Hospitality, Home, and the Environment in the Works of Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh and Simon Ó Faoláin
Hospitality, Home, and the Environment in the Works of Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh and Simon Ó Faoláin

Summary/Abstract: This essay explores contemporary Irish-language poetry through a focus on the related concepts of rootedness and mobility. Examining works by Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh and Simon Ó Faoláin, and drawing on theories of James Clifford, Zygmunt Bauman, and Emmanuel Levinas, I ask how these poets combine depersonalized and globalized perspectives with themes of proximity, hospitality, and care. By opening their poems up to different forms of otherness, they show hospitality as both an inevitable and potentially problematic aspect of contemporary world. While Ní Ghearbhuigh foregrounds gender inequities encoded in stereotyped notions (and biological facts) of motherhood, Ó Faoláin focuses on the ambiguous legacies of various cultures. In being simultaneously rooted in the local (already extremely diversified) literary tradition and informed by a globalized sense of connection, their poems speak of genuine care for vulnerable ecological communities and social, linguistic, or other “minorities.”

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