Gendered Spaces in Contemporary Irish Poetry

2 Liminal Spaces: Tom Paulin Walking a Line

In Walking a Line my interest is in the dangerous edge of things.^1

Paulin: Poet and Essayist

Since his initial publication of A State of Justice (1977), Paulin as
essayist, academic and poet, has been described by critics such as
Patricia Craig in terms of the ësocial criticismí of his work. In his
review of Fivemiletown (1987), George Watson refers to Paulin as ëan
uncomfortable, spikey poetí, while Kathleen Jamie calls him a
ëliberating criticí and portrays Paulin as a poetic rebel and critical
iconoclast.^2 What these and most of Paulinís reviewers share is the
idea that, as a Northern Irish poet, he is more politically grounded than
his counterpart, Paul Muldoon; a characterization that is held onto by
Paulin himself in his critical essays and television appearances. It is
therefore not surprising when Elmer Andrews views Paulin as an
ëunderground resistance fighterí, a label that has connotations of the
Second World War, claiming that

Poetry, for Tom Paulin, is a subversive act, a defiance of a linguistic and

literary order designed for the ideological suppression or pacification of

1 Tom Paulin, ëTwentieth Century Poetry Lectureí, Tuesday 26th November,
1996 at Rutherford College, The University of Kent at Canterbury. Recorded
and held at the Templeman Library, UKC.
2 Patricia Craig, ëHistory and its Retrieval in Contemporary Northern Irish
Poetry: Paulin, Montague and Othersí, Contemporary Irish Poetry: A
Collection of Critical Essays, ed., Elmer Andrews (London: Macmillan, 1992),
pp.1ñ25. George Watson, ëAn Uncomfortable, Spikey Poetí, Irish Literary
Supplement, Fall, 1988, Vol.7, No.2. Kathleen Jamie, ëReggae and the Crack:
Writing to the Momentí, The Independent, Sunday 24th November, 1996,
ëSunday Reviewí.