Nor do I think that afford, for our own survival and that "anger poems" (which are not, in any of countless other women, to remain case, a genre apart) are merely a "tran- silent. This is an ethical and political sitional moment" in women's po- imperative (why do we separate the etry, now redundant, passe. There is Gertrude Dsgenhardt, "Vagabondage--Women in Music, ' Leaf 2, drypoint etching two?) as well as a personal and "com- nothing passe about the horrible

80 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME presentness of violence in women's tant. Powered by indignation, they the wake of these deaths. In the lives and outrage seems to me to be speak out of rational rage, exposing poem, the statue of the Virgin speaks an entirely reasonable response to the injustice and cruelty of a system her solitary confinement in the pro- the fact of the continuing oppres- which moulds, uses, and abuses, found silence of her plaster virgin- sion of millions of people for no women at will. In their very utter- ity, speaks her desire-"My being / reason other than that of their sex. ance, these poems defy the interdic- cries out to be incarnate, incarnate, Anger is not a phase you "work tion against women's entry into the / maculate and tousled in a honeyed through" (whatever therapy may tell polis; they refuse to accept as "private" bed"-her isolation and gief, her US),not something you can or should practices which demean and, worse, shame. She keens the death of a grow out of if its source remains destroy the personhood of women. young girl-"a cacophony of bone painfully alive. If outrageous op- In so doing, they launch a crucial imploring sky for judgement / and pression continues, why should it be challenge to the powers that keep release from being the conscience of poetically necessary to "move on"- women in silence and in place-they the town." There is no release for to what? Yes, we may be blinded by are properly, necessarily ~olitical. those who choose silence over life. rage, but even that-especially 's poem, "The Statue that--can be a powerful focus of of the Virgin of Granard Speaks," I am Ireland l and I'm sick vision, raising us, body and soul, up evokes an especially shameful occur- sick in the womb / sick in the and off the "yes, but" fences erected rence in recent Irish social history- head by patriarchal versions of rational- the death ofAnn Lovett. It is at once and I'm sick of lying in this ity, which construct women, wom- a meditation of the disempowerment sickbed en's pain, women's anger as un- of all women, the difficulty of speech and if the medical men don't speakable. Why, we must constantly in a world where public silence about stop operating / ask, is anger disallowed?Whose in- sex is a commandment, and a con- I'll die terests does the prohibition serve? demnation of the silences we agree to ...... Reason can blind us to the necessity keep through convention, coward- I am Ireland l and I'm silenced ofpassion: "I have never seen us mad ice, or fear of reprisals: I cannot tell my abortions / my enough" (Dorcey). divorce / my years of slavery 1 The poems which deliberately in- On a night like this I remember my fights for freedom tervene in and gloss the grosser at- the child it's got to the stage I can hardly tempts by state and society to con- who came with fifteen summers remember what I had to tell trol women's sexuality are impor- to her name, and when I do / I speak in and she lay down alone at my whispers feet ...... without midwife or doctor or I am Ireland / friend to hold her hand And I'm not waiting any more. and she pushed her secret out -Maighread Medbh, into the night, from "Easter 1991" far from the town tucked up in little scandals, Maighread Medbh is sickoflying, bargains struck, words broken, passive and conned, and will have no prayers, promises, more of it, for what is most sacred to and though she cried out to me the nation is most dangeroustowom- in extremis en's well-being. She attempts no sepa- I did not move, ration ofpolitics from poetry, for the I didn't lift a finger to help her, one (which one?) grows out of and I didn't intercede with heaven, into the other, and each is vital for nor whisper the charmed word survival. She knows no fear, or rather, in God's ear. the writing ofthe poem exorcises the -Paula Meehan, from fears she has been made to live with, "The Statue of the Virgin of silently, for so long-and who may Granard Speaks" say with impunity that exorcism is the preserve ofreligion, or oftherapy? Ann Lovett died giving birth, and When the cause of death is known, it her baby too. Alone, Christianity not- must be named. withstanding. There was no formal - - - - . Gertrude Degenhardt, "Vagabondage-- women in Music, " public inquiry, and no major changes These are our streets. Leaf 31, drypoint etching in social policy or sex education in If you are a woman you must

VOLUME 17, NUMBER 3 break the mould, on Nothing to whine smash the flashy screen my Spine- home about that makes us meat for pricks but it was dry and not for joy. Booo oring holes and beggars can't be choosers. If you are a woman you must fight Burning sin You're the poet, to choose to work, to dress, to into the knuckles of my the one with fuck, spine the fancy words, to look straight in the eye, -Patricia Scanland, from I'm the one to stroll and not "Terrorfull Return" with the toilet- Walk faster. they call me -Maighread Medbh, from Scanlan's "Terrorfull Return" self- the space invader. "Our Streets" knowingly seeks a space outside and beyond the possibilities of its mate- A toilet, a toilet Street-walking with the new mean- rial existence-its pain is too hot for my kingdom is a toilet- ing of freedom, means straight-talk- the page which would contain it, give us a poem ing and new ways of naming and bore it into place. The "Irish poem" or piss off missus. claiming what we have never been contained, in the most literal sense, -Rita Ann Higgins, from allowed to own. Medbh fights the the given meaning, ambiguously sin- "Space Invader" mould of tradition with her flashy gular, ofvirgin-Mother-Ireland; con- rap-rhythms, attention-grabbing tained, through exclusion and silence, Nothing is safe. Hallelujah! "un-literary" language, and her glori- the complexity, the polyvalence, the The willing ability to mock po- ously undecorous imagery. It is, in- painfullpleasurable confusion of etry, and everything else, is one of deed, poetry of and for "everyday use." women's sexuality (see Boland 1989; the most powerful marks contempo- For many Irish women poets, writ- Meaney). Breaking up that singular rary Irish women poets are making, ing up and through the darkness, the form, finding the words, the with transformative intentions and secrecy which shrouds and shapes rhythms, the patterns capable of car- effects, on the world-of poetry and theirlour sexuality, is almost too pain- rying, shaping, sounding women's everything else. There is an altogether ful. There are moments when it seems experiences and understandings of invigorating and regenerative bold- as if the poem must collapse, or alto- their sexuality is a mind, spirit, and ness about much of the writing, a gether disappear, under the weight of body-consuming struggle, fraught delicious impropriety which subverts prohibition and fear: with personal dangers and technical our understandings of the "proper" risks: means and matter of poems, and There was reason everything else: WHY You could die for this. I The gods could make you blind. She sat on the lip Went back -Eman Boland, from Of events. Into that "Solitary," 1980 House Waiting for some new mouth My home, But the power of the gods is not to open. Picked up, in a flurry, what it used to be. It is being thwarted And left and undermined by the strategic Offering With a few WORDS subversions of cooly targetted, hotly- An original sin. SCULLED expressedanger, by the truths of"two- -Anne Le Marquand On paper sights seeing" irony, by the incisive Hartigan, "Eve- TESTIFYING derision of wit and humour. The New Mouth" Testifying, diktats of those with clay feet are not Testifying long for this world. History, myth, and icon are turned My Life on their heads, subverted to new be- My Love Hey Missus, ginnings, heretical, ludic, and pro- My Art you're the poet, vocative." I have Known write a poem about me, a red hot about the time Alone in the room PoKer I lived in a toilet with the statue of Venus for six months, I couldn't resist Ta-p-p-i-n-g out no shit girlie. cupping her breast. burns It was cool

CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME and heavy in my hand I yearn The laws of ~atriarchallogic and like an apple. for the fullness reason and history and culture and, -Paula Meehan, "Secret" of your tongue simply, the law, prescribe that women making me should make babies, not poems, and Romance and its flowery growth burst forth have families, not sexual pleasure. are also given short, ironic shrift, lea sure after pleasure Notwithstanding and nevertheless, which the speaker turns against her- after dark, Irish women are making far fewer self, with a side-long glance of rueful babies and a lot more poems. In- complicity to her reader: soaking all my dreams. formed speculation, based on a read- -Rita Ann Higgins, ing of the poems, indicates that there Because she carried flowers: "It's Platonic" is considerable pleasure in the having Lilac and wild red poppies of the sex and the making of the When she first came to my bed, Subversion also occurs more ex- poems. There is an increasingly rich I loved her. pansively, and often in terms of a abundance of sex in poems by Irish reversal of roles. The woman persona women: lesbian and heterosexual, Because she carried flowers: of the poem assumes the role of agent, complicated and direct, explicit and Marigold and lilies subject, and speaker (which is, al- subtle, straight-talking and vision- To another woman's bed, ready, to usurp the male place), turns ary, solitary, singular, and plural, ex- I left her. the tables, revealing theobjectification ploratory, interrogative, analytical, -Mary Dorcey, to which she is typically subjected, descriptive, subversive, political, play- "Because She Carried Flowers" and laughs uproariously at the ensu- ful, ironic, funny, and celebratory. ing male discomfiture (or silence). Where does it all come from? And the tales they tell, oh how Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill achieves this For a long time I have puzzled over they can sting with malice afore- with magnificent comic effect in po- a line from a poem by Sharon Olds: thought, providing occasions of ems such as "An tOileann or "Gan do "How do they do it, the ones 1 who multiple pleasure: chuid Eadoigh." Mairead Byrne's hi- make love without love?" larious interview with Romulus and Even more puzzling to me is the That man Remus-geographically and cultur- question: how do they write them, Is an occasion of some sin ally located generations away from the ones who make sex poems with- Against a number of command- the canonical "Irish Poemn-sends out sex words? ments up the unreality and emptiness of The answer I suppose, in both cases, Committed in haste, macho versions of myth and history is that you can't. In the first case, you To be repented at great leisure. which make men speechless in the either do something else-have sex- realm of the personal: or nothing at all. In the second case He is like a whole box the answer requires more initiative Of very rich chocolates Would you let your daughter and ingenuity, for you must subvert, With a hint of mint in the tail, marry a wolf? transform, invent, imagine, create. The kind that only tantalise the How fast can you run? I do not think that sexuality is at lips Say, what's your favourite food? the "core" of our selves (if we have Linger on the tongue Do you eat raw meat and tear it such an unfashionable thing as a core, And slowly settle on the hips. apart with your teeth? or even a self, any more). Nor do I -Mary O'Malley, Well, I suppose that was quite think that sexuality is the fundamen- "Gluttony" common in Rome. tal source of imagination and creativ- Hey, thanks for your time boys. ity (if, likewise, there be such a thing). These poems have a sharpness It's been real. But sexuality-and simply, sex-is which comes from their tight con- You gotta learn to talk soon, also part of experience and it also trol and a line pared down so far it boys. touches the imagination. It is thus reaches the quick of sensibility and A lotta people are dying to hear also, like politics, part of the matter of sensuality. Their extreme brevity about this. poetry. mockingly counters patriarchal des- -Mairead Byrne, from Of course, I don't know precisely ignations of women as "essentially" "Interview with where or how the words are found, garrulous, frivolous, and empty. It is Romulus and Remus" any more than I know exactly how or no accident that so many of these why we experience sex as variously as "quick notes" take sex as their centre The pleasure is palpable in the writ- we do. Analysis and explanation seem of gravity-and prick the bubble of ing, in the reading, in the reciting. peculiarly inadequate when they try its perfectly self-centred pomposity: Who could resist it?Who would want to explain these things. I do, however, Platonic my eye, to? know a grand piano when I see one-

VOLUME 17, NUMBER 3 or an abundance of them. And I h here is an anthology of love poems ofpoets published by Daedalus Press, know for certain that poems by con- (including a very few poems by 16 per cent by Gallery Press, eleven temporary Irish women have been women), but none of Irish erotica (it per cent by Ranve Arts Press, and 45 important to me in sighting, naming, sounds like an oxymoronic joke). This per cent by Salmon Publishing (the and exploring "my wild hills": signifies more about "our" image of only poetry press headed by awoman). Irish literature (and of Ireland) than See also Hannan and Wright; .. . the red grass that grows in its realities. Soul and spirit are, of Haberstroh; O'Connor. high boglands course, more high-minded (and 131 don't think it is for men poets and the passionate brightnesses Catholic). either. I suspect that the silencing of and darknesses here are just two references to sex men poets who write "offthe agenda" of high bog lakes in the index of J. J. Lee's Ireland. is also ferocious. -Moya Cannon, from "Hills" 1912-1985: to the Censorship of 14~aryDorcey's poetry has never Publications Act and to Contracep- been reviewed, for example, in the Ailbhe Smyth is an activist, writer, and tion1Abortion: The discussions of influential, U.S.A.-published Irish researcher and director of the Women i these in-text are ultra-brief. There is Literary Supplement. I am not sug- Education, Research, and Resource no discussion at all of the impact of gesting that this is deliberate, but the Centre (WERRC) at University College feminism and the women's move- omission is revelatory of the prevail- Dublin, where she teaches Women i ment on changes in sexual practice or ing values and priorities. Studies. She has published widely on on the regulation of sexuality. '5~avan Boland, discussingthe choice contempora~yfminism mainly in Ire- 9~nDublin, a fortnightly event guide, between "separatism" and "subver- land, and is active in feminist and contains several pages of advertising sion," comments: "I want to subvert lesbian politics. for what are coyly called "Personal the old forms. I think where those Services," offering "everything aman's elements of the Irish experience are '~otableexceptions are Clair Willis heart desires" in "leather and lace" repressive, I would rather subvert and Jacqueline McCurry. from "beautiful new young girls" to them than throw the baby out with '1 do know who sets the agenda and "elegant ladies from 18 years up- the bathwater" (Hannan and Wright how they do it, and what happens to wards." 62). Subversion, of course, may also those who venture too far, too soon. 'O~heonly poem I have come across lead in extrovert directions where To be sure, I am not alone in the (i.e., in a contemporary publication) baths no longer seem relevant at all. "knowledge," but that is not mypoint by an Irish woman poet from an lG~hisis Ostriker's phrase-not en- here. earlier period (writing in English) tirely positive (Ostriker 126). 3~dnaLongley talks about the "nar- that talks about sex at all does so in 17"Poetic activist" is a term missing- row and doctrinaire perspective" on just such terms of negative fascina- from our vocabulary. Its very absence Irish literature, culture, and politics tion: is significant. of the Field Day analysis in a recent Let them not listen to her fatal 18~uthHooley encountered the hos- interview (Krino). song tility of "poetry" to "politics" in con- 4~edbhMcGuckian, on whom Wills Nor trust her pictures, nor be- creteform: "I recently selected apoem focusses very significantly, has said lieve her tongue. on incest for H. U. (The Honest Ul- that she is "sexless" (as a poet) and Contentmentblooms not on her sterman). It was challenged as having claimed that there is "no such thing as flowing ground, been chosen for its political content: an Irish poet" (in Somerville-Arjat and round her splendid shrine I was told I wanted the poem because and Wilson 5), which seems a high no peace is found. of its subject and that had coloured price to have to pay for being a woman, -Mary Tighe (1772-1 8 1O), my judgement about it.. .. The other and a poet-and Irish. from "Dissipation" in Kelly. editor's blockto the subject ~rwented 5Asked how she negotiated between ''~licia Ostriker uses the phrase him from seeing the poem objec- multiple identities, Jackie Kay re- 'Igiddy glee" to describe women po- tively, as a careful, intelligent piece" plied: "I don't feel I need to sing it all ets' ludic and irreverent desolemni- (qtd. in O'Connor 36). the time. If someone just called me a zation of the body and sex. 19"1f it will be difficult for the serious poet, thatwould be fine" (Somerville- "~ichard Hayes (, 36, critic to determine exactly how seri- Arjat and Wilson 127). 1992) notes that "only one-fifth of ously such playful poetry asks to be 61 am also bothered by how indirectly the three hundred and thirty or so taken, there can be no question ofthe sexuality bears on sex, in literarycriti- contributors [to Poetry Ireland] have widespread tendency among women cal or theoretical terms (even femi- been women in the journal's first 21 poets to promote a yeasty triumph of nist). I do not even try to sort out sex, issues" (62). A survey carried out by life over the exhaustion and annihila- sexuality, and the erotic here, but see TheSteeple(Three Spires Press, Cork, tion that always threaten it" (Ostriker Marilyn Frye's witty and pertinent June 1992,5657)found thatwomen 201). Since I have never experienced discussion in "Lesbian 'Sex."' writers now account for five per cent this difficulty, I infer-with relief-

CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME that I am not a serious critic. Can play Hooley, Ruth. "Cut the Cake." Map- O'Malley, Mary. A Consideration of (or pleasure) exist only in arelation of Makm 'Colours:New Poets ofloorth- Silk. Galway: Salmon Publishing, opposition to "seriousness"? Like po- ern Ireland. Eds. T. Swift and M. 1990. etry and politics? For a discussion of Mooney. Montreal: Nu-Age Edi- Ostriker, Alicia. StealingtheLanguage: the "iconic feminine," see Mills. tions, 1988. The Emergence opomen i Poetry in Kelly, A. A., ed. Pilbrs of the House: America. London: The Women's References An Anthology of Verse by Irish Press, 1987. Women fiom 1690 to the Present. Scanlan, Patricia. Three Dimensional Anderson, Linda. "Private Dancer." Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1987. Sin. Cork: Ink Sculptors, 1988. Fortnight 292 (Supplement): 5. Longley, Edna. "In Conversationwith Smyth, Ailbhe, ed. Wifdish Things: Archer, Nuala, ed. "Special Issue: Carol Rumens." Krino 15 (1994): An Anthohgy ofNew Irish Women i Irish Women's Writing." Midland 1-12. Writing. Dublin: Atticpress, 1989. Review 3 (1986). McCurry, Jacqueline. "'Our Lady Smyth, Ailbhe. "States of Change: Archer, Nuala. The Hour ofPan/ama. Dispossessed': Female Ulster Poets Reflections on Ireland in Several Galway: Salmon Publishing, 1992. and Sexual Politics." Colby Quar- Uncertain Parts." Feminist Review Archer, Nuala. "Sheela-Na-Gigging terly 27.1 (1991): 48. 50 (1995a): 24-43. Around." 41 Meaney, Gerardine. Sex and Nation: Smyth, Ailbhe, ed. "Special Issue: (1994). Women in Irish Culture and Poli- Irish Women's Writing." Writing Boland, Eavan. In Her Own Image. tics. Dublin: Attic Press, LIP Pam- Women 11.3 (1995b). Dublin: Arlen House, 1980. phlet, 1991. Smyth,Ailbhe. "Outings, GuiltTrips, Boland, Eavan. A Kind of Scar: The Medbh, Maighread. The Making ofa and Other Kinds of Excursions." Woman Poet in a National Tradi- Pagan. Belfast: The BlackstafTPress, (Forthcoming). tion. Dublin: Attic Press, LIP Pam- 1990. Smyth, Cherry. "Coming Home." phlet, 1989. Meehan, Paula. The Man Who Was Feminist Review 50 (1995). Boland, Eavan. In a Time ofViolence. Marked by Winter. Oldcastle: Gal- Somerville-Arjat, Gillian, and Manchester: Carcanet, 1984. lery Press, 199l. Rebecca Wilson, eds. Sleeping with Byrne, M. "Interview with Romulus Mills, Lia. "'I Won't Go BackTo It': Monsters: Conversations with Scot- and Remus." The New Younger Irish Women Poets and the Iconic tish and Irish Women Poets. Dub- Irish Poets. Ed. . Bel- Feminine." Feminist Review 50 lin: Wolfhound Press, 1990. fast: The Blackstaff Press, 199l. (1995): 69-88. Strong, Eithne. Flesh the Greatest Sin. Cannon, Moya. Oar. Galway: Salmon Ni Dhomhnaill, Nuala. Selected Po- Dublin: Attic Press, 1993. Publishing, 1990. ems. Trans. . Wills, Clair. Improprieties: Politicsand Donoghue, Emma. Passions Between Dublin: Raven Arts Press, 1986. Sexualig in Northern Irish Poetry. Women: British Lesbian Culture, O'Connor, Mary. "The Thieves of Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993. 16623-1801. London: Scarlet Press, Language in Gaol?" Krino 15 1993. (1994): 3042. Dorcey, Mary. Movinglnto the Space Cleared by Our Mothers. Galway: Salmon Publishing, 1991. 1999 Berkshire Conference Frye, Marilyn. "Lesbian 'Sex."' Willf;l Virgn: Essays in Feminism. Free- on the History of Women dom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1992. Call for Papers Haberstroh, Patricia Boyle. "Literary Politics: Mainstream and Margin." The 11th Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, "Breaking Canadian Journal of Irish Studies. Boundaries," will be held on June 4-6,1999 at the University of Rochester, 18.1 (1992): 181-191. Rochester, New York, U.S.A. Hannan, Dennis J., andNancy Means Submit proposals in triplicate, postmarkedbyJanuary31,1998,in a single Wright. "Irish Women Poets: packet market "AITN: Berkshire Conferencento the appropriate co-chair. Breaking the Silence." Canadian Send proposals on U.S. and Canadian topics to Nell Painter, Department Journal of Women i Studies. 16.2 of History, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544-1017; on European (1990): 57-65. topics to Sharon Strocchia, Department of History, Emory University, Hartigan, Anne Le Marquand. Im- Atlanta, GA 30322; on Africa, Latin America, Asia, the Pacific, and all mortalsins. Galway: Salmon Pub- comparative topics (U.S./non-U.S.) to Teresa Meade, Department of lishing, 1993. History, Union College, Schenectady, NY 12308-2365. Higgins, Rita Ann. Philomenai Re- For more information see our website at: www.berks.aas.duke.edu venge. Galway: Salmon Publish- ing, 1992.

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