The Name Flows from the Naming: The Key to Understanding Medbh McGuckian's Poetry

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how a reading of Martin Heidegger’s
philosophy might illuminate McGuckian’s work and to examine the ways in which it helps to define
(and affirm) it as poetry. Based on original research into the sources of McGuckian’s poems, I want to
argue that her texts often declare their status as poetic texts, that an uncovering of her intertextual
borrowings can aid in the grasping of their “cognitive import”, and that the intertexts themselves
suggest interpretative frameworks for analysing the poetry