Poem

An Obair

Title An Obair
Author Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

Instances of Publication

A published appearance of this poem.

Collection/Anthology Year of Publication Medium View Details
Cead Aighnis 1998 Print Collection View Details
Feis agus Cead Aighnis 2015 Print Collection View Details
Northern Lights 2018 Print Collection View Details
The Fifty Minute Mermaid 2007 Print Collection View Details

Translations

Connected translations of this poem.

Title Author Collection/Anthology Year View Details
The Task Paul Muldoon The Fifty Minute Mermaid 2007 View Details
My Care Bernard O'Donoghue Northern Lights 2018 View Details
Some Observations on Land-Under-Wave Paul Muldoon The Fifty Minute Mermaid 2007 View Details
Publication Instance Details #823
Collection/Anthology Details
Collection/Anthology Northern Lights
Date of Publication 2018
Publisher The Gallery Press (Ireland)
Page Number(s) 84, 86
Publication Overview
Translation Is Multilingual Explicit Irish Context? Ekphrasis Has Paratext? Reference to News, Media or Technology
No
Yes
Yes
No
No
Yes
Details
Human Rights Issues
War / Genocide Referenced
Irish Context
Languages
Genre Short Lyric
Medium Print Collection
Notes First-person speaker of the poem reflects on the meaning of the place name, 'An Obair', 'Nobber', in County Meath. The town was so named by the local Irish because of the Norman moat, built by Norman settlers, referenced twice in the poem. The speaker appears to relate the meaning of 'obair', 'work', to different kinds of emotional labour and tasks. There are references in the poem to Algerian children being killed - possibly in the Algerian Civil War, a Serbian poet who was in charge of a concentration camp (likely to be Radovan Karadžić, president of Serbia, poet, and later convicted for crimes against humanity), and a literary historian who played football with human skulls (a probable reference to the short story, 'Augsburg' by Slovenian writer Drago Jancár.
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