Abstract
This chapter examines the work of a selection of contemporary Irish poets, and focuses on the relationship between media technology and place in their writing. While technology as a marker of modernity has repeatedly been considered an agent of (or metaphor for) cultural discontinuity and the loss of tradition, and as eroding a personal as well as shared connection with place, this chapter argues that Irish poetry’s responses to recent developments in media technology, have been much more complex. The discussion explores the work of a number of authors, including Moya Cannon, Alan Gillis, Paula Meehan and Peter Sirr, to demonstrate how the role of technology is understood in diverse and often conflicting ways, depending on context: poets’ engagement with technology varies between concerns with technological control and alienation on the one hand, and, on the other, a curiosity regarding the new forms of mediation that we adopt to communicate our place in the world.
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Karhio, A. (2018). Lost? Technology and Place in Recent Irish Poetry. In: Flynn, D., O'Brien, E. (eds) Representations of Loss in Irish Literature. New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78550-9_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78550-9_7
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