The Poetry of Medbh McGuckian: The Interior of Words

Introduction

Author of twelve collections of poetry, Medbh McGuckian is one of Northern Ireland’s foremost poets; however, she has not won the critical acclaim accorded to her peers.While there are monographs and collections of essays devoted to the work of Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Derek Mahon and Michael Longley, McGuckian’s oeuvre tends to be overlooked.The reason for this is, perhaps, its ‘obliquity’. Indeed, it is by now a critical commonplace to describe her poetry as ‘obscure’, a term rarely used in approbation with regard to her work. Accurately summarising the current critical consensus, Rui Carvalho Homem writes that [f]ew contemporary poets with well established careers and near-canonical status will have been so hounded by one single critical topos as Northern Irish poet Medbh McGuckian.That topos concerns her supposed obscurity, mentioned vociferously, dismissively, apologetically, or with some enthusiasm, depending on the critical perspective and on the ensuing degree of sympathy.1 Reviewers of her first collection, The Flower Master (1982), were, in the main, perplexed by the complexity of her similes, the curious syntactical arrangement of her sentences, and the often unstable lyric centre of her poems. Writing for the Sunday Tribune, fellow poet Dennis O’Driscoll stated that McGuckian was ‘a profoundly self-absorbed poet’ whose work was ‘merely private’, the syntax of which left ‘the reader confused, excluded, even bored’.2 Although Eamon Grennan’s review for The Irish Times was more appreciative, commenting that here was ‘a talent that is surely one of the most exciting in recent Irish poetry’, yet even he talks of her poems as ‘unnecessarily opaque, the language straining after its own concealment’.3 Such criticisms were not specific to male reviewers. Avril Forrest, in her piece for The ConnaughtTribune, felt that McGuckian’s ‘problem in writing a poem’ was not ‘in finding the words and images she needs, but in gaining Introduction SHANE ALCOBIA-MURPHY 1 2 Shane Alcobia-Murphy control and imposing order on the thronging richness of her poetic imagination ’.4 However, reading her early poems after twenty-five years have passed, one can begin to wonder what all the fuss was about. Is ‘Mr McGregor’s Garden’5 really all that ‘exotic in its imagery and impenetrable in its reference’?6 Mr McGregor’s garden (97) Mr McGregor’s Garden lived largely for her needle; saved the Some women save their sanity with needles. sanity of more women (55) I complicate my life with studies ‘volatile [. . .] his vulgarity’ (48) Of my favourite rabbit’s head, his vulgar volatility, a little ladylike sketching (33) Or a little ladylike sketching her resident toad; in a flannel-lined box (50) Of my resident toad in his flannel box; the Herbarium;‘exclusively tropical’ (45) Or search for handsome fungi for my tropical dry-rot [. . .] in the garden [. . .] grow it (44) Herbarium, growing dry-rot in the garden, for the sake of a kinder climate (14) And wishing that the climate were kinder, the spiky [. . .] purple head among the moss, Turning over the spiky purple heads among the moss which I took up carefully with my old cheese- With my cheese-knife to view the slimy veil. knife, and turning over saw the slimy veil (43) sleepers in the goods sidings (22) Unlike the cupboard-love of sleepers in the siding, under the animal’s own control; My hedgehog’s sleep is under his control My tame hedgehog could rouse herself at half And not the weather’s; he can rouse himself an hour’s notice; on a merely wet day in At half-an-hour’s notice in the frost, or leave at will August; usually after a large meal and an On a wet day in August, by the hearth. evening of extra liveliness; very cross if He goes by breathing slowly, after a large meal, interrupted (51); wants to return; 120 A lively evening, very cross if interrupted, respirations to the minute; weak and And returns with a hundred respirations nervous (52) To the minute, weak and nervous when he wakens, Busy with his laundry. Sleepless nights [. . .] were spent in learning On sleepless nights while learning the plays of Shakespeare by heart (40) Shakespeare off by heart, Bunny came to my bedside in a white cotton I feel that Bunny’s at my bedside nightcap and tickled me with his In a white cotton nightcap, whiskers (61) Tickling me with his whiskers. In contrast to the reviewers’ claims of ‘opacity’, the poem seems to have a...