Abstract
This stanza from the first section of Bobby Sands’s long poem “Trilogy” encapsulates some of the most crucial preoccupations of the Republican POWs who were composing their texts in the H Blocks between 1976 and 1981. Like many texts written during incarceration, the space of the prison intrudes, the fearful interior of Castlereagh interrogation center standing in stark opposition to the beauty of the natural world exterior to jail walls. Indeed, this violent juxtaposition propels Sands’s poem: as the POW is dragged inside the cell, so is the audience metaphorically incarcerated alongside him. While the “quaking wretch” found in the cell at first may appear to be a solitary figure, the stanza insists that all of this takes place “Amidst a people’s screams.” The political prison is but one locus of a larger, shared trauma—a trauma willfully ignored, Sands asserts, by the artists and writers whose duty it is to communicate such injustice to the rest of the world.
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Chapter Three “Comrades in the Dark”: Writing in the H Blocks, 1976–1981
Bobby Sands, “Trilogy” Skylark Sing Your Lonely Song: An Anthology of the Writings of Bobby Sands (Dublin and Cork: Mercier Press, 1982) 57–8.
W. B. Yeats, “The Tower,” Oxford Anthology of British and Irish Poetry, ed. Keith Tuma (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) 47.
Allen Feldman, Formations of Violence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991) 148.
David Lowry, “The English System of Judicial Injustice,” Catholic League Newsletter 7.11 (1980): 3.
Pat Magee, Gangsters or Guerillas? (Belfast: Beyond the Pale, 2001).
Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA (Boulder: Roberts Rinehart, 1994) 368.
Denis O’Hearn, Nothing but an Unfinished Song: Bobby Sands, the Hunger Striker Who Ignited a Generation (New York: Nation, 2006) 185–6.
Gerry Adams, “Inside Story,” Republican News 16 Aug. 1975: 6.
Eileen Fairweather, Roisin McDonough, and Melanie McFadyean Only the Rivers Run Free, Northern Ireland: The Women’s War (London: Pluto, 1984) 57.
David Lloyd, Anomalous States (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993) 47.
Bobby Sands One Day in My Life (Dublin and Cork: Mercier, 1983) 25.
Gerry Adams, “Cage Eleven,” Cage Eleven (Dingle: Brandon, 1990) 16.
Bobby Sands, “I Once Had a Life,” An Phoblacht/Republican News 17 Mar. 1979: 2.
Bobby Sands, “Christmas Eve,” Skylark Sing Your Lonely Song (Dublin and Cork: Mercier Press, 1982) 99.
Bobby Sands, “The harvest Britain has sown” [sic], Republican News 16 Sept. 1978: 8.
Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985) 4–6.
Bobby Sands “Teach Your Children” Skylark Sing Your Lonely Song (Dublin and Cork: Mercier Press, 1982) 113.
Laurence McKeown, Out of Time: Irish Republican Prisoners Long Kesh 1972–2000 (Belfast: Beyond the Pale, 2001) 70.
Bobby Sands, “How Much More?” and “I fought a monster today” [sic], Republican News 7 Oct. 1978: 9.
Bill Ashcroft, Post-Colonial Transformation (New York: Routledge, 2001) 168.
Bobby Sands “On the Blanket,” Republican News 1 Apr. 1978: 2.
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1977) 201.
Bobby Sands, “The window of my mind” [sic], Republican News 25 Nov. 1978: 7.
Bobby Sands, “The Gloves Have Been Removed,” Republican News 16 Sept. 1978: 8; Sands, “Harvest” 8.
Bobby Sands, “I fought a monster today” [sic] and “How Much More” Republican News 7 Oct. 1978: 9.
Bobby Sands, “The Birth of a Republican,” Republican News 16 Dec 1978: 6.
Bobby Sands, “On the Blanket,” Republican News 7 Jan. 1978: 6.
Bobby Sands, “Poetic Justice,” Republican News 2 Dec. 1978: 5.
Danny Morrison, “Introduction,” in Bobby Sands, Prison Poems (Dublin: Sinn Féin Publicity Department, Oct. 1981) 10.
Roibeard O Seachnasaigh (Bobby Sands), “An scéal” [sic], An Phoblacht/Republican News 10 Dec. 1981: 10.
Jerome McGann, A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983) 8.
G. Thomas Tanselle, Textual Criticism and Scholarly Editing (University of Virginia Press, 1990) 187.
Bobby Sands, “The Diary of Bobby Sands,” special supplement, An Phoblacht/Republican News 13 June 1981: vii.
Bobby Sands, The Diary of Bobby Sands (Dublin: Sinn Féin Publicity Department, June 1981) 42.
Bobby Sands, The Diary of Bobby Sands (Dublin: Republican Publications, May 1990) 53.
Bobby Sands, “The Writings of Bobby Sands,” An Phoblacht/Republican News 21 Mar. 1981: 6–7.
Qtd. in Brian Campbell, Laurence McKeown, and Felim O’Hagan, Nor Meekly Serve My Time (Belfast: Beyond the Pale, 1994) 104.
Bobby Sands, “The Birth of a Republican,” An Phoblacht/Republican News 4 Apr. 1981: 7.
Bobby Sands, “The rhythm of time” [sic], An Phoblacht/Republican News 29 June 1981: 16.
Bobby Sands, “The Captain and the Cowards” and “All God’s Children,” An Phoblacht/Republican News 19 Sept. 1981: 8–10.
Gerry Adams, “Introduction,” in Bobby Sands, The Writings of Bobby Sands (Belfast?: Sinn Féin, Mar. 1981).
Bobby Sands, “The Lark and the Freedom Fighter,” The Writings of Bobby Sands, (Belfast?: Sinn Féin, Mar. 1981). No pagination.
Gerry Adams, “Introduction,” in Bobby Sands, The Writings of Bobby Sands (Dublin: Sinn Féin POW Department, Apr. 1981) 5–6.
Marcella, H6 (Bobby Sands), “… and the woman cried” [sic], An Phoblacht/Republican News 24 Mar. 1979: 11.
Roibeard, H5 Block (Bobby Sands), “Poetic Justice,” Republican News 2 Dec. 1978: 5.
Sands, “The Rhythm of Time,” Prison Poems (Dublin: Sinn Féin Publicity Department, Oct. 1981) 81.
Gerry Adams, “Real poetry” [sic], An Phoblacht/Republican News 17 Dec. 1981: 9.
Bobby Sands, Writings from Prison (Boulder: Roberts Rinehart, 1997) 3, 24.
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© 2007 Lachlan Whalen
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Whalen, L. (2007). “Comrades in the Dark”: Writing in the H Blocks, 1976–1981. In: Contemporary Irish Republican Prison Writing. New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230610064_3
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