'Unnameable Things' for The Clearing

'I have found the words for butterflies, in my native tongue, and I am drawing their lines on my insides. I am ready, now, to speak of unnameable things.'

                                 Words for The Clearing at  Little Toller Books on their site now.

This essay was incredibly moving to write, and the fact it was written for this deeply inspiring site has filled me with such gratitude and courage.

'Naomh Bríd' for Oh Comely

'When winter lays its head down, memories dance; the delicate ghosts of who we once were...Light, streaming out, unstoppably; to a soundscape of oystercatchers...'

Words about St Brigid, Ireland and healing for Oh Comely .

New Year, New Moon Bird

I have some words about 'Curlew Moon' by Mary Colwell on Mark Avery's site. It was such a pleasure to write about this book and my own curlew experiences. 

'That Further Shore'

https://newwelshreview.com/article.php?id=2272

'That Further Shore' has been highly commended in the New Welsh Writing Awards 2018: Aberystwyth University Prize for an Essay Collection Shortlist. 

"This collection hinging on Northern Ireland is strikingly organised around images of wild animals. Its themes are ‘making place’ through art, exile, transfer, transition and bridges to reconciliation. Its voice is personal, empathetic and political. Classical references, symbols and motifs from the natural world put this entry into the class of literature."

'Atlantic Palimpsest

https://literatureworks.org.uk/national-memory-day-writing-competition-shortlist-announced/


'Atlantic Palimpsest' has found a home at The London Magazine after being shortlisted for The National Memory Day Prize.

https://www.thelondonmagazine.org/atlantic-palimpsest-kerri-ni-dochartaigh/

‘Atlantic palimpsest’ 

-for Heaney and the Peace Bridge 

  

Grey and greying sky  

reflected in choppy body, 

as our matching heron 

performs his balancing act for all to see. 

  

The Donegal hills, 

patient, 

waiting; barren, 

call a siren song, 

lost and piercing- on the wind. 

ours is a past seeped in rust. 

a history bathed in thick, black squelch; 

M U D L A R K I N G, always, for our sense of self. 

waiting for that ancient bogland 

to spit 

and spew 

and remould 

our memory of last Winter, 

in all its terrifying beauty. 

  

The years that have passed 

are like a body now lost 

to the sea: already long gone 

many moons before that dark body of water 

swallowed it up 

-claiming-maiming; tossed 

-out and in along a coast line  

that will not claim ownership, in the harsh grey spell of morning. 

  

Things hidden under the surface 

that cannot 

cannot 

be kept in the belly of the sea. 

Memories that are washed up 

all along the tideline- obscuring the path 

not yet solid; the future not yet in seed. 

  

 I gather spat up objects, broken things and leftover parts of the storm  

and begin to see them, clearly, in all that fragile, unstoppable beauty;  

  

under a thundering, Island-thick sky.