Luke Condon
Highly Recommended
Department of English Undergraduate Awards (2nd Year)
Abstract
Working-class literature, which has to an extent been consigned to the margins in the past, has begun to gradually receive the scholarly attention that it is due. The study of Irish working-class literature, especially, has emerged as an important field in Irish universities. This work applies not only to more traditional forms of literature written by members of the working class, such as novels and poetry, but also to newer forms such as life writing and hip-hop. Paula Meehan’s poetry is of special interest to scholars of Irish working-class literature. As one of Ireland’s most esteemed poets, she has released a number of award-winning poetry collections and was appointed as the Ireland Professor for Poetry in 2013. Meehan’s work covers a broad range of topics, but a primary concern of her poetry relates to the experiences of working class individuals and communities. Having spent her childhood in a working-class household, Meehan draws from her personal experiences to craft harrowing and meaningful depictions of working-class life in her poetry.
This essay aims to examine these depictions, which differ from many other working-class texts in that they focus on subjective experiences rather than broader ones, in order to identify the mechanisms that Meehan uses to link the individual and the communal. To this end, three poems from Meehan’s earliest collection, Return and No Blame, are subjected to a close reading, with a focus on the relevant aesthetic and formal features that are typical of working-class literature.
Common themes and the collection’s overarching narrative of working-class guilt are also analysed in order to further illustrate Meehan’s unique usage of subjective perspectives in a collective fashion.
Be it in her poetry or her public life, Paula Meehan has never shied away from her working-class roots. After spending much of her early life living in North Dublin, Meehan was inspired by a “working-class culture steeped in a rich oral tradition of storytelling and song” that fostered her creativity and was therefore an important factor in her later success as a poet (Randolph, “Text and Context” 7). With this in mind, it is no surprise that working-class themes pervade Paula Meehan’s work; her poetry is rife with the concepts of collectivity, equality and solidarity, ideas that are commonly associated with working-class literature. Although she was separated from members of her own community at a young age, Meehan continues to represent them through her writings, paving the way for other working-class poets to do the same.
However, Meehan’s approach to the depiction of working-class communities is unique in its focus on the subjective experiences of members of the working-class, including her own. By crafting representations of these individuals, both fictionalised and based in reality, and combining them with her own experiences, Meehan provides a platform for voices that are rarely afforded the opportunity to be heard and paints a picture of working-class communities from an intimate and personal perspective. This methodology can be seen clearly in Meehan’s 1984 poetry collection Return and No Blame, and is especially evident in the three poems “Voices That Persist”, “Intruders”, and “Chameleon”. Examining these works in this order, which is also the order in which they appear in Return and No Blame, reveals how Meehan unites her perspective with those of other individuals in order to represent working-class communities as a whole.
“Voices That Persist” is one of the opening poems of Return and No Blame. Its early placement in the collection is deliberate; the poem marks the beginning of a larger narrative within Return and No Blame that reflects an evolving view of working-class collectivity. The chronological setting of “Voices That Persist” can be traced to a similarly early part of Paula Meehan’s life, before “she witnessed the break-up of her community as inner-city tenements were cleared for development”; in other words, a period in which her original community still existed (Randolph, “Text and Context” 6). Accordingly, the poem is made up of four lively, distinct voices, known as “Barney the Butcher”, “Mick the Mouth”, “Joan the Moan”, and “Fat Aggie” (Meehan 9). The poem is presented in a dialogic form, which is typical of many working-class texts; Zandy believes that “what is crucial to retrieving and producing working-class culture is the [...] dialogic dimension of the process” (5). Phrases deriving from Irish working-class dialects are used: Joan the Moan’s claim that “the noise has craters / Dug in me poor old brain” is an example of this (Meehan 9). By creating a poem that is composed of working-class speech patterns, specifically those of the North Dublin area she grew up in, Meehan quickly establishes a sense of place for her poetry without explicitly locating it in a given area, allowing for the representation of her own working-class community as well as others. In addition, Meehan focuses on portraying the spoken words of her community in order to pay tribute to the “vital oral culture of [her] childhood”, replicating the anecdotal stories that bolstered her creativity as a youth (Randolph, “Body Politic” 240). Despite Meehan’s specialty in written poetry, she refuses to ignore the fact that “working-class literature has often taken oral forms”, incorporating aspects of her community’s traditional storytelling form into her work (Lauter 17). In the absence of any in-text response to the stories told in “Voices That Persist”, the reader of the poem is offered the opportunity to actively participate in this working-class storytelling culture, taking on the role of listener.
Although the characters of “Voices That Persist” are notably characterised in negative ways – their nicknames, such as “Mouth” and “Moan”, are justified by the fact that each character complains in some way – this does not indicate ill will towards the working-class (Meehan 9). Meehan has expressed that she does not want to “romanticise” her working-class past, which she considers “desperately hard times”, and this may have influenced the decision to construct the negative portrayals of “Voices that Persist” rather than positive ones (qtd. in Randolph, “Body Politic” 240). Furthermore, Boland writes that Meehan’s poems highlight “community, even while they [recognise] its flawed nature”, and this is exemplified by the characters of “Voices That Persist”; despite their grievances, they are still grouped together in the poem’s structure, inseparable as a community (Boland 18). The negative sentiments expressed by these characters also illustrate how working-class individuals are often reduced to stereotypes in order to delegitimise their causes for complaint. Despite the fact that the individuals in this poem are undoubtedly complex themselves, as all humans are, the only “voices that persist” are their complaints about their working-class lives (Meehan 9). For example, Mick the Mouth is unhappy with his labour, stating “It’s killing me to haul / The padlocks up and down, / Up and down the stairs”, and rightfully so; it is monotonous work, which is emphasised by the repetition of the phrase “up and down” (Meehan 9). This is an effort by Meehan to “reproduce the boredom of sameness, of mindless repetition, of humans acting as machinery” faced by many working-class individuals in their work (Christopher & Whitson 74). Barney the Butcher alludes to mismanagement by someone in a position of authority when he expresses his desire to “batter / The head of the bollix / That drew up the plan”; it has been written that “the working class aesthetic usually [...] involves a distrust of authority” (Meehan 9; Christopher & Whitson 75). Their grievances are legitimate, but it is unlikely that these characters will be taken seriously by either their own community or the rest of society; they are “confined to the margins, kept in their place, stuck in the dialogue”, like many other portrayals of working-class individuals in literature, defined only by their simple nicknames (qtd. in McGlynn 59). Joan the Moan and Fat Aggie suffer a similar fate; despite being justifiably unhappy about the issues of noise pollution and local crime, the former is dismissed as a “Moan”, implying her problems are not worth discussion, and the latter is known only for her weight, a dehumanising and unfavourable moniker. This is reflective of a prevailing “toxic social stasis [...] where women were concerned”, exacerbated by their marginalised status as working-class women (Boland 20).
The usage of first-person pronouns in “Voices That Persist” is especially noteworthy in its implications. As working-class literature frequently “involves the interplay of three narrative voices: the personal ‘I’, the referential ‘They’, and the collective ‘We’”, this poem can be seen as a manifestation of the former; the poem’s speakers are concerned with their own problems, referring to themselves in the first-person (Zandy 4-5). However, this is not to say that they are selfish, or unconcerned with matters of their community, as these voices merely serve as an indicator that “rarely is the notion of human plurality immediately and unambiguously perceived as affirmative” (Poloczek 76). For Meehan to ignore this aspect of collectivity would be a disservice to the working-class community she grew up with; instead, these individuals are portrayed just as they were, rather than through a rose-tinted lens. This is backed up by the fact that “Voices That Persist” falls under under the larger heading of “Echoes” in Return and No Blame; such a title would imply that these voices are the reverberations of speech from the past, rather than the words of someone situated in the present day. Meehan understands that communities cannot always be depicted as a singular, cohesive unit, so she instead focuses on recreating the voices of a select few to represent the greater whole. The characters of “Voices That Persist”, despite their apparent individualism, confide in other members of their community in order to lessen the burden of their problems, and the usage of the words “I” and “me” serves to “remind the reader at every turn of that interdependence” (Meehan 9; Boland 20). As the complaints of these individuals go unanswered by society at large, Meehan emphasises that they must draw comfort from the knowledge that they are not alone in their struggle, demonstrating that “human plurality may be [...] the background upon which individuals can support themselves” (Poloczek 87).
The placement of “Intruders” in the larger collection of Return and No Blame once again takes on thematic significance; located roughly halfway through the text, it is far removed from the dynamic voices encountered in the previously analysed poem. As such, there is great distance, both physically and mentally, between the speaker in “Intruders” and their original working-class community. The poem’s setting is given in a direct fashion this time, as the speaker describes living on a “tiny island halfway to Iceland” (Meehan 36). Even here, hundreds of kilometres away from North Dublin, the focus remains on the speaker’s working-class origins, who spends time reminiscing on their past as “a young self / Sowing dreams on Gardiner Street / And not the holder on this small plot” (Meehan 36). This statement clearly shows the divide between the speaker’s current state, now a self-sufficient landowner on a remote island, and their past as a member of a vibrant working-class community. However, the poem soon takes on a wistful and even guilty tone, as the “difficult negotiations between individual and community” take hold in the speaker’s mind (Collins 83). The speaker’s thoughts go primarily to memories of other working-class individuals struggling, such as “an old man / On an older pavement cradling his bottle” and a woman who “pushes up Summerhill her battered pram / Heavy with her many years” (Meehan 36). Meehan’s manner of calling the suffering of these individuals to attention illustrates how “writing of working-class life [...] does tend to draw attention to social conditions”, which in Meehan’s case allows her “to be a voice for the voiceless” (Pierse 51). The speaker’s comparatively privileged current position leads to a sense of culpability; they feel judged by “the laughing eyes / The treacherous eyes, in Dublin’s blind windows”, and hear the “city’s million voices chiding” them (Meehan 38). This is a “representation of the price of upward mobility”, one of many crafted by working-class writers who achieve success but feel as though they are abandoning their community (Christopher & Whitson 78).
Despite this degree of separation, Meehan remains careful to represent her past community accurately while also noting its flaws and triumphs, resulting in “specular commentary on Irish working-class life [that] is everywhere apparent in the poetry” (Pierse 52). The collective nature of working-class communities is emphasised, as the individuals in the speaker’s memory often come in groups; the “three old women beckon” together, the “boys appear by the dyke” as a group, and the “young ones / All abrash, bright eyed” are bound to each other with “arms linked” (Meehan 37). The latter description is especially crucial, as it highlights the importance of the physical, tangible connection with one’s community that the speaker lacks, as well as highlighting the positive camaraderie present amongst working-class youths. In addition to recalling the people of working-class communities, the speaker notes the similarly important locations of their youth, naming distinct areas such as “Finglas, Cabra, and Ballymun” (Meehan 37). As a writer commonly associated with the “poem of place”, Meehan often refers to the working-class areas in which she spent her childhood, explicitly naming them to make it clear she is not ashamed of their roots; if anything, she is ashamed of the perceived abandonment of these roots (Randolph “Text and Context” 11). The speaker continues in this fashion with a quip about the “shady stretches of a once Grand Canal”, employing the “ironic humour” that “is in fact a distinctive tone of proletarian class” to highlight the dereliction of this area (Meehan 37; qtd. in Dentith 69). Quick to clarify that the decline of this inner-city area is not the fault of its inhabitants, the speaker explains that the previously mentioned group of boys are only “lobbing stones” due to the “country merchants / That hold their ma’s to ransom”, invoking “the spectres of social discontent, of class war” (Meehan 37; Pierse 51). By correctly identifying the petty-bourgeoisie as the guilty party, the speaker shows that their loyalties still lie with the working-class, even if the speaker has now “learn[ed] to pass as middle class” (qtd. in Randolph “Body Politic” 258). The speaker understands that they are still, at least in spirit, a member of the working-class, although this is not enough to quell the survivor’s guilt of escaping impoverished conditions.
If “Voices That Persist” is most closely associated with the narrative voice of the “personal ‘I’”, “Intruders” can be seen as representative of the “referential ‘they’” (Zandy 5). As this poem also makes use of first-person pronouns this may initially seem contradictory; however, it is important to note that Meehan has remarked that she does not “use a trustworthy I in the poetry”, and went on to say, “I’m playing all the time with I because I don’t have an identity” (qtd. in Collins 81). The speaker provides us with their first-person narrative voice here, but they are merely acting as a conduit for the memories of their working-class fellows – the “Intruders” in the speaker’s mind, and the true subject matter of the poem. In their inner landscape the speaker only observes as the young members of this working-class community “chatter / Through the tumbled stones” and “slip giggling into / The warm clasp of vodka and sweet Whispered promises” (Meehan 37). The speaker cannot participate in these important communal rituals, even in a daydream, due to the extent of the alienation that is now felt; their original community has become “other”, or “they”. By shifting the attention away from the speaker, who shares much in common with her, Meehan avoids the “isolated or romanticised individualism” that is common to middle-class autobiographical writing and instead “recall[s] the fragile filaments and necessary bonds of human relation”, perhaps unconsciously proving that she is not so far removed from her original community as she believes (Zandy 5). Of course, the “referential ‘they’” can also be associated with the middle to upper classes, who are often invoked in working-class poetry to illustrate the unfair gap between the working-class and wealthier groups of society (Zandy 5). This technique is also used in “Intruders”; the speaker refers to the “corporation’s pittance” of peat that working-class people use to keep their home warm, implying that their employers – most likely members of the middle class – are not providing them with enough payment to survive (Meehan 37). Additionally, “juvenile delinquents’ crimes are [...] equated with those of merchants”, highlighting the hypocrisy of the middle and upper classes who point the finger at the working-class for crime (Pierse 51).
In “Chameleon”, the final poem of Return and No Blame, this divide between classes only becomes more pronounced. “Chameleon” features a speaker who seems to have reconciled with their working-class identity, and is capable of identifying the ways in which they relate to other working-class individuals, and how they differ from members of the middle-class. The poem’s placement as the concluding words of the collection indicates that these findings are also final, as the speaker prepares to fully shed the middle-class “camouflage” they have adopted, just as a “Chameleon” sheds its skin (Meehan 62). It can be assumed that the speaker is, once again, not physically present in Dublin; they make reference to named locations in Greece, such as “the Plaka” and “Acropolis”, as well as areas closer to home such as “Claddaghduff”, still in Ireland but far from Dublin, and finally the “Project”, a term that is often used to describe low-income, inner-city areas (Meehan 62). This variance of widely spread working-class locales is important, as it demonstrates “the possibility of continuity within humanity based on common experiences and the relationship of human beings to one another across time and space” (Villar-Argáiz 181). The speaker has come to understand that class solidarity extends further than the working-class community that they grew up in; it is a universal concept that reaches beyond any city or country. In this way, Meehan reiterates that her poems represent all members of the working-class, not just those from North Dublin.
Once again, working-class experiences are brought to the forefront in this poem, as the speaker retells a number of incidents that they associate with being working-class. In Greece, the speaker talks about “Answering the nice Englishman’s / Query about the Acropolis / With a shrug”, not cooperating with this undoubtedly middle-class tourist that condescends to them (Meehan 62). In New York, the speaker states “Not one mugger got me”, understanding the importance of looking out for oneself as a member of the working-class, due to the unfortunate reality that “the law, court systems, and bureaucracies don’t do as much for working-class people as they do for middle-class people” (Meehan 62; Christopher & Whitson 75). Meehan also provides accounts of working-class individuals engaging in academic activities, such as “Going on about Grotowski”, a theatre director, and “striding / Towards Patterson Hall, to catch / A class in contemporary literature” (Meehan 62- 63). This implies that the speaker has acquired a newfound hope for the future of working-class academics, who may overcome disadvantages stemming from a history in which “many women, and especially those of working-class origins, were cut off from academic traditions and academic forms” (Lauter 20). After going through these experiences, the speaker expresses their complete lack of connection to the middle-class “woman / With the camera and the large map”; unlike this person, the speaker has first-hand experience with the mentioned areas and can serve independently as their own guide (Meehan 62). Compared to the notably uncertain speaker of “Intruders”, this voice is markedly more assertive, possibly due to the confidence gained from seeing other working-class individuals thriving.
In “Chameleon”, Meehan employs the usage of first-person pronouns once more, but she again uses the subjective experiences of others as a means of expressing her working-class identity while also representing others. Villar-Argáiz argues that the poem is Meehan’s way of addressing “through a series of parallelisms, the many multiple identities she acquires in her life”, but it must also be noted that these “parallelisms” are thoughtful representations of working-class individuals in their own right, and not just vehicles for metaphor (191). The individuals described in the poem, who each prompt the speaker into thinking “that was me”, do not merely represent the speaker’s past selves; they are a new generation of working-class youth that the speaker identifies with (Meehan 62). Seeing them allows the speaker to recognise that, despite being separated from their own working-class community, they are still surrounded by working-class people everywhere they go. As a result, the speaker realises it is futile to continue pretending to be disconnected from their working-class origins, admitting that “This veteran could teach you all / You need to know about camouflage” but acknowledging that embracing the alternative by accepting their working-class identity will allow them to “turn golden” and “shine” (Meehan 62). In this way, “Chameleon” concludes Return and No Blame’s commentary on working-class collectivity by making it clear that, as Poloczek writes, “the role of [...] community is to prevent the individual from alienation from the world and herself” (83). Therefore, the pronoun best suited to describe “Chameleon” is the “collective ‘we’”, despite the the usage of a first-person narrative voice, as the poem marks the occasion of reconciliation and identification with one’s working-class fellows, accepting that collective identity over any individualistic one (Zandy 5).
Together, these three poems encapsulate the value of using subjective perspectives in order to represent working-class communities. “Voices That Persist” makes use of a cast of independent characters to bring working-class struggles to light; “Intruders” describes working-class life from the troubled perspective of an individual who no longer considers themself to be a part of it, highlighting the need for working-class collectivity in order to cope with and overcome unfair societal conditions; “Chameleon” displays how the bonds formed in working-class communities can endure even after said communities have been split up by highlighting the similarities between different working-class perspectives. All three poems feature a first-person narrative voice, but none of the perspectives offered are self-centred, with the focus always remaining on the struggles of the collective rather than any singular individual.
Meehan’s work demonstrates that the feeling of working-class collectivity is not necessarily limited to those who currently reside in working-class areas, or those who enjoy active relationships with other members of the working-class, but can extend to any individual who regards the cause of the working-class as their own. In Return and No Blame, there is no greater pain than that which arises due to isolation from one’s working-class roots, but the overarching themes of the collection – and especially the three poems examined – point towards the idea that working-class experience transcends the present moment.
Works Cited
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