#5 The Library of Interesting Things

Hello

Today, my ‘Library of Interesting Things’ edition, with a round up of resources, links and curiosities. But before I get there, I went down sea to write you a note. The shoreline helped to shape the words below. Phone photos from the spot! (with Milly the muse taking up the rear)

Below too, you’ll find some dates to Wild Edge happenings- Owl Hours & a Writing Sanctuary, all happening this month, starting this week.

As ever, thank you for opening your inbox to my words.

Clare. X

I have come down to the shore to write this note to you, back against the rocks. The water is crystalline, lapping its quiet, late afternoon melody over a symphony of pebbles. It’s warm for this time of year, an all too frequent tale, and even the regular trills of Robin and Wren are muted. A few sailboats populate the harbour, but it’s not quite the season of water revelry yet, and into the silence, I listen. My solitude is everything but alone.

It is clipping shy of a decade since my move to West Cork. Next April it will be ten, and every day that passes still feel like an arrival. Each day, I am new to the way the weather will turn the hours into an origami fold of seasons, not always sure which will pop next. I still don’t know the names of all the plants, or insects, or migrating species which move about these shores. I don’t know all the hills or little eddies in the inlets. I’m not yet fully calibrated to tidal times, nor moon phase. I don’t know all the Irish place names, nor each pocket of land with its own story. In the familiar, we can still be stranger. I still don’t really understand what brought me here, but I have a sense of what keeps me here. To be estranged, I have realised is to be in want of knowing, and I have come to sense that has everything to do with here.

Ten years ago, I was on my way out of Ireland again, camera and notebook at the ready. I’d an idea for a new project, and another book, which would take me to track old story routes. The lure of the songline was strong. For years, I’d had my bag half-packed. Leaving these shores again was not a huge leap. I’d made maps, marked a tentative route, began taking notes, researching. The real world was always elsewhere.

In between then and now is a much longer story. I wrote a different book, about matriarchal memory lines, in body, blood and stone, one which poured into me listening, listening, swimming, walking walking, writing writing. It took me in.

I knocked on publishers doors. The doors jammed. Some opened, then closed.

Still, I listened, listened, walked, swam, walked, swam. Writing. Writing.

The sea takes me in.

I’ve written two other books since, a third in the making, more on the way. I’ll be knocking on doors again soon, hoping they will open.

Even still, I’ll walk walk swim listen listen write write.

The sea takes me in.

Ten years ago, I was about to leave. Ten years later, I am only just arriving.

I am by the shore now. There is music in the tide. Out there, I can hear some ancient longlines calling. I have no idea where they are going to take me, so long as it involves here.

For here, I have learned, is not singular nor static.

Here, is migration routes, star maps, the politics of borders, opening and closing.

Here is the way currents move, the way language remembers or not.

Here is the soil, mycelial threads, kingdoms of otherness.

Here is the air, sometimes cloud, sometimes river, sometimes breath.

Here is climate patterns, geological stories older than the word story.

Here is whale song, and cuckoo and the absence of the corncrake.

Here is the way apples from New Zealand end up beside apples from Ireland, wrapped in plastics for ‘safety’.

Here is a library, an independent bookshop, with doorways to the world.

Here, there, everywhere. It’s all interwined.

Sometimes, back against a rock, we don’t know where are listening will take us. Sometimes, it’s all we need to do: to sit, to listen, to let the sea carry our voice over, to let the sky and the forests and the birds and the fungal web of life help us find out way back to our very own songline.

I take the little stream path back towards my home. High in the trees, a robin and a thrush are singing in tandem. Their music rises, the way their music always should.

And a quick reminder of what else is coming up on The Wild Edge

Owl Hours: May 8th, 15th, 29th

Writing Sanctuary: Sunday 11th : 6-7pm Irish/ UK Time

By the way…

A bonus post this week, with photos from the incredible Ballydehob Jazz Festival.

All that Jazz

Now, over to The Library of Interesting Things.

This is my monthly round up of things I have been reading/ watching/ listening to/ learning and looking forward to.

It’s a feature for paid membership of The Wild Edge - a way of honouring my time to put this together, and my way of supporting my on-going work. All illustrations, design, photography and artwork are my own.

The Wild Edge Membership is €8 per month or €80 per year. It includes poetry salons, writing sanctuaries, seasonal guides and exclusive writing. Your membership is also a way of supporting my on going creative work, and its very much appreciated.