“If you don’t get caught”: islands, isolation and entrapment in contemporary Scottish women’s poetry

Peter Mackay

doi:10.1093/cww/vpaa022

“If you don’t get caught”: islands, isolation and entrapment in contemporary Scottish women’s poetry

Peter Mackay

School of English

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

This essay explores the trope of the island in recent Scottish poetry and in particular the tendency to treat poems as islands and vice versa. With a particular focus on the work of Meg Bateman, Jen Hadfield, Kathleen Jamie, Jackie Kay, and Liz Lochhead, the essay discusses ideas of entrapment, freedom, and isolation, to suggest that alongside the Utopian imaginings of islands, there is also the possibility of them becoming, like St Kilda for Lady Grange, constrictive prison cells.

Original language	English
Article number	vpaa022
Journal	Contemporary Women's Writing
Volume	Advance articles
Early online date	31 Dec 2020
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1093/cww/vpaa022
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 31 Dec 2020

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Mackay_2020_CWW_Islandsisolation_AAM
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved. This work has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies or with permission. Permission for further reuse of this content should be sought from the publisher or the rights holder. This is the author created accepted manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1093/cww/vpaa022
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“If you don’t get caught”: islands, isolation and entrapment in contemporary Scottish women’s poetry

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