“In the midst of this lifelike grief”: Nick Laird’s maternal elegies in Feel Free

Abstract

AbstractThe article focuses on elegies for the mother figure in Nick Laird’s collection Feel Free (2018). I first offer a brief discussion of the maternal elegy in contemporary Irish poetry and then go on to argue that, faced with the inexpressibility of death, Laird seeks relief from the sorrow of loss in his own parental love, as full of heartfelt fondness as it is imperfect. Thus his elegies, tentatively committed to poetry as a consoling force, place solace for the death of the mother in the familial bond between the poet and his children.