“Sympathetic Vibrations”: Music, Language and Ecology in the Poetry of Moya Cannon

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24162/EI2025-13159

Keywords:

Contemporary Irish poetry, Ecocriticism, Moya Cannon, poetic language, prosody

Abstract

The essay focuses on the poetry of Moya Cannon and her idea of poetic language as a link between people and the material environment in which they dwell. Throughout her oeuvre, Cannon shows that poetic language, which she often associates with music, is rooted in nature through its sonic organisation. The present essay sets out to demonstrate that by investigating the relationship between song, language and material environments, she seeks not only to express the mystery of nature but also, through her poems’ semantic and prosodic contours, to inscribe it in the construction of her verse.

References

Allen, Aaron S. (2011). “Prospects and Problems for Ecomusicology.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 64 (2): 414-24. https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2011.64.2.414.

Attridge, Derek (1982). The Rhythms of English Poetry. London: Longman.

Braidotti, Rosi (2013). The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Cannon, Moya (2020). “A Door Opening.” New Hibernia Review 24 (2): 9-17. https://doi.org/10.1353/nhr.2020.0016.

______ (2007). Carrying the Songs. Manchester: Carcanet.

______ (2019). Donegal Tarantella. Manchester: Carcanet.

______ (2011). Hands. Manchester: Carcanet.

______ (2020). “Poem for St. Brigid’s Day: A Song at Imbolc.” The Irish Times (1 February). https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/poem-for-st-brigid-s-day-a-song-at-imbolc-1.4149091.

______ (2011). “Reassembling the Broken Jar.” New Hibernia Review 15 (1): 9-15. https://doi.org/10.1353/nhr.2011.0010.

______ (2009). “‘The Hospital,’ Patrick Kavanagh.” Irish University Review 39 (2): 189-94. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20720396

______ (2001). “The Poetry of What Happens.” My Self, My Muse: Irish Women Poets Reflect on Life and Art, edited by Patricia Boyle Haberstoh. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press: 124-32.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1974). Poems, edited by John Beer. London: Dent.

Collin, Luci (2016). “The Poetic Reconstitution of Place in the Poetry of Moya Cannon: Roots, Land, Home and Language.” ABEI Journal 18: 159-70. https://doi.org/10.37389/abei.v18i0.3528.

Cusick, Christine (2005). “‘Our Language Was Tidal’: Moya Cannon’s Poetics of Place.” New Hibernia Review 9 (1): 59-76. https://doi.org/10.1353/nhr.2005.0019.

Flannery, Eóin (2018). Ireland and Ecocriticism. New York: Routledge.

Gilsenan Nordin, Irene (2010). “Elegy and Celebration: Landscape, Place and Dwelling in the Poetry of Moya Cannon.” Redefinitions of Irish Identity: A Postnationalist Approach, edited by Irene Gilsenan Nordin and Carmen Zamorano Llena. Bern: Peter Lang. 243-66.

Latour, Bruno (2018). “Down to Earth”: Politics in the New Climatic Regime, translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge: Polity.

______ (2017). Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime, translated by Catherine Porter. London: Polity.

Mahon, Derek (2010). Autumn Wind. Loughcrew: The Gallery Press.

______ (2014). Red Sails. Loughcrew: The Gallery Press.

Meehan, Paula (2016). Geomantic. Dublin: Dedalus Press.

Pietrzak, Wit (2019). “‘I Could Read It Like Leaves’: Communion of Languages in Paula Meehan’s Geomantic.” New Hibernia Review 23 (2): 62-76. https://doi.org/10.1353/nhr.2019.0018.

Pound, Ezra (1968). Literary Essays. New York: New Directions.

Potts, Donna L. (2009). “Carrying the Songs (Review).” New Hibernia Review 13 (1): 143-44. https://doi.org/10.1353/nhr.0.0061

______ (2018). Contemporary Irish Writing and Environmentalism: The Wearing of the Deep Green. Cham: Palgrave.

______ (2021). “Songs in Stone: Moya Cannon and Ecomusicology.” Contemporary Irish Poetry and the Climate Crisis, edited by Andrew J. Auge and Eugene O’Brien. New York: Routledge: 35-54.

Rorty, Richard (1989). Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

______ (2007). Philosophy as Cultural Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

“Symphony.” Brittanica. https://www.britannica.com/art/symphony-music.

Yeats, W. B. (1954). The Letters of W. B. Yeats, edited by Allan Wade. London: Rupert Hart-Davis.

Published

2025-03-17

How to Cite

Pietrzak, W. . (2025). “Sympathetic Vibrations”: Music, Language and Ecology in the Poetry of Moya Cannon. Estudios Irlandeses, 20(1), 12–21. https://doi.org/10.24162/EI2025-13159