Immram

Publication Instance Details #1718

Publication Overview

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

Details

Human Rights Issues	HR & Colonisation/Colonial Legacies Gender-based violence Indigenous Rights (incl. culture & language)
War / Genocide Referenced	Genocide: Genocide of indigenous people in USA (pre 20th century)
Irish Context	Colonization and Colonial Legacy (Ireland) Emigration (from Ireland) Specific Irish place or place-name mentioned
Languages	English
Genre	Long (narrative) Poem
Medium	Print Collection
Notes	First published in Why Brownlee Left (1980), this is a long narrative poem or sequence. It intertwines Native American and Irish history, including references to colonisation and the colonial legacy. The poem is propelled by an unnamed narrator's detective-like search for self-knowledge amid film-noir plotlines. He goes 'west to Paradise', to a pool room, the Park Hotel, the Atlantic Club, but only finds that he is still, as before, 'behind the eight': a white man that is, by the defaults of power, conducive to violent colonial acts: he is a coloniser of women, indigenous lands, and indigenous people. The poem's title places the speaker's quest in the Irish immrama (literally 'rowing about') tradition, a genre that typically depicts a voyage that turns out to be a spiritual pilgrimage or soul-search. The immram Muldoon's poem specifically alludes to and parodies - at times playfully, at others tragically - is the Old Irish, medieval sea voyage tale "Immram Maele Dúin". The original protagonist, Maol Dúin, shares Muldoon's surname, although in his own poem, the speaker remains unnamed and shares the fate of the reader: together, everyone rows about the unravelling stanzas, trying to forge connections that seem pre-determined rather than contingent.