Sense of Place in the Poetry of John Montague
Keywords:
poetry, ireland, studyAbstract
In this study of a '"sense of place" in the work of John Montague a knowledge of his birthplace sheds light on a geographic interpretation of his work. Born in Brooklyn in 1929, he spent his childhood in his ancestral home of Garvaghey, County Tyrone. Throughout his life he travelled widely, sampling a variety of different cultures and societies, an experience which helped him to put his home place of Garvaghey within a global perspective. Yi-fu Tuan once stated that travel increases one’s awareness, not of exotic places but of one's home as a place (Tuan 1977). This is especially true of Montague. Due to his extensive travel, he wrote about Garvaghey not from the wholly subjective point of view of an existential insider, but from the perspective of an "outsider-insider”. Thus in his writings about his parish in Co. Tyrone, he is highlighting what it is not, so he can more easily identify its unique characteristics.
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