Poem

Red Switch Palace

Title	Red Switch Palace
Author	Stephen Sexton

Instances of Publication

A published appearance of this poem.

Collection/Anthology	Year of Publication	Medium	View Details
If All the World and Love Were Young	2019	Print Collection	View Details

Publication Instance Details #3195

Collection/Anthology Details

Collection/Anthology	If All the World and Love Were Young
Date of Publication	2019
Publisher	Penguin Books (UK)
Page Number(s)	31

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	HR & Environment HR & Colonisation/Colonial Legacies Death Penalty/Unlawful Detention/Incarceration Health Indigenous Rights (incl. culture & language) HR & Natural Disasters Poverty/Deprivation/Lack of Sustenance Racism/anti-Semitism/Sectarianism Forced Labour (incl. slavery & child labour)
Languages	English
Genre	Part Of Lyric Sequence
Medium	Print Collection
Notes	The poem forms part of a long sequence of poems written about the death of the poet's mother. Sexton employs the world of video games and Super Mario interspersed with fragments of memories past and present. More specifically, the poem is set in the Big Hole open-pit in South Africa -also known as Kimberley Mine or Tim Kuilmine (Afrikaans: Groot Gat)-, an underground mine claimed to be the deepest hole excavated by hand. References to the Sharashka built into the basin by black miners offer a more sinister look at a history of systemic racial discrimination and deprivation regarding black labour rights: the Sharashka were secret research and development laboratories operating from 1930 to the 1950s within the Soviet Gulag labor-camp system.

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