Patricia’s Blog
There is nothing this writer likes more than writing about their writing process. A recent visit to the Coming Home Famine Art exhibition at Dublin Castle prompted these thoughts about the the writing journey for my new book which has the famine experience at its heart. Thanks Writing.ie for sharing my thoughts.
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Nothing sweeter for this writer than reader feedback and this piece of enthusiasm from Mary J Murphy came early, with the new book barely born: Well bless my booties Patricia Byrne, how thrilling it is to be associated with such an original, beautifully written, intensely researched book that reeks of Achill’s complex past between every…
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Delighted that today my new book is hurtling towards book shops across Ireland. So exhilarating is the feeling that I feel like climbing the iconic Achill mountain Slievemore that features on the cover. The book will launch in Achill on the slopes of the mountain on 4 May at 8pm as part of the splendid…
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Oranges and chocolate were exotic extravagances in my childhood; pointers to a future when these would become normal daily purchases and not occasional luminous luxuries. In our 1950s childhood home in East Mayo, an orange was a sporadic treat; the fruit was carefully peeled, divided in four, the white pith discarded and each succulent segment…
Read MoreReading Mary Lavin’s story ‘In the Middle of the Fields’ in the recent anthology of Irish Women Writers The Long Gaze Back, I was reminded of a visit to East Walpole on the outskirts of Boston several years ago. I had travelled along Washington Street which seemed to extend forever in straight lines south-east of the…
Read MoreConcord, Massachusetts, the birth place of Henry David Thoreau, is a very civilised place these days. When I travelled there from Boston, I had to go to the nearby Walden Pond, the place Thoreau made famous and where he lived the simple life in a cabin for two years. His essay, Walking (1862), is one of…
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Earlier this year I was back in Achill for my favourite arts festival, the Heinrich Boll Memorial Weekend where one of the themes was the Achill Mission Colony and I was delighted to give a talk on the role of women at the Colony. A version of this paper has now been published in the online publication…
Read MoreIn the Stepping Stones interviews Seamus Heaney spoke to Dennis O’Driscoll about the ‘power of a dividing line’: the line of the first ploughed furrow; the laying of a house foundation; the marking out of a football pitch; the place of sanctuary behind the altar rails; the space between graveyard and road. Lines mark out spaces that…
Read MoreGraves Apart The controversial evangelist Edward Nangle died 130 years ago this week and is buried in Deansgrange Cemetery, Dublin. Almost two hundred miles away, the remains of his first wife Eliza and five of their children are interred on the slopes of Slievemore Mountain, Achill Island; the Achill Mission project of the mid-nineteenth century…
Read MoreInteresting collaborative arts project following in the footsteps of Paul Henry in Achill and Connemara. Welcome.
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