routledge+history+of+literature+in+english

Martians and gorgons
483
Contemporary Irish poetry can be urban working class, polemical,
feminist, occupied with history and tradition, and at the same time
open to international influences and concerns. Poets like Pearse
Hutchinson and Michael Davitt, to name only two, are reinvestigating
the tradition of poetry in the Irish language, bringing together the
strands of history, legend, literature and language, which give Ireland
its modern identity and heritage.
MARTIANS AND GORGONS
In the late 1970s Craig Raine came to be known as leader of the
‘Martian’ school of poetry. It was not so much a ‘school’ as a
defamiliarising mode of perception which derived from the poem A
Martian Sends a Postcard Home (1979). This plays with ways of seeing;
books are ‘Caxtons’, the toilet is ‘a punishment room’ where ‘everyone’s
pain has a different smell’. From The Onion Memory (1978) through to
Clay: Whereabouts Unknown (1996), Raine has continued in this vein,
bringing unexpected perspectives to everyday things: ‘a pug like a car
crash’ and the moon fading in the morning ‘like fat in a frying pan’.
He is, more than any other, the poet who sees likes in unlikes. More
ambitious projects like the long poem History (1995) have less of this
distinctive characteristic and have enjoyed less success.
Tony Harrison regards poetry as ‘the supreme form of articulation’ and
sees the poet’s role as to ‘reclaim poetry’s public function’. His writing,
often set in his home county of Yorkshire, as in V (1985–88), uses colloquial
forms, natural speech, and local dialect in perfectly scanning rhymes to
explore matters like education and class, violence and language, questions
of social conflict. The letter V stands for ‘versus’, punning on ‘verses’, and
the traditional V for Victory; the poem was written during the miners’
strike of the mid-1980s, causing scandal when it was broadcast on
television. Harrison’s work, often for theatrical performance, is a vital
assertion of poetry and language, with none of the safe, ironic detachment
of some of his contemporaries: Harrison’s is committed, dramatic poetry
which is never comfortable and always challenging.
The Gaze of the Gorgon (1992), a long poem for television written in the
wake of the Gulf War, has shown that his energy and creativity are constantly
developing, making Harrison one of the most accessible and exciting poets