Cultural Memory as a Bridge between the Past and the Present: Sheena Blackhall’s “The Irish Famine”

Cultural memory, which might be observed in monuments, museums, historicised buildings, objects and even literary works, transmits to contemporary generations many traumatic events of history such as holocausts, famines, mass emigrations, starvation, pandemia, and, as a result, builds a link between history and the present. The traumatic impact of the Irish Famine, too, is awakened within the present by means of monuments such as the Famine Monument and the tour ship, the Jeanie Johnston on the Custom House Quay in Dublin, and literary texts such as Sheena Blackhall’s poem, “The Irish Famine”. In this sense, the bronze statues in the monumental area that depict the Famine’s traumatic impact upon the starving Irish, the ship which invites its visitors to take a metaphorical journey to the historical “coffin ships” adventures of the Irish, and Blackhall’s poem that (re-)presents and reinterprets them become devices of cultural memory. In the stanza where Blackhall reinterprets the Jeanie Johnston, the ship that represents historical facts about the Irish diaspora, readers feel a metaphorical slap in the face due to the unexpected reflection of a contemporary event: The African refugee problem. In the light of these discussions, this paper aims to discuss, in line with the concept of cultural memory, a Scottish poet, Sheena Blackhall’s poem, “The Irish Famine” as a literary text that constructs a bridge between the past and the present by means of its (re-)presentation and reinterpretation of the Great Irish Potato Famine represented in the Famine Monument and the tour ship, the Jeanie Johnston on the Custom House Quay in Dublin.