Paula Meehan: Poetry across Boundaries

Abstract

This considers how Meehan’s work promotes transgression of boundaries between self and non-self, social class, and nation. Subheadings: Creating Distance explores the geographical and ideological distances from Ireland which Meehan generated during her early career, and wrote about in her first three collections. Gary Snyder and Meehan’s Poetry of Breath offers an account of the formative influence of Snyder’s environmental Buddhism on the development of Meehan’s mature poetic practice. Three Female Images of Ireland scrutinises the dramatic monologues, ‘The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks’, and ‘Pillow Talk’, as well as the character Alice in Meehan’s play, Cell. It does this in order to explore how Meehan gives the agency of voice to previously emblematised female figures, and thereby critiques traditional ideologies of Ireland. Inside History: A Jobbing Poet of the 1990s gives an account of the integration of Meehan’s poetry in the cultural life of Dublin, and her collaboration with artists, dancers, musicians and film-makers.