she writes. So a further boundary is created here between those who
are let into the political subtexts of the poem and those who are left
outside. With allusions to a specific context, the poem writes a
territory where only certain readers can confidently tread. On the one
hand, the meanings of ëSmokeí are part of a ëchosen groundí rather
than the ëcommon groundí which is imagined by Seamus Heaney at
the end of ëGifts of Rainí (1972).^22 In this way, the political impli-
cations of the poem become audience dependent. To understand the
political resonance of ëSmokeí an outsider would need to be familiar
with the specificity of McGuckianís community or ëplace logic.í This
begs the following questions: for whom is McGuckian writing and, in
spite of her speaker on the run, is her secretive poetry always able to
deterritorialize or escape from her place? Although the context of the
poem can be localized, there is still no firm ground on which to locate
the poetic speaker or from which to interpret the poem and it is in this
way that the poem constitutes a break with ëplace-logicí or the
foundational. If there is no foundational position from which to
identify the fleeing poetic speaker, what kind of maps are
McGuckianís poems providing, what are the politics of her poetic
cartography and does this constitute a critical geography?
J.B. Harleyís essay ëMaps, Knowledge, and Powerí (1988)
addresses the issues of space and power which are touched on by
Homi Bhabha. It is useful to explore his theorization of space and
cartography in order to discuss the representation of place in
McGuckianís poem ëOn Ballycastle Beachí (1988) which will bring
together discussion regarding the representation of the body and
space, and feminist and post-colonial identity politics. Harley notes
how
[b]oth in the selectivity of their content and in their signs and styles of
representation, maps are a way of conceiving, articulating, and structuring the
human world which is biased towards, promoted by, and extends influence
upon particular sets of social relations. By accepting such premises it becomes22 Seamus Heaney, ëGifts of Rainí, Selected Poems 1965ñ75 (London: Faber,
1980), p.65.