Dr Sarah Balen

Publications

‘The music you’re carrying your head’: Reading Hélène Cixous in the ‘Breath’ of Paula Meehan’s Poetry’, in France and Ireland: Notes and Narratives, ed. by Una Hunt + Mary Pierse (Bern: Peter Lang, 2015), pp.231-47.

‘Revolt Against Ennui: A poetics of Paralysis’, in War of the Words: Literary Rebellion in France and Ireland, ed. by Eamon Maher + Eugene O’Brien (Rennes: TIR, 2010), pp.93-109.

‘Modern Living, Modern Loving – Baudelaire and Sirr’, in Reinventing Ireland Through a French Prism (Studies in Franco-Irish Relations, vol. 1), ed. by Eamon Maher, Eugene O’Brien + Grace Neville. (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2007), pp.195-210.

Research projects

My doctoral research entitled ‘A City Rooted Out of Time: A Rhizomatic Analysis of Woman and the City in the Poetry of Charles Baudelaire, T.S Eliot, Fernando Pessoa and Peter Sirr’ was completed in 2014. I am continuing my research into these and other poets and currently completing an introduction to the forthcoming publication of a collection of essays by T.S. Eliot, previously unpublished in Portuguese.

Lectures/conferences

Conference Papers: 2015: ‘Stepping Through the Wardrobe: Intertextual Travel through a Franco-Irish Space in Peter Sirr’s 2014 collection The Rooms’, AFIS Conference (Association of Franco-Irish Studies), Université de La Rochelle, May.

2014: ‘The dead leaves float […] We charge at dawn’: The Poetics of WW1 at Home and at the Front’, Écrire la guerre – Journée d’études, National Centre for Franco-Irish Studies, IT Tallaght, October.

2014: “Accepting the Anguish of Submersion’ (‘Accepte l’angoisse de la submersion’) – Reading Hélène Cixous and the Water Music of Paula Meehan’s Poetry’, AFIS Conference (Association of Franco-Irish Studies), The National Concert Hall, May.

2010: ‘Urban Reconstruction: The Imagined Cities of Jorge Borges and Peter Sirr’, AFIS Conference, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, May.

2009: ‘Prayers of Consciousness: Spirituality in the Poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire and Peter Sirr’, Catholicism and Public Culture Conference, IADT, June.

2009: ‘Revolt Against Ennui: Baudelaire, Nietzsche and Heidegger’, AFIS Conference, University College Cork, May.

2008: ‘City Spaces and Spirituality in the poetry of Peter Sirr and Fernando Pessoa’, IASIL Conference (International Association for the Study of Irish Literature), Universidade do Porto, Portugal, July.

Awards + Achievements

Research Fellowship awarded while at the NCFIS (National Centre of Franco-Irish Studies), ITT Dublin, completing my PhD.