Knowing One's Place in Contemporary Irish and Polish Poetry: Zagajewski, Mahon, Heaney, Hartwig

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Are we allowed to choose where we belong What pressures make us feel that we should belong somewhere This book brings together four major poetsHeaney, Mahon, Zagajewski, and Hartwigwho ask themselves these questions throughout their lives. They start by assuming that we can choose not to belong, but know this is easier said than done. Something in them is awry, leading them to travel, emigrate, and return dissatisfied with all forms of belonging. Writer after writer has suggested that Polish and Irish literature bear some uncanny similarities, particularly in the twentieth century, but few have explored these similarities in depth. Ireland and Poland, with their tangled histories of colonization, place a large premium upon knowing one's place. What happens, though, when a poet makes a career out of refusing to know her place in the way her culture expects This book explores the consequences of this refusal, allowing these poets to answer such questions through their own poems, leading to surprising conclusions about the connection of knowledge and belonging, roots and identity.

Reviews

"Through a careful and extensive examination of both Polish and Irish poetries and their prominent contemporary voices, Magdalena Kay's book offers excellent insight into the sense of identity and belonging as filtered through poetic meditation. Her highly nuanced reading, founded on the consequences of history for an individual consciousness and its creative expression, is driven by the imperative of respect for poetic singularity; indeed, seldom does one encounter this kind of synchrony between a critic and a poet. Her eloquently written and coherently structured book adds a new and original perspective to the emerging field of Irish-Polish comparison." -- Bozena Shallcross, Associate Professor of Polish Literature, University of Chicago, USA

Author Bio

Magdalena Kay is Associate Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Canada. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and B.A. in English from Harvard University. She is the author of In Gratitude for All the Gifts:Seamus Heaney and Eastern Europe (University of Toronto Press, forthcoming 2012) and has published articles in journals such as World Literature Today, New Hibernia Review, An Sionnach, Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, Polish Review, Comparative Literature Studies and Comparative Literature.