Quare Éire: An Anthology of Neo-mythmaking
Deadline: 30 Apr 2025Call for submissions
Quare Éire is a digital anthology of neo-mythmaking, which invites artists and authors to "queer" Mother Ireland, a pervasive cultural symbol in the Irish imaginary, in the form of poetry, short stories, creative non-fiction, and artwork. Submissions are currently open.
Mother Ireland has been predominantly imagined as white, hyperfeminine, and heterosexual. Moreover, she is often described as a paradox: in Irish mythology, the sovereignty goddess, the oldest iteration of Mother Ireland symbolises the land, but does not maintain power over it, endowing instead a prospective male hero with kingship. Thus, the motif effectively describes women's lack of autonomy over the land/their bodies/their bodies that represent the land throughout Irish history.
Recently in Ireland, we have seen witnessed increased violence against women, violence against members of the LGBTQIA+ community, violence against migrants, and violence against our environment. Mother Ireland, the cultural landscape upon which national, gender, class, and racial politics have been negotiated for generations, can be used as a symbolic tool by contemporary artists and authors to imagine an inclusive, intersectional Ireland. By queering Mother Ireland's body, her borders, and implied binaries, foundation myths for the State can be upturned and neo-mythmaking re-planted in the disturbed, sedimented layers of Irish history.
David Halperin argues that "Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normative, the legitimate, the dominant”. Consequently, I do not simply mean that this figure can be represented as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community - though that is a possibility - I mean instead that authors can re-imagine, distort, or completely de-mythologise this figure in an effort to disturb and dismantle the status quo. This call for submissions invites authors and artists' responses to the concept of a queer Mother Ireland. Responses can be as abstract or as literal as creatives want.
This call encourages, but is not limited to:
- Original neo-mythmaking: new and novel foundation myths for a changing Ireland
- Re-workings of pre-existing myth
- Transnational, hybrid, or multicultural mythologies
- Queer ecologies and eco-critical re-imaginings of Mother Ireland
- Gods, goddesses, and non-binary or trans deities from other cultures that remind artists of Mother Ireland or completely depart from the motif
- Explorations of space and public space, particularly for those who do not feel safe within Mother Ireland’s map
- De-mythologisations that restore humanity to the symbol of Mother Ireland
- Experimentation with genre and form
To learn more and make a submission, visit: https://quareeire.wordpress.com/