ABSTRACT

This chapter addresses the intermingling and intertwining of colonial and ecological themes in Heaney's poems from Wintering Out to his last collection, Human Chain by combining perspectives from postcolonial and ecocritical theory. The combination of postcolonial theory with ecocriticism was suggested by Lawrence Buell in The Environmental Imagination, one of the foundational studies of ecocriticism. This chapter also seeks to address a predominant critical focus on colonial themes in Heaney's poetry, which has sometimes been at the expense of recognising the important role ecological changes and conditions play in many of the poems. Greg Garrard has drawn attention to the intertwined relationship between ecology and linguistics in 'The Backward Look', which makes it impossible to separate the declining snipe population and the marginalisation of Irish from each other. Garrard explains the complex references of the word 'sniper', and the prioritisation of the political over the ecology.