Some Observations on Land-Under-Wave

Publication Instance Details #807

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	Displacement/Forced Migration Genocide
War / Genocide Referenced	Genocide: Holocaust
Irish Context	Emigration (from Ireland) Irish Language/Culture Specific Irish place or place-name mentioned
Languages	English
Original Language	Irish
Original Poem	Spléachanna Fánacha ar an dTír-fó-Thoinn
Original Author	Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
Genre	Part Of Lyric Sequence
Medium	Print Collection
Notes	This sequence of poems, 'Na Murúcha a Thriomaigh', makes use of the international folk tale of the mermaid to construct an allegorical world in which the merpeople have left the water and now live uneasily among humankind on land. This is the final poem of the sequence and deals with the merpeople's homeland. The speaker of the poem connects this homeland to mythological islands, such as Hy Breasil. The final lines of the poem describing the mermaids' fortress draw on Holocaust iconography: piles of clothing, heaps of eyeglasses, and earrings. Although this sequence is often read in the context of the Great Famine and Irish cultural loss, these images prompt an alternative reading of the themes of displacement, genocidal violence, and repression central to this sequence.