environment and space 151By contrast, the sonnets document the less ephemeral elements
of city life and make an appeal to history, nature and time. The
second sonnet, ‘Number Fifty-One’, envisages the ‘dissolution’
of ‘the solid world’ as building components return to nature, the
red bricks to ‘clay pit,’ granite returns to the mountains ‘above
Ballyknockan’, shutters ‘ache’ and the iron railings ‘guard the
memory of fi re’ (p. 29 ). This return of objects to their constitu-
ent elements is counterbalanced by the fourth sonnet’s focus on
the craftsmen and their work with ‘chisel and clamp, diestock
and drill / edgetools and fi les’ (p. 31 ). Meehan reminds us that
the Green’s Georgian design is the result of intensive labour.
The world of work creates a civic space procured by the ‘makers
and minders of our material world’ (p. 31 ). In the fi fth sonnet
Meehan sketches for us how the park became a brief defence for
the insurgents of the Easter Rising in 1916 ; and incidental details
of the battle in the park are highlighted in a citation from the
Park Superintendent’s report on the damage: ‘ 6 of our waterfowl
were killed or shot, 7 of the garden seats broken and about 300 shrubs
destroyed’ (p. 32 ). The view from a window overlooking the park
prompts a scene from the past where buildings ‘made mirror to
smoke and fi re / a Republic’s destiny in a Countess’ stride’ (p. 32 ).
The revolutionary nationalist Countess Constance Markievicz’s
bust is now displayed on the south side of the central garden.
Importantly, Meehan suggests that the civic space’s relationship
with a national discourse is not a sacrosanct space. Indeed, the
smaller lyrics of dailiness, desiring and loss which accompany the
sonnets reinscribe the sense that living public spaces are consti-
tuted by ephemeral narratives and not only the dictates of civic
pride.
PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY: THE POET IN THE CITY – IAIN
SINCLAIR
Iain Sinclair’s writing is often characterised as performing a form
of literary psychogeography. Guy Debord in his ‘Introduction to a
Critique of Urban Geography’ ( 1955 ) defi ned psychogeography as
a practice that: