{"id":213,"date":"2021-04-06T11:23:09","date_gmt":"2021-04-06T09:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs2.abo.fi\/nisn-conference2021\/?page_id=213"},"modified":"2021-04-15T16:08:14","modified_gmt":"2021-04-15T14:08:14","slug":"session-6-perspectives-on-poetry","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs2.abo.fi\/nisn-conference2021\/session-6-perspectives-on-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"Panel 7: Perspectives on 21st Century Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cEnvironmental Justice and Posthuman Poetics in Contemporary Irish Poetry\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anne Karhio<\/em>, National University of Ireland<\/em><\/p>\n

This presentation addresses the idea of environmental justice in contemporary Irish poetry in the context of an emerging posthuman consciousness, and a posthuman poetics. This means the questioning of the centrality of the category of \u201chuman\u201d, and exploring forms of engagement with the world as more than an \u201cobject of knowledge\u201d or \u201cthing\u201d, a creation of \u201cthe productions of knowledge [by] the human knower\u201d, as Donna Haraway has argued (\u201cSituated Knowledges\u201d). In the poems addressed here, environmental justice or injustice is addressed in specific contexts related to the consumer society, the effects of multinational capitalism, or the destruction of human and non-human habitats. There is also, however, a more profound paradigm shift in the implicit challenging of the human perspective as a foundation for a sustainable ethics, or the human as \u201cthe food chain\u2019s top banana\u201d as Leontia Flynn writes in \u201cSecond Dialogue\u201d (The Radio<\/em>, 2018). In a number of poems, this is expressed through a recalibration of the first-person verbal-visual point of view, as well as of sense of scale. The perspectives of non-human animals or machine perception often replace the presumed subject-position of the speaking voice. In Derek Mahon\u2019s \u201cBeing a Dog\u201d (Against the Clock<\/em>, 2018) there is \u201cno inter-species dialogue\u201d to translate what the dog \u201cknows\u201d into human terms (or into human knowledge\u201d), and Peter Sirr\u2019s \u201cVision\u201d similarly recognizes the \u201cdog\u2019s eye view of the world\u201d (Gravity Wave<\/em>, 2019). In the long sequence that forms the second part of Justin Quinn\u2019s Fuselage<\/em> (2002), the distinction between human and machine vision is blurred in the repeated image of eyes monitoring individuals at different stages of the global trade on consumer goods (\u201cTwo eyes watch the earth\u201d, \u201cThe two eyes watch them all the time\u201d, \u201cthe sky-hooked eye\u2026of fluidity and ochlocracy\u201d). At the same time planetary and microscopic scales co-exist in the flow of goods and pixels on screen, across the planet. Mahon\u2019s \u201cA Country Road\u201d moves beyond the familiar trope of a rural landscape and senses, and recognizes how \u201ccloud swirls on the globe\u201d while \u201cbacteria, fungi, viruses [are] squirming in earth and dirt\u201d (Life on Earth<\/em>, 2008). The speaker of Nick Laird\u2019s \u201cFeel free\u201d (Feel Free<\/em>, 2018) similarly seeks to \u201cinterface \/ with Earth\u201d and while sensing \u201cthe presence of numerous and minute quanta moving\u2026in unison\u201d. In these poets\u2019 writing, such an imaginary of the more-than-human domain is also a prerequisite for a meaningful framework of environmental justice.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the \u2018Dim Coming Times\u2019: The Call to Justice of Ireland\u2019s Spoken Word Poetry and Internet Culture\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Charika Swanepoel, <\/em>University of Turku<\/em><\/p>\n

In W.B. Yeats\u2019s 1892 poem \u201cTo Ireland in the Coming Times\u201d, he writes of the artist\u2019s work as the making of song in order to \u201csweeten Ireland\u2019s wrong\u201d. Yeats suggested that politics is \u201can effect of art, not a cause of it; that poetry instigates action, instead of responding to external events\u201d1. Certainly, the same can be said today of the younger generation of artists who attempt to \u201csweeten Ireland\u2019s wrong\u201d when one considers the recent rise in spoken word poetry in Ireland and its call for justice. Spoken word poets are no longer limited to open mics at small-time pubs but form an integral part the cultural hub of Ireland. These artists are, for instance, seen performing outside the D\u00e1il \u00c9ireann and on popular television programs on public broadcasters such as RT\u00c9.<\/p>\n

In line with these spoken word performances and the written poetry that emerges from them, the global development of internet culture further allows for immediate and worldwide attention to injustice. Spoken word poetry performances often draw hundreds of thousands of views online and gain further interest by being shortened and shared on various online media and social platforms. This paper therefore hopes to illustrate how current spoken word poetry and internet culture in Ireland succeeds in challenging the established social order. This will be done by providing an overview of the issues addressed by young Irish spoken word poets Stephen James Smith, Emmet Kirwan, Emmet O\u2019Brien, and Natalya O\u2019Flaherty. On the whole, these issues include the housing crisis, the Irish identity, mental health and addiction, global warming, and the effects of the internet culture itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cEnvironmental Justice and Posthuman Poetics in Contemporary Irish Poetry\u201d Anne Karhio, National University of Ireland This presentation addresses the idea of environmental justice in contemporary Irish poetry in the context of an emerging posthuman consciousness, and a posthuman poetics. This means the questioning of the centrality of the category of \u201chuman\u201d, and exploring forms of … Continue reading “Panel 7: Perspectives on 21st Century Poetry”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":615,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-213","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs2.abo.fi\/nisn-conference2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs2.abo.fi\/nisn-conference2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs2.abo.fi\/nisn-conference2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs2.abo.fi\/nisn-conference2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/615"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs2.abo.fi\/nisn-conference2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs2.abo.fi\/nisn-conference2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":303,"href":"https:\/\/blogs2.abo.fi\/nisn-conference2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/213\/revisions\/303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs2.abo.fi\/nisn-conference2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}