Department of English

Professor Lucy McDiarmid, Montclair State University (USA)

22 March 2023

O'Rahilly 2.12 and online via Teams
https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_OTdiZjA5NzAtYTJjMC00MGRlLTk0MGQtN2YwMjA1ODM4MDM0%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%2246fe5ca5-866f-4e42-92e9-ed8786245545%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%229388a8d1-25e6-4ab4-ab6f-56373146031f%22%7d

Recent Irish poems feature a street that disappears, a house that disappears, a door that opens from who-knows-where onto the platform of a train station, a clearing where something magical might happen but doesn’t (yet), and a mysterious encounter with an ‘other self’ in Knocksink Wood. Are these places actual settings, poetic creations, absurdist fantasies, or the result of wearing the wrong glasses? – That would be an ontological matter…and the subject of this talk.