In Enraptured Space, Kathryn Kirkpatrick draws on her own lived experience as a practicing poet to explore how scholarship is grounded in an imaginative exchange between the words on the page and the material conditions of the scholar who works to inhabit them. Kirkpatrick explores this realm in the first book-length study of Paula Meehan, one of Ireland’s leading contemporary poets, and showcases Meehan as an original voice whose perspectives on gender, class, and ecology are transforming the Irish literary landscape and beyond.

Here we discuss the inspiration behind Enraptured Space and what drew Kirkpatrick to Meehan’s work.

What inspired you to write Enraptured Space? Was there a moment when you knew Paula Meehan’s work needed a full-length study?

Enraptured Space evolved over a number of years as I continued to be drawn by the new books Paula published, including Painting Rain and Geomantic. There was a through-line of the environmental and class themes in all the books, and I found that they developed in fascinating ways. I wanted to be in the presence of that imaginative process. And her explorations of voice and form, of relationships, of ecological engagement spoke to my own interests and concerns very deeply. I was also inspired and moved by the innovative lectures that Paula gave while serving as Ireland Professor of Poetry. 

It’s well known that the work of women poets is less likely to receive sustained critical attention, especially in book-length studies. I wanted to help correct that kind of omission. But foremost, you can’t write this kind of book unless you really admire the poet and her work. I try to get at this in the book, the ways that our work as scholars is life-changing. We make ourselves as we do the research and writing. And the deep engagement with Paula’s poems was very much that kind of process for me.

In the book, you mention that reading Meehan’s Dharmakaya was a turning point for you. For the uninitiated, and/or casual poetry reader, is that a good place to start reading her work or is there another jumping on point that you would recommend?

Dharmakaya is a wonderful place to start! Even though I felt as if the book chose me (it came in the mail as a request for a review from an editor), it’s a collection long prepared for by the earlier books. And adding that Buddhist lens makes a powerful difference in perspective. But I’m also very fond of the earlier Pillow Talk with it’s beautiful opening poem, “My Father Perceived as a Vision of St. Francis” and the later volume, Painting Rain, with its equally astonishing “Death of a Field.” I’m not sure readers can go wrong!  

Your book explores the intersections of gender, class, and ecology in Meehan’s poetry. How do these themes interact in her work?

It’s difficult to address all three at the same time, but I’ve tried to argue that when you don’t grow up inside a dominant class’ worldview, you understand that so much of the way social structures are made could be otherwise. One way I tried to write about this double vision in Meehan’s poems is as a preference for the outdoors, the city street and the more-than-human world. It isn’t necessarily the case that the private, domestic realm is the safest space. I also think that in working class cultures the hold of separate spheres gender roles is less firm. Often women need to work outside the home, as my own mother did, even as they might also have preferred that work, or rather combined it, with domestic labor.

Your book blends scholarly analysis with your own experiences as a poet. How did your background as a poet shape the way you approached this project?

I have an endless fascination with prosody, and Paula’s poems are always working with image, line, rhyme, and received forms like the sonnet in innovative ways. I’ve taken what I know about these elements of poetry from my own teaching and making of poems to her work and in turn, I’ve learned so much as I’ve engaged closely with her poems. It’s felt like a genuine exchange, and she’s said so herself, that she appreciates me as a reader and maker of poems. 

Meehan’s work is deeply rooted in working-class Dublin. How does she challenge traditional poetic narratives about class and urban life, and what does it add to our understanding of contemporary Irish poetry?

Addressing these questions is really the project of Enraptured Space. I’ve argued that just as Eavan Boland brought the domestic lives of women into the Irish poem, Paula Meehan brought the working class. And others have said too that this has been new in the Irish poem. I’ve also mentioned the outdoor/indoor permeability in her poems, and this perspective serves a focus on the earth as oikos, our literal, planetary home. So we don’t gather rapaciously from the public realm for our interior lives because those lives really aren’t separate. It’s all home and all worthy of our care.

Learn more about Kirkpatrick and her work at her website.