Centre for Irish Studies Seminar Series: ‘The Law of the Mother and the Sibling World: Leeanne Quinn’s Queer Ecologies’

Centre for Irish Studies Seminar Series

‘The Law of the Mother and the Sibling World: Leeanne Quinn’s Queer Ecologies’

Professor Moynagh Sullivan

Moynagh Sullivan is a Professor of English at MU, and the Faculty of Arts, Celtic Studies and Philosophy Associate Dean for Equality, Diversity Inclusion and Interculturalism. A visiting scholar at The Centre for Irish Studies at NUIG in 2022, she has previously been a visiting Professor at the centre for Irish Studies at Boston College, MA, and the Fulbright Fellow in Irish Studies at UC Berkeley, CA. Moynagh’s pioneering intersectional work in Irish Studies has examined patriarchal, racist and classist structures in canons and canon-making, and has introduced previously neglected or understudied women writers to the field, such as Blanaid Salkeld and Carla Lanyon Lanyon. Moynagh’s extensive publications in these areas includes close studies of contemporary poets such as Eavan Boland, Meadbh McGuckian, Rita Ann Higgins and Leeanne Quinn. She is currently working on a monograph on Maternal Imaginaries in contemporary Irish culture.

Paper: ‘The Law of the Mother and the Sibling World: Leeanne Quinn’s Queer Ecologies’

Paper Photograph (credit https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/i-was-thinking-about-how-we-say-things-in-poetry-how-we-depart-from-our-sources-1.4369661)

Paper Abstract:

This paper examines how the work of poet Leeanne Quinn attends to the interdependence of all life, ‘every last cord between us’ (Leeanne Quinn, ‘Acoma’, Before You, Dublin: Dedalus Press, 2012), on this planet and beyond.  Born in Drogheda in 1978, Quinn is an award winning and critically acclaimed Munich-based poet. The molecular and cellular granularity of Quinn’s vision, ‘wrapped in particles of winter/light’ (Quinn, Before You, 2012) ) is perceptually entwined with the existential threat of climate emergency, and in this paper, I consider how the interconnectivity of body, planet, and art is expressed in Quinn’s acclaimed first volume Before You (2012), through the holding metaphor of the ‘sibling world’, an emotional ecosystem painstakingly painted in the sister poems, ‘Imprints’ and ‘Mosquitoes’. I explore her writing through psychoanalytical and eco-critical perspectives to advance feminist literary, cultural research that highlights the damaging dominance of the father-son model of inheritance and influence in Irish cultural critique.