Poetry as endurance : Caitríona O'Reilly' Geis

Vol.46,No.2(2020)

Wit Pietrzak

https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2020-2-14

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/143217

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Abstract
The article focuses on O'Reilly's Geis (2015), exploring the notion of poetry as a force of endurance of life's traumas. The volume is shown to display a tense balance between celebrations of life and a constant awareness of death as well as between displays of language's expressive capacity and the recurrent realisations of the ineffable nature of the world. This vacillation, in turn, takes on a critical potential, as her poems investigate the situation of a traumatised psyche and the ends of art, all the while being alert to the question of what enables the (poetic) voice to speak out. In the course of my reading, O'Reilly's insistent ambiguities are mapped out against the classical writings of Jacques Derrida, whose challenge to the metaphysics of presence, truth, speech and coherence helps trace O'Reilly's investment in the perception of poetry as springing from no source but nevertheless representing a vital force of endurance, life and resilience.

Keywords:
contemporary Irish poetry; Caitríona O'Reilly; Jacques Derrida; trauma; endurance

Pages:
249–260
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