The following article aims to examine Mary Dorcey's poem "Come Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear," included in the 1991 volume Moving into the Space Cleared by Our Mothers. Apart from being a well-known and critically acclaimed Irish poet and fiction writer, the author of the poem has been, from its beginnings, actively involved in lesbian rights movement. Dorcey's poem "Come Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear" is to be construed from a perspective of lesbian and feminist discourse, as well as a cultural, sociological and political context in which it was created. While analyzing the poem, the emphasis is being paid to the intertwining of various ideological and subversive assumptions (dominant and the implied ones), their competing for importance and asserting authority over one another, in line with, and sometimes, against the grain of the textual framework. In other words, Dorcey's poem introduces a multilayered framework that draws heavily on various sources: the popular culture idiom, religious discourse (the references to the Virgin Mary and the biblical annunciation imagery), the text even employs, in some parts, crime and legal jargon, but, above all, it relies upon sensuous lesbian experience where desire and respect for the other woman opens the emancipating space allowing for redefining of one's personal and textual location. As a result of such a multifarious interaction, unrepresented and unacknowledged Irish women's standpoints may come to the surface and become articulated, disrupting their enforced muteness that the controlling heteronormative discourse has attempted to ensure. In Dorcey's poem, the operating metaphor of women's silence (or rather—silencing women), conceived of, at first, as the need to conceal one's sexual (lesbian) identity in fear of social ostracism and contempt of the "neighbours," is further equated with the noiseless, solitary and violent death of the anonymous woman, the finding of whose body was reported on the news. In both cases, the unwanted Irish women's voices of either agony, during the unregistered by anybody misogynist bloodshed that took place inside the flat, or the forbidden sounds of lesbian sexual excitement, need to be (self) censored and stifled, not to disrupt an idealized image of the well-established family and heteronormative patterns. In the light of the aforementioned parallel, empowered by the shared bodily and emotional closeness with her female lover, and already bitterly aware that silence in discourse is synonymous with textual, or even, actual death, the speaker in "Come Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear" comes to claim her own agency and makes her voice heard by others and taken into account.

The relation between an individual and society has been customarily perceived as inexorably antagonistic, constituting a source of potential, yet with conflict and struggle almost bound to happen. Consequently, an individual is portrayed as having to come to terms with frequently inconsistent expectations of the community and contradictory, or stereotypical, social roles that the world at large imposes. However, the writings of the philosopher Hannah Arendt remind us that it has not necessarily always been like that. Arendt indicates that during Roman times the phrases " 'to live' and 'to be among men' (inter homines esse)" and "'to die' or 'to cease to be among men' (inter homines esse sinere)" were employed interchangeably as verbal equivalents (7-8).In The Human Condition (1958), Arendt comments on two dimensions that characterize the functioning of an individual in society:Human plurality, the basic condition of both action and speech, has the twofold character of equality and distinction. If men were not equal, they could neither understand each other and those who came before them nor plan for the future and foresee the needs of those who came [or] will come after them. If men were not distinct, each human being distinguished from any other who is, was, or will ever be, they would need neither speech nor action to make themselves understood. (175 -76) Paula Meehan, in the poem "Reading the Sky," has phrased this "twofold character" of human plurality in a very similar way, arguing that "We glean a common language / to describe our differing fates" (Reading 13). Much in the same vein, in his book Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, David Swartz claims that "Bourdieu's conceptual formulation KATARZYNA POLOCZEK "Sharing Our Differences": Individuality and Community in the Early Work of Paula Meehan

I have dedicated this monograph to my Mother whose unremitting and unfailing support "empowered" me to work on this book. Many thanks to my fiancé for not losing faith in me and for his patience. Over the years, while conducting my research on contemporary Irish women's poets, I have encountered many inspiring and helpful people to whom I am sincerely indebted for their advice, wisdom and encouragement. With regard to this book, my special thanks are directed to Michaela Schrage-Früh, her husband David and Frederic for their hospitality and kindness. I would like to thank Przemysław Ostalski for his help with typesetting of the book, and Richard O'Callaghan Ph.D. for proofreading of the earlier versions of the text. Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Jerzy Jarniewicz for inspiring me to read poetry.The first and perhaps most striking is our interest in understanding the ways men dominate women, an interest that remains the impetus of much feminist research . . . .a second feminist concern with power: our interest in understanding the power that women do havethat is, empowerment . . . . The third interest that feminist theorists bring to the discussion of power comes in the wake of charges that the mainstream feminist movement has marginalized women of color, lesbians, and working-class women. . . . That is, we have an interest in theorizing the kind of collective power that can bridge the diversity of individuals who make up the feminist movement. (The Power 122) 1. Women matter as much as men do. 2. Women have the right to determine their lives. 3. Women's experiences matter. 4. Women have the right to tell the truth about their experiences. 5.Women deserve . . . respect, self-respect, education, safety, health, representation, money. (Fire with Fire 138)One of the broadest and the least controversial explanations of female empowerment is provided by Miller:My own working definition of power is the capacity to produce a changethat is, to move anything from point A or state A to point B or state B. This can even include moving one's own thoughts or emotions, sometimes a very powerful act. It can include acting to create movement in an interpersonal field, as well as acting in larger realms such as economic, social, or political arenas.("Women and Power" 198), emphasis original Hence as argued in Hannah Arendt and Human Rights: The Predicament of Common Responsibility (2006), "The 'I am able' must be understood as the ability to act in a public space, to move in a space of freedom with others" 2 The first two types of power are elaborated in Allen's writing on the basis of Foucault and Butler (the empowerment phase). Her most vital contribution to power discourse is showing the coexistence of various aspects of power and their mutual interdependence. Allen's approach to feminism means bringing into focus the idea of women's coalition-building and solidarity, as illustrated on the example of Arendt's philosophy.3 Furthermore, Arendt argues that "[power] derives its legitimacy fro...

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