This summer, my daughters and I were selected to take part in the Family Residency at Greywood Arts in Killeagh, Co. Cork. We enjoyed a memorable week working in the Writer’s Den by day, exploring the area after lunch, and drawing in the kitchen by night – the treasures of being largely screen-free!
Top of the list of places I wanted to visit during our stay was nearby Shanagarry and Ballycotton, where my mother’s family used to vacation in the 1960s. These two poems, Family Holiday and A Riddle About a Place, are part of my response to this location which stirred a profound hiraeth. This wonderful Welsh word conveys the nostalgia and longing a person can feel for a place they have never been.
Finding hagstones among the pebbles at Youghal, I created a kind of pinhole through which to shoot footage of the beaches and harbours we visited.
In folklore, the hagstone is said to have magical properties – giving the bearer protection from harm and the ability to view another realm. It seemed a perfect medium through which to explore the searching curiosity that comes from loss – the desire to connect to places, stories and memories that are impossible to reach and possibly even fictional, but to which you feel you belong.
These stills are from a film and form part of an ongoing body of photographic work for which I use homemade pinhole cameras to create images communicating the emotional aftermath of early parental loss.
A heartfelt thank you to Jessica and Hughie for hosting us at Greywood Arts and fellow artist Katherine Nolan for what was a truly special week.