Vona Groarke

Writing Yourself Home - RTÉ Lyric Feature documentary, October 8, 2023

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Listen Here: https://www.rte.ie/radio/lyricfm/the-lyric-feature/stories/2023/1010/1409978-the-lyric-feature-writing-yourself-home/

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'The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine', thinks Stephen Dedalus of the English Dean of Studies in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. For Irish people now living in Britain, that relationship might be complicated by their having brought with them an English that has been Irished; that might be said to think, sound and mean differently, to a greater or lesser extent.

     For Irish writers who have moved to Britain and who write in English, that relationship with language might be even more complex. For poets (whose relationship with language is always knotty) might it, in fact, be problematic?

     Four poets from different parts of Ireland – Martina Evans from Cork, Conor O’Callaghan from Dundalk, Sinéad Morrissey from Belfast, and John McAuliffe from Listowel – who all now live in England, talk with Vona Groarke about what brought them there and about how living there has (or maybe hasn’t) changed how and what they think about Ireland, and how and what they write.

     This candid and probing documentary asks important questions about being Irish in England, especially post-Brexit, as well as questions about language and identity, and about how an environment might shape the words we use, and how we think in them.