Campbell, Alexandra (2018) Archipelagic poetics: ecology in modern Scottish and Irish poetry. PhD thesis. https://theses.gla.ac.uk/9102/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] ARCHIPELAGIC POETICS: ECOLOGY IN MODERN SCOTTISH AND IRISH POETRY Alexandra Campbell SUBMITTED IN FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF PhD IN ENGLISH LITERATURE School of Critical Studies College of Arts University of Glasgow August 2017 ©Alexandra Campbell, August 2017 2 ABSTRACT This thesis examines a range of poets from Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland from the Modernist period to the present day, who take the relationship between humans, poetry and the natural world as a primary point of concern. Through precise, materially attentive engagements with the coastal, littoral, and oceanic dimensions of place, Louis MacNeice, Hugh MacDiarmid, Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, Kathleen Jamie, John Burnside, Moya Cannon, Mary O’Malley and Jen Hadfield, respectively turn towards the vibrant space of the Atlantic archipelago in order to contemplate new modes of relation that are able to contend with the ecological and political questions engendered by environmental crises. Across their works, the archipelago emerges as a physical and critical site of poetic relation through which poets consider new pluralised, devolved, and ‘entangled’ relationships with place. Derived from the geographic term for ‘[a]ny sea, or sheet of water, in which there are numerous islands’, the concept of the ‘archipelago’ has recently gained critical attention within Scottish and Irish studies due to its ability to re-orientate the critical axis away from purely Anglocentric discourses. Encompassing a range of spatial frames from bioregion to biosphere, islands to oceans, and temporal scales from deep pasts to deep futures, the poets considered here turn to the archipelago as a means of reckoning with the fundamental questions that the Anthropocene poses about the relationships between humans and the environment. Crucially, through a series of comparative readings, the project presents fresh advancements in ecocritical scholarship, with regards to the rise of material ecocriticism, postcolonial ecocriticism, and the ‘Blue Humanities’. 2 3 CONTENTS Abstract ........................................................................................................ 2 Acknowledgements ..................................................................................... 4 Introduction ................................................................................................ 5 Chapter 1: ‘Free of All Roots’: The Archipelagic Modernism of Hugh MacDiarmid and Louis MacNeice .................................................... 32 Chapter 2: ‘Working on the Circumference’: Michael Longley’s and Derek Mahon’s Littoral Landscapes ........................................................... 67 Chapter 3: ‘Cocooning us in their whisper of contact’: Acoustic Entanglements in Michael Longley and Kathleen Jamie ................ 96 Chapter 4: ‘A catalogue of wrecks’: John Burnside’s and Derek Mahon’s Unhomely Lyrics ............................................................................. 129 Chapter 5: ‘Waves succumbed to | and survived’: Sea Change in the Poetry of Moya Cannon and Mary O’Malley .................................. 166 Chapter 6: ‘The sea returns whatever you give it’: Kathleen Jamie, Jen Hadfield and the Poetry of the Global Ocean................................. 202 Conclusion ............................................................................................... 242 Bibliography ............................................................................................ 248 3 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my supervisory team for all their help and support over the past four years. I am thankful to Dr David Borthwick who, despite joining the team nearly 18 months into the project, has proved to be one of the most important influences in the completion of this thesis. Without his sharp critical guidance and continued encouragement, not to mention the constant supply of cappuccinos, inspiring eco-chat, and the occasional clean hanky, this thesis would not have been possible. I am thankful to Professor Willy Maley whose keen critical eye and specialist knowledge has been a constant source of enthusiasm throughout, and I am also grateful for the support of Dr Gavin Miller whose precise and stimulating feedback has been invaluable to the success of this project. This thesis would not have been possible without the love and support of my family, friends, and colleagues. To my office-mates in 227, Graeme Spurr, Louise Daly-Creechan, Oliver Kröener and Kirsty Strang-Roy, without your constant singing, hilarious scheming, and sharing of knowledge this thesis would not have been completed, or may have been completed earlier, it’s hard to say. To my friends and colleagues in the Great George St. offices, without your sage advice, coffee breaks, and constant stream of cynical banter these past four years would have been dry and despairing. To the world’s greatest cheerleaders, Emily Ryder, Rose Cresswell, Becky Lea, Thomasin Bailey and Harriet Killikita, thank you for your unending support and continued defiance of the patriarchy. You are an inspiration to me. I would also like to thank a special group of people including Emilie Kristensen-McLachlan, Zoe Clarke, Sarah Fox, Thomas Raine, and Lucie Robert-DeBeauchamp, whose friendship has been a vital source of joy and good food without which I would not have made it. To my entire family, thank you for everything throughout these past few years, your constant encouragement has been vital in completing this project, I hope I have made you proud. And finally, to the other Alex, I owe all my success to your love, companionship, and unwavering belief in me. Thank you. 4 INTRODUCTION Ecopoetry in the Atlantic Archipelago In their introduction to Wild Reckoning (2004), an anthology inspired by the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), the poets John Burnside and Maurice Riordan suggest that one of the major concerns for contemporary poetry is the way in which it is able to shape ‘human relationship[s] with the natural world’ as a form of ‘belonging, a reckoning, and an accommodation.’1 The ‘wild reckoning’ that their anthology cultivates presents an understanding of poetry that is shaped by modes of contemplation, recording, and recounting.2 The use of the term ‘reckoning’ is of particular importance for Burnside and Riordan as it invokes questions of judgement and consequence. For these poets, poetry must not only recount modes of being in the world, but must also account for the consequences of our actions as a species, where ‘careless human activity’ has thrown the ‘natural world’ into disarray.3 The anthology is thus comprised of poems and poets that have ‘something vital to say about the human relationship with the natural world in the broadest sense: poets with a philosophical concern with the land; those whose work deal[s], in clear-sighted and compassionate fashion, with animal and plant life; poets whose lyrical explorations had to do with connection, continuity and the interlaced quality of all life’.4 Drawing from the legacy of Carson’s environmental activism and writing, Burnside and Riordan suggest that her exploration of a ‘new form of ecology, a science of belonging, a science founded as much on appreciation and lyricism as on observation and precision […] shares a lot of common round with poetry.’5 By placing the interrelationships between science and poetry at the forefront of the 1 John Burnside and Maurice Riordan, ‘Introduction’, Wild Reckoning, ed. by John Burnside and Maurice Riordan (London: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2004), pp.13-22, (pp.20-1). 2 The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘reckoning’ as: ‘1a. The action or an act of accounting to God after death for (one’s) conduct in life’, ‘b. The action or an act of giving or being required to give an account of something, esp. one’s conduct or actions’, ‘2. The action of providing an account or record of property, money, etc. entrusted to one’s charge’, and ‘4.a. Manner or mode of considering or regarding a matter’. OED [online], ‘reckoning’, <http://www.oed.com/search?searchType=dictionary&q=reckoning&_searchBtn=Search> [accessed 05.06.2017]. 3 Burnside and Riordan, p.22. 4 Ibid, p.20. 5 Ibid, p.19. 5 anthology’s inquiry into ‘nature’, Burnside and Riordan prompt us to consider the ways in which poetry has come to inform our comprehension of the natural world, and inversely, how the natural world has come to inform the very function and production of poetry itself. It is perhaps unsurprising that Burnside and Riordan choose to frame their discussion of the relationship between science, poetry, and the natural world around Carson’s work. Silent Spring is often cited as foundational in the