Being Irish: My inclusion in the Irish Poetry Reading Archive as a Diaspora Poet.

I'm delighted to have eight poems included in the Irish Poetry Reading Archive hosted by the University College Dublin, included as an Irish diaspora poet. Above is the first poem, "Edwin," but the seven other poems are on the same channel. 

I’m Irish born — born in Belfast, Northern Ireland to immigrant parents (Ashkenazi Lithuanians by way of South Africa)—and my connection to Ireland and to what it means to have spent my formative childhood years in Ireland has always been a significant part of my identity as a person and, more indirectly as a writer. The complex negotiations of how identity functions in the modern world often includes a network of diasporas, national, ethnic, religious, and cultural components. For me, Ireland is an important part of this mix. The landscape, the narrative and poetic impulse, a particular relation to the language — these are elements that connect me to Ireland. But also, an understanding of modern Ireland, diverse, complex and comprising a web of relations to Ireland and to Irishness, which includes the further complexity of being born in Northern Ireland and its relation to nation, heritage, colonialism, cultural and religious struggles and identity.

Identity for me has been a recognition of “otherness” — in culture, language, history — while at the same time negotiating belonging and connection.

Additionally, because my grandparents moved from Lithuania to South Africa, and then my parents moved to Ireland, and then my parents and me and my siblings moved to Canada, thinking back about growing up in Ireland makes me aware of language, culture and identity as an agreement, as something constructed. Some part by history and place, some part by those living in that place and that history. It was evident that there were many ways of being, many ways of seeing one's self depending who and where one was. This is the experience of exile, of migration, of diaspora, of being a stranger in a strange land, or of recognizing how we construct "stranger" and how we construct the strangeness or normalacy of the land.

And so, because of this, I was very honoured to be part of the Irish Poetry Reading Archive as a recognition of my ongoing and abiding connection to Ireland and Irishness. I have never been recognized institutionally as part of the diaspora and I have had few opportunities to be included in Irish or Irish diaspora events or literary culture. It means a great deal to me and for my writing to have it appear and be collected in this significant archive. I am glad of the opportunity for my work to be able to be available to Irish and Irish diaspora readers and scholars as well as to have the archive become more well known to Canadian readers and scholars and to share my work as part of it. I’m also glad that this archive furthers the discussion of what Irish writing is and speaks to the more complex understanding of contemporary Irish identity.