Skirt of a Thousand Triangles

Publication Instance Details #3366

Publication Overview

Translation	Is Multilingual	Explicit Irish Context?	Ekphrasis	Has Paratext?	Reference to News, Media or Technology
No	No	No	No	No	No

Details

Human Rights Issues	War Racism/anti-Semitism/Sectarianism Death Penalty/Unlawful Detention/Incarceration
War / Genocide Referenced	War: Second World War Genocide: Holocaust
Languages	English
Genre	Short Lyric
Medium	Print Collection
Notes	This poem makes explicit reference to the occupation of a unnamed city by Nazi forces and a spate of suicides as well as executions. There is also explicit references to imprisonment and to a camp, most likely a concentration camp. Shane Alcobia-Murphy has identified an important intertext: 'Michelangelo in Ravensbrück: One Woman's War against the Nazis' by Karolina Lanckorońska, a first-hand account of her experiences of Ravensbrück concentration camp, having previously been imprisoned in Stanisławów prison for being active in the Polish resistance. Like other poems by McGuckian in this dataset, eye-witness accounts from other sources are incorporated into her poems. This is a self-reflexive technique that underscores the challenges of bearing witness to atrocities. Notably, this publication does not include the first couplet found in other publications which reads: 'I am at present reading a fascinating book/ Called “Dante n’a rien Vu”—a tortoise-shell reading'.