Gendered Spaces in Contemporary Irish Poetry

ëpolishedí rather than smashed. The poem then is a composition that
tries to fight composition. The weeping woman is imagined as
discomposed and the poem alludes to the limits of composure. Under-
mining composure and composition, Boland could come close to
throwing away the very tools that build the poem, as the poet, in
Kristevaís terms from ëRevolution in Poetic Languageí, makes small
ambushes at the limits of language.^38
When Butler analyzes Kristevaís description of ëpoesisí, she
provides a useful examination of the philosophical processes that are
to be found in Bolandís poem:

the poetic-maternal practices of displacing the paternal law always remain

tenuously tethered to the law. Hence, a full-scale refusal of the symbolic is

impossible, and a discourse of ëemancipationí, for Kristeva, is out of the

question. At best, tactical subversions and displacements of the law challenge

its self-grounding presumption. But, once again, Kristeva does not seriously

challenge the structuralist assumption that the prohibitive paternally sanctioned

culture cannot come from another version of culture, but only from within the

repressed interior of culture itself, from the heterogeneity of drives that

constitutes cultureís concealed foundation.^39

The discomposure of poetic-maternal practices within poetic language
is played out within Bolandís ëThe Art of Griefí. But as is usual in
Boland, apart from the underlying threat of discomposure, her poetic
voice remains composed albeit on edge. Her critique of ëpaternal
sanctioned culture cannot come from another version of culture, but
only from within the repressed interior of culture itself.í
The poem attempts to go to the edge as the speaker invokes an
ëinbetweení space and a between time or ëthe hour between planetsí,
and at this point the verse becomes less lucid and more comparable
with the style of Medbh McGuckian:

From now on let daylight be blackñ

and-white and menial in-between and

let the distances be made of silk. My

distances were made of grit and the light

rain throws away in the hour between planets.

And rush-hour traffic.

38 Kristeva, ëRevolution in Poetic Languageí, The Kristeva Reader, pp.80ñ123.
39 Butler, p.169.