Ellen Howley - Böcker

Oceanic Connections is a first-of-its-kind comparative study of Anglophone Irish and Caribbean poets who write widely about the sea, revealing the similarities across the poetic traditions of both regions. In turning to the sea, Ellen Howley applies a Blue Humanities lens to the work of major poets from Ireland and the Anglophone Caribbean, such as Derek Walcott, Kamau Brathwaite, Seamus Heaney, and Medbh McGuckian. She demonstrates how the sea is more than a backdrop or metaphor—it is a generative space of creative and historical meaning. Through careful analysis, Howley shows how poets from these geographically distant but culturally resonant regions engage with the ocean’s material realities and mythic depths. Howley navigates between concrete maritime experiences—sailors, shipwrecks, coastal labor—and the sea’s profound metaphorical potential. Poets become cartographers of both physical and imaginative spaces, mapping connections that span continents and centuries. Oceanic Connections reveals how the ocean simultaneously represents historical trauma, cultural memory, and a site of transformative artistic expression. Building on studies of Irish-Caribbean connections by Michael Malouf, Lee M. Jenkins, Stephanie Pocock Boeninger, Allison Donnell, Maria McGarrity, and Evelyn O’Callaghan, this study furthers the comparative conversation through its emphasis on poetic resemblances, illuminating surprising commonalities while honoring each tradition’s unique voice.

Seamus Heaney’s Mythmaking examines Seamus Heaney’s poetic engagement with myth from his earliest work to the posthumous publication of Aeneid Book VI. The essays explore the ways in which Heaney creates his own mythic outlook through multiple mythic lenses. They reveal how Heaney adopts a demiurgic role throughout his career, creating a poetic universe that draws on diverse mythic cycles from Greco-Roman to Irish and Norse to Native American. In doing so, this collection is in dialogue with recent work on Heaney’s engagement with myth. However, it is unique in its wide-ranging perspective, extending beyond Ancient and Classical influences.In its focus on Heaney’s personal metamorphosis of several mythic cycles, this collection reveals more fully the poet’s unique approach to mythmaking, from his engagement with the act of translation to transnational influences on his work and from his poetic transformations to the poetry’s boundary-crossing transitions. Combining the work of established Heaney scholars with the perspectives of early-career researchers, this collection contains a wealth of original scholarship that reveals Heaney’s expansive mythic mind. Mythmaking, an act for which Heaney has faced severe criticism, is reconsidered by all contributors, prompting multifaceted and nuanced readings of the poet’s work.