SOURCE: Porter, Susan. “The ‘Imaginative Space’ of Medbh McGuckian.” In International Women's Writing: New Landscapes of Identity, edited by Anne E. Brown and Marjanne E. Gooze, pp. 86-101. Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood Press, 1995.

In the following essay, Porter examines the similarities between McGuckian's poetics and the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, revealing the ways McGuckian evades co-opting English literary traditions as a Northern Irish woman writer.

Because she is an Irish Catholic from the North of Ireland, Medbh McGuckian is surrounded by insistent reminders of her national and religious identity. She belongs to a minority within political boundaries that in themselves cordon off a minority in Ireland as a whole, so that characterizing her by national and religious identity at the same time entails a certain marginalization. In addition, as a woman and an Irish poet, her sexual identity makes her a member of a group that has...