Scholarcast 38: 'port-lights/Of a ghost-ship': Thomas Carnduff and the Belfast Shipyards

UCD Scholarcast - Series 7: The Literatures and Cultures of the Irish Sea

Belfast, as a city, has come to be represented in recent years by the shadow of its industrial heritage. The Titanic, and the shipyards in which it was built, have become central to the city's attempt to give cultural and economic purchase to its contemporary identity. This lecture uncovers some of the history behind that branding of Belfast. It takes Thomas Carnduff's shipyard poetry, written in the 1920s and 1930s, as a way in which to understand the complexities of labour which underpinned the products of the shipyards and to reconsider the meaning of the shipyards for Belfast today.