Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: The 'winds of change' blowing through Irish society in the second half of the twentieth century are well-documented.(See Brown 2004;Ferriter 2004;Lee 1989.)It might be argued however that, rather than clearing away collective cobwebs, these winds merely disturbed the latent dust of economic and social conservatism, leading to a resurgence of emigration that ravaged Ireland at the end of the eighties.This paper examines emigration to America during that period, with specific reference to the New Irish generation.The article will set out the context and history of twentieth-century emigration in Ireland and America.The poetry of emigration, in particular Irish-American poetry, is considered and the paper questions the peculiar void of (e)migrant poetry in the Irish canon.Finally, this article conducts an in-depth analysis of the poetry of Greg Delanty and Eamonn Wall and probes the ways their individual migrations affect their work. 'Nothing But the Same Old Story' 2 ?: Late twentieth-century emigrationThe shifting fortunes of the Irish nation during the latter half of the twentieth century are evident through the prism of emigration.The economic stability of the sixties and membership of the EU had engineered massive reductions in emigration figures, leading to a total reversal of migration trends during the seventies, but by 1989 a record 44,000 people emigrated, a near ten-fold increase on figures for a decade earlier (Centre for Migration Studies).For many, this marked a symbolic regression to the well-established paradigm of emigration as a necessary, inevitable aspect of Irish life.Contemporaneous 1 'Breakfast-time back Home' is the title of a 1994 advertisement for Galtee Foods which captured the popular impression of the 'New Irish' emigration experience through its depiction of success, integration and prosperity, balanced by the requisite nostalgia for 'home'. 2 'Nothing but the Same Old Story' is the title of the final track from Paul Brady's Hard Station (1983).The entire album, and the song 'Nothing but the Same Old Story' in particular, considers the choices, chances, and consequences of contemporaneous emigration.
DOI: 10.21427/d7p449
Author: McDaid, Ailbhe
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W108667802