The Task

Publication Instance Details #771

Publication Overview

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

Details

Human Rights Issues	War Genocide
War / Genocide Referenced	War: Bosnian War Genocide: Bosnian Genocide
Irish Context	Specific Irish place or place-name mentioned Colonization and Colonial Legacy (Ireland)
Languages	English
Original Language	Irish
Original Poem	An Obair
Original Author	Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
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.)