This chapter discusses the ruptured landscapes of Northern Ireland/Ulster in relation to the poetic art of Seamus Heaney. The divisions in the landscape of the region can be traced back to its contact with English planters (largely protestant Scottish and English settlers from 1608) who wrested economic, political and religious power from the Catholics of the region. Up to the present day the region remains a contested part of Britain and it has suffered the effects of sectarian violence (fuelled by paramilitary groups) which reached its peak in 1972. This historical and political movement ruptured the landscape of Ireland both ideologically and literally, as division occurred along the lines of nationalism, religion and belonging. The landscapes Heaney writes from are ruptured, in more ways than one: here I explore how he uses his poetic art to redress these ruptures, reweaving the discordant landscape of Ireland into something like a harmony. There is a tension in Heaney’s work between the painful, lived reality of political divisions and his desire to find poetic symbols that transcend rigid binaries. Relating his critical essays and poetry to the political and cultural landscape of Northern Ireland, through the poetical expression of stress and rupture, I explore the power of the poet to redress the physical and emotional ruptures of violent politics and military struggle.
Harkin uses John Barrell’s idea about English landscape painters from Barrell’s book The Dark Side of the Landscape: The Rural Poor in English Painting, 1730–1840.
2.
The 12th of July marches are held by the Orange Order to commemorate the victory of the Protestant William of Orange over the Catholic James II at the Battle of Boyne in 1690 (Bryan 2000).
References
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Coughlan P (1991) Bog queens The representation of women in the poetry of John Montague and Seamus Heaney. In: O’Brien Johnson T, Cairns D (eds) Gender and Irish writing. Open University Press, Milton Keynes
Olwig KR (2008) Performing on the landscape versus doing landscape: perambulatory practice, sight and the sense of belonging. In: Ingold T, Vergunst JL (eds) Ways of walking: ethnography and practice on foot. Ashgate, Aldershot, pp 81–92
Schein R (2003) Normative dimensions of landscape. In: Wilson C, Groth P (eds) Everyday America: cultural landscape studies after J. B. Jackson. University of California Press, Berkeley, pp 199–288
Tymoczko M, Ireland C (2003) Language and tradition in Ireland: prolegomena. In: Tymoczko M, Ireland C (eds) Language and tradition in Ireland: continuities and displacements. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, pp 1–28
