This chapter focuses on the literary tradition of shape-shifting human-animal figures in early Irish and modern literature. Inspired by ecofeminist and multispecies scholarship, Kathryn Kirkpatrick argues that “Palpably dynamic, relational, and even dialectical, the shape-shifter dramatically embodies ... a relational epistemology, the self-made and known in relation to others, including animal others.” Indeed, shape-shifting is “a powerful trope in an era when human beings, particularly those of the first world, must transform and adapt quickly to climate crisis.” The essay chastises the severe shortcomings of contemporary politics to address the mass extinction of species and contextualizes the historical literary tradition of shape-shifting from the vantage point of contemporary concerns.

Over many decades, the poetry of Paula Meehan has given a voice to urban (Dublin) working-class experience, and in doing so, to paraphrase Yeats on Synge, expressed a life that had never before found expression in poetry. This is Meehan’s world, yet her world contains so much more too, in poems that encompass Buddhism, environmental concerns, and the classical world. Class consciousness is an intrinsic aspect of Meehan’s artistic vision, rather than a thematic add-on, and critical engagement with her work requires a decisive reorientation of conventional aesthetic categories. A key piece of revisionism present in the poems is Meehan’s critique of domestic space: as against convention, it is often public spaces that are welcoming, where domestic spaces are fraught with tension and violence. To her critique of domestic spaces and class politics, Meehan has notably added in her recent work a sophisticated strain of ecopoetics, taking us beyond human exceptionalism and into a deeper realm of connection with the natural world.