Postcolonial Overtures

Postcolonial Overtures explores the importance of sound in contemporary Northern Irish writing, focusing on the work of three canonical poets: Ciaran Carson, Derek Mahon, and Paul Muldoon. Obert argues that these poets respond to what Edward Said calls "e;geographical violence"e;-to the stratification of the North's visual spaces; to the sectarian symbols splashed across Belfast and beyond-by turning from the eye to the ear, tentatively remapping place in acoustic space. Carson, for instance, casts Troubles-era Belfast as a "e;demolition city,"e; its landmarks "e;swallowed in the maw of time and trouble,"e; and tries to compensate for this inhospitality by reimagining landscape as soundscape, an immersive auditory field. This strategy suggests sound's political and affective potential: music, accent, and even comfortingly familiar white noise can help subjects, otherwise unmoored, feel at home. Drawing on a diverse range of fields, Obert devotes two chapters to the examination of each poet's work, allowing room for both in-depth formalist readings and contextual and theoretical understandings of the poems and their reverberating effects.