Our Shared Japan: Contemporary Spaces of Love and Exoticism in Irish Women’s Poetry

The aim of this paper is to analyse the new perspectives on the locus amoenus put forward by contemporary women poets in Ireland, in particular those by the female authors included in the anthology Our Shared Japan, edited by Irene De Angelis and Joseph Woods (2007). This paper argues that these writers provide alternatives to traditional pastoralism that trigger new reflections on women’s identities and subjectivities. As Donna L. Potts asserts, some constitutive aspects of the pastoral tradition are “the relationship between nature and human nature, and between the present and the mythicised past, the motif of transformation, etc.” (9). These aspects will be scrutinised in the context of travel to the new, exotic space of Japan. The alterity that the poetic voices meet with in their travel provides them with new perceptions of themselves and their affective life in relation to the environment. This renegotiation of identity is mostly made through the body, which becomes a tool for knowledge and communication. The heterotopia (Foucault) of the trip, therefore, provides the perfect space for the poetic subjects to interact, change and reflect about their identity, their sense of belonging or alienation and the impact of travel on their emotional life.