The Trauma of Partition in Michael Longley’s Poetry of the Irish Troubles and Murīd al-Barghūthī’s Palestinian Exilic Poetry

Violence, migration, and displacement shape postcolonial societies; they help in dividing colonised countries into geographical partitions. The political and communal aspects of the partition have individual and collective influences, particularly when it comes to the splitting of both Ireland and Palestine. The colonial partitions in Ireland in the wake of World War I and Palestine at the end of World War II offers an extensive study of the social and cultural heritage of state divisions, where the trauma of partition constitutes political events up until today. This paper concentrates on the political and cultural legacies of partition in Ireland and Palestine in the poetry of both the Irish and Palestinian poets, Michael Longley and Murīd al-Barghūthī. Both poets specify the issue of the partition to their countries, yet it works on a wider level that spreads to all nations. Partition becomes a universal crisis, not just for Irish people or Palestinians. Their poetry also involves national voices and entails cultural struggles. While al-Barghūthī refuses the partition of Palestine and sees it as a kind of colonisation, Longley sees that the conflict in Ireland is not explained as a story of partition, but rather a problem of sectarianism and communal border. He tries to find ways of reconciliation and acceptance of this problematic issue. Partition reflects an uneasy and problematic solution to a complex problem that had existed for a long time between the Anglo-Irish minority and Catholic majority and Muslim Palestinians and Jewish Israelis.