BOOK LAUNCH | Michele Holmgren- Canada to Ireland

DETAILS

Michele Holmgren will be launching Canada to Ireland: Poetry, Politics, and the Shaping of Canadian Nationalism, 1788–1900 at the Irish Cultural Society in Calgary. 

6452 35 Ave NW, Calgary, AB T3B 1S6

https://www.calgaryics.org/

Michele Holmgren is associate professor of Canadian and Irish literature at Mount Royal University.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Canada to Ireland explores the poetry and prose of twelve Irish writers and nationalists in Canada between 1788 and 1900, including Thomas Moore, Adam Kidd, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, James McCarroll, Nicholas Flood Davin, and Isabella Valancy Crawford. Many of these writers were involved in Irish political causes, including those of the Patriots, the United Irish, Emancipation, Repeal, and Young Ireland, and their work explores the similar ways in which nationalists in Ireland and Indigenous and settler communities in Canada retained their cultural identities and sought autonomy from Britain. Initially writing for an audience in Ireland, they highlighted features of the landscape and culture that they regarded as distinctively Canadian and that were later invoked as powerful unifying symbols by Canadian nationalists. Michele Holmgren shows how these Irish writers and movements are essential to understanding the tenor of early Canadian literary nationalism and political debates concerning Confederation, imperial unity, and western expansion.