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Vertical Verse: Aerial Maps of the Middle East in Contemporary Irish Poetry.

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  By Natasha Remoundou This blog article explores the ways technological media of vertical and oblique war photography and military surveillance are captured in contemporary Irish poetry to open up discussions about the Western 'gaze', ways of 'seeing'/'mapping', mobility, and conflict in the Middle East. In the photographic series ‘Heat Maps’, Irish conceptual documentary photographer Richard Mosse documents a digital atlas that archives forced mobility across the globe while capturing in film a haunting parallel journey between spectators and those that remain ‘unseen’ from above and afar. By means of repurposing military surveillance technology, Mosse uses vertical and oblique mid-wave infrared camera techniques, commonly used to detect and track criminals, to photograph humans in states of exception and landscapes in ruins. The specific use of this apparatus of visual surveillance assembles the transcontinental trails of migrants from Africa and the Persia