Towards Female Empowerment. The New Generation of Irish Women Poets: Vona Groarke, Sinéad Morrissey, Caitriona O'Reilly and Mary O'Donoghue

Katarzyna Poloczek

This monographic study analyses in depth the poetry written by four most significant Irish authors born in the 1970s. Together with insightful interpretations of the explored poetry, it offers a new reading of philosophy, social and cultural studies, and psychology connected with the subject matter of women’s empowerment. The poetry of Vona Groarke studies resistance articulated in historical terms, as resistance against political domination (colonisation). Sinéad Morrissey questions the expressions of political violence in the North, even those that might directly result from the reaction against the officially sanctioned system of domination. Caitríona O’Reilly analyses the fears that may be considered as existential (the passage of time, death, loss) that contribute to the sense of women’s incapacity. Here O’Reilly’s poetry seems to work like an empowering catharsis: imagining the least desired course of action and facing up to these vision. The poetry of Mary O’Donoghue probes two correlated though not synonymous phenomena: women being the actual victims of masculine violence, and the social mechanism of victimisation of women that ascribes to the female gender the “natural” and “established” role of a Victim. The book constitutes a thought-provoking debate on the up-to-date issues that need to be critically re-examined and re-thought these days. It is an inspiring reading for people interested not only in Irish poetry but in modern literature in general.