Michael Allen: Close Readings: Essays on Irish Poetry

The late Michael Allen was a member of the famous Belfast Group, and one of the most authoritative critical voices on poetry from Northern Ireland, intimately part of the North’s poetic movement since the early 1960s. He taught at Queen’s University, where he was a colleague of Seamus Heaney and tutor to poets such as Paul Muldoon and Medbh McGuckian. Seamus Heaney called him ‘the reader over my shoulder’. Close Readings brings together interlinked critical writings which have crucially influenced approaches to Irish poetry during the last forty years. The book ends with an extended essay, hitherto unpublished: ‘Doubles, Twins and the Feminine: Development in the Poetry of Michael Longley’.

Close Readings contains a Foreword by Fran Brearton, which relates Michael Allen’s essays to continuing critical and cultural debates. Edna Longley’s Afterword offers a personal view of Allen’s involvement with poetry in Belfast.

Love Thy Neighbor? Relationships between Religion and Racial Intolerance in Europe.

This article examines relationships between religion and racial intolerance across 47 countries by applying multilevel modeling to European survey data and is the first in-depth analysis of moderation of these relationships by European national contexts. The analysis distinguishes a believing, belonging, and practice-dimension of religiosity. The results yield little evidence of a link between denominational belonging, religious practice, and racial intolerance. The religiosity dimension that matters most for racial intolerance in Europe is believing: believers in a traditional God and believers in a Spirit/Life Force are decidedly less likely, and fundamentalists are more likely than non- believers to be racially intolerant. National contexts also matter greatly: individuals living in Europe’s most religious countries, countries with legacies of ethnic-religious conflict and countries with low GDP are significantly more likely to be racially intolerant than those living in wealthier, secular and politically stable countries. This is especially the case for the religiously devout.

"Things I did not know”: Retrospectives on a Canadian rural male youth suicide using an instrumental photo voice case study

In Canada, it is young rural based men who are at the greatest risk for suicide. While there is no consensus on the reasons for this, evidence points to contextual social factors including isolation, lack of confidential services and pressure to uphold restrictive norms of rural masculinity. In this article we share findings drawn from an instrumental photo voice case study to distil factors contributing to the suicide of a young Canadian rural based man. Integrating photo voice methods and in-depth qualitative we conducted interviews with 7 family members and close friends of the deceased. The interviews and image data were analyzed using constant comparative methods to discern themes related to participants’ reflections on and perceptions about rural male suicide. Three inductively derived themes, “Missing the signs”, “Living up to his public image” and “Down in Rural Canada ” reflect the challenges that survivors and young rural men can experience in attempting to be comply with restrictive dominant ideals of masculinity. We conclude that community based suicide prevention efforts would benefit from gender-sensitive and place specific approaches to advancing men’s mental health by making tangibly available and affirming an array of masculinities to foster the well-being of young rural based men.

Motivos de beleza e amor no cancioneiro popular português e sérvio

Tese de doutoramento, Linguística (Linguística Aplicada), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, 2014

Poetry With People With Dementia: An Evaluation of a Two Year Project Engaging in Poetry Activities With Older People in Residential and Nursing Homes.

This paper is a summary of an evaluation of the first two years of a three year poetry project for older people with dementia. The project was set up with a poet in residence who mentored six poets to deliver poetry activities to older people and those with dementia in residential and care homes in Herefordshire. The project was developed and run by the Courtyards Hereford. The evaluation was undertake through the use of questionnaires that were given to staff and carers undertaking training workshops and the poets, staff and carers in the homes who facilitated the activities and finally by the residents who took part in the project. The main findings were that participants that responded to the questionnaire for staff and carers it had increased confidence and assisted them in gaining more knowledge about the residents, whilst for residents it had a number of positive effects including enhanced communication, increased self-esteem and enhanced self-worth whilst making them feel less isolated.

The Pindaric poetry of Cruz e Silva and the Neoclassical revival among Lusitanian national heroes

António Dinis da Cruz e Silva, member of Arcádia Lusitana, the literary academy he helped to found, introduced the Pindaric ode to the Portuguese literature of the neoclassical period (18th century). This poet imitates the triadic form and the mythological nature of Pindar’s encomiastic poetry, in order to celebrate the deeds of reputed historical figures from the national context, such as sailors, captains, politicians, and even the king himself. As in Pindar’s poetry, the mythological excursus holds an important part in Cruz e Silva’s Pindaric poetry. Winners of athletic games are acclaimed through allusion to the ancient heroes. Likewise, the heroes of the Portuguese history see themselves turned into immortals, since their deeds are reported as comparatively greater than those of Homeric warriors. Among the 44 Cruz e Silva’s Pindaric odes, 18 rewrite the myth of the Trojan War, from its beginnings with Eris (Odes I-II) to its outcome with the imperishable fame of the most conspicuous Homeric fighters (Ode XLII). These 18 compositions (re)tell, in a neoclassical style, the main scenes and themes of the Iliad and Odyssey, alluding directly to their heroes’ deeds. Achilles’ wrath and Hector’s death are topics repeatedly brought up in Cruz e Silva’s Pindaric poetry as models of courage and patriotism for national heroes. This chapter offers a discussion of Cruz e Silva’s neoclassical representation of the Trojan War. To this effect, an interdisciplinary approach is adopted, showing how the Portuguese poet handles the mythological material from Homer and Pindar. In this way, he initiated in 18th-century Portuguese literature a new literary genre, the Pindaric ode. By dealing with Poetry and History, Cruz e Silva perpetuated the life and fame of national heroes long after their deaths.

Poetry and feminine crafts in the letters of the young Marquise of Alorna (1750-1839)

abstract : Taking as a starting point the association between embroidery and language conveyed by the Greek myth of Filomela and Procne, this article examines the relationship between social status and ornaments like embroidery and lace. In order to illustrate this relationship an example is selected form the letters exchanged between the Marquise of Alorna and her Father where a connection is established between the production of these 'feminine' crafts, women's culture and womens writing, in the XVIIIth Century

The relationship between dimensions of love, personality, and relationship length

The present study examined the associations among participant demographics, personality factors, love dimensions, and relationship length. In total, 16,030 participants completed an internet survey assessing Big Five personality factors, Sternberg’s three love dimensions (intimacy, passion, and commitment), and the length of time that they had been involved in a relationship. Results of structural equation modeling (SEM) showed that participant age was negatively associated with passion and positively associated with intimacy and commitment. In addition, the Big Five factor of Agreeableness was positively associated with all three love dimensions, whereas Conscientiousness was positively associated with intimacy and commitment. Finally, passion was negatively associated with relationship length, whereas commitment was positively correlated with relationship length. SEM results further showed that there were minor differences in these associations for women and men. Given the large sample size, our results reflect stable associations between personality factors and love dimensions. The present results may have important implications for relationship and marital counseling. Limitations of this study and further implications are discussed.