Irish identity, Pilgrimage, Partition, Pain and Poetry.

Cherry Smyth is an Irish writer and poet who lives in London. In 2022 Cherry was nominated as a Fellow for the Royal Society of Literature and she is Associate Professor in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of Greenwich. Critically acclaimed, Cherry has had four poetry collections published and a debut novel, Hold Still. Her current work, If the River is Hidden, is a collaboration with Craig Jordan Baker. This has also been developed for performance with the flautist Eimear McGeown, one of the world's most versatile exponents of both the classical and Irish flute. If the River is Hidden, is a shared pilgrimage, over 8 days, Cherry Smyth and Craig Jordan Baker walk the length of the River Bann, Northern Ireland’s longest river. This hybrid work of prose and poetry, is a deeply personal, journey between friends. With backgrounds from each side of the sectarian divide, they explore together their Irish identity, of belonging and not belonging, of the Troubles, trauma and truth. This is by no means an easy pilgrimage and we talk about the pain of partition, of bombings, the Irish famine, deep personal losses but also of compassion, connection and landscape as coming home.

Discover the musical composition by flautist Eimear McGeown, specially commissioned to accompany If the River is Hidden.

https://www.epoquepress.com/cherry-smyth-craig-jordan-baker-if-the-river-is-hidden

Discover Cherry Smyth here: https://www.cherrysmyth.com/

Edit - Courtesy of Katherine Wiley.

Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb

Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview can also be found here: https://www.canartsaveus.com

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to this podcast seriesasking the question Can art save

(00:04):
us? I'm starting the firstnational and international
conversation about courage andcuriosity. What do these
qualities really mean? And whydoes it make a big difference to
our mental, societal anddemocratic health? I talked to
award winning and diverseartists across the arts to
explore these qualities in theirlives and work, both to inspire

(00:24):
and for us all to learn. I'mexploring why we need these
policies to help change theglobal epidemic of mental
illness, loneliness,polarization of our community,
and even global conflict. If theart cultivate courage and
curiosity, I'm asking thequestion, Can art save us? And my

(00:45):
guest today is Cherry Smyth, anIrish writer and poet who lives
in London. In 2022 Cherry wasnominated as a fellow for the
Royal Society of literature, andshe is Associate Professor in
Creative and Critical Writing atthe University of Greenwich.
Critically acclaimed Cherry hashad four poetry collections
published and a debut novel, HoldStill, prior to her current work,

(01:07):
If the River is Hidden. Some ofher work is collaborative and
performance based. She touredher poetry collection Famished
working with the internationallyacclaimed composer Ed Bennett,
and vocalist Lauren Kinsella,one of the foremost vocal
innovators of the contemporaryEuropean jazz scene. Her current

(01:27):
work If the River is Hidden is acollaboration with Craig Jordan
Baker. This has also beendeveloped for performance with
the flautist Eimear McGeown, oneof the world's most versatile
exponents of both the classicaland Irish flute. If the River is
Hidden is a shared pilgrimageover eight days, Cherry Smith
and Craig Jordan Baker walkedthe length of the river Bann,

(01:51):
Northern Ireland's longestriver, a hybrid of prose and
poetry. It feels like a call andresponse between friends
memories, ancestors,communities, the displaced, and
with the river itself. Hello,cherry, and a very warm welcome
to the podcast series.
Thanks, Paula. Thank you forinviting me.

(02:13):
Thank you so much for making thetime. So many layers
have have come out of thisparticular work If the River is
Hidden, and I wondered if astarting point could be to ask
how you both reflected on feelinglike fraudsters early on in the

(02:36):
book. And there's a line whereyou say, "a homeland Craig can't
quite claim and I can't quiterenounce."
Yeah, that's completely key tothe to the book itself. And to
our discussions. Before we didthe pilgrimage, we had many
discussions as friends. Ilearned that he only spent

(03:00):
holidays in Ireland. Hisgrandfather was Irish. I grew up
with Irish stories. And then Ileft Ireland when I was 22. A
long time ago. So we both havethis, you know, we're joined by
our love of writing and our loveof Irish literature. But
actually, you know, are we stillIrish? Were we ever Irish, he
never lived there. I don't I'velived most of my life in London.

(03:23):
So it was that kind of question.Could we together, revisit it and
I had my own ghosts with growingup and the Troubles in the
north. And he had his sort ofsense that he was always seen as
English. So we were both quitetentative, like how could we do
it? But together, then we had, the courage or the

(03:45):
willfulness to try and do it.
Yeah, certainly, I think couragereally belongs to so much of
your work actually. And in termsof this particular journey, this
pilgrimage, it does feel like awrestle with belonging and not

(04:05):
belonging, almost at the sametime, and I wondered whether it
was more challenging, perhaps,than you expected. And perhaps
from from both of your point ofview, in terms of that personal
and philosophical wrestle?
Yeah, wrestling is a good verb. Ithink for me, when I first left

(04:31):
the north, I was determinednever to live there again, and I
just felt quite scarred by it,and scarred by those awful
sectarian divisions. And really,that kind of role of British
imperialism, if you like, and itfelt just very complex and
overwhelming. And I used to goback, as I say, in the preface

(04:53):
to the book and write in placeslike Donegal, Connemara, West
Cork where I could just be. Yeah,I was from the north, but I
could be there as an Irishperson. And I felt very
connected to the land and Irishlanguage and unharmed. The
question for me was, could Iwalk in my own end of the

(05:14):
country in the north, and, andfeel, bring that look, bring
that way of looking at Irishidentity to the north. And I'm
sort of having permission to dothat perhaps, I didn't really
know what I'd find. I knew I wasstill very conflicted. And, you

(05:35):
know, I was, I wasbrought up in a Protestant
tradition, Craig was brought upin a Catholic tradition. So it
felt like we were also togetherfacing those sorts of divides
and looking for them and seeinghow we reacted to that. And it
felt very open. And in a way,that was one of the most scary
things because I said to him, atone point, it's like weaving

(05:57):
air and water, the air, we'rebreathing, the water, we're
walking beside, what is it andwe didn't know for so long what
it was, we just went oninstinct, to walk from the
source to the mouth and take eachday and see what happened. And
it could have gone more in amagazine style of talking to

(06:19):
people and a journalistic style,but it actually went very
inward. Very few people werekind of out on the streets,
because it was just coming outof Covid. And so it was very, as
you say, philosophical, and thatquestion of being very present,
what do you see in the moment?And what, you know, whether it's
a game of thrones center, or alittle baby wren coming out of

(06:43):
the hedge? How do you relate tothat and make a narrative that
could invoke a sense ofplace, and also invoke it for
lots of people that, you know,made some people who heard it
recently, talk about their homeriver, whether it was in Africa,
or in France. And I thought, oh,that's, that's very exciting,

(07:04):
it's got that mobility, whichI didn't really expect.
Yeah, and it does feel like a,you know, as you progress, the
journey, perhaps your sense ofidentity has twists and turns
almost like the river itself.And when you talk about what is

(07:29):
visible, and what is hidden, isit more about what you both
uncover that really, is whatcomes to define your identity?
Yeah,
the sense of identity twistingand turning, sometimes, you

(07:50):
know, as Craig says, this isboring. What are we doing here,
you know, missing the citymissing the cosmopolitan worlds
that we spend most of our timein and, and then, you know,
realizing that we would have togo back quite a few generations,
and I was very aware of thatancestral, need to walk. Before

(08:12):
we had cars, you know, where itwas a horse and cart. And before
that, you know, so many peoplein Ireland walked and walked
barefoot, and I was just reallythinking about that kind of
weight of history, if you likeand weight of ancestry. And we,
yeah, I think a lot of thingsprobably remained hidden to us.

(08:34):
What, what he didn't, Craigdidn't expect to be writing
about caring for his mom who wasdying of cancer. And I kind of
thought, well, you know, my dadwas also quite frail by the end
of the journey, and it becamemuch more of how a river goes
into the sea and loses itself.And that became a metaphor for
death, and in a way, I think,accompanied me. He died quite

(08:58):
soon after the journey. Andbefore the book was finished,
and it felt like that wassomething that I didn't know I
was looking for. How could theriver give me something back
that connected to land andancestry and losing a parent
really.
Yeah, it's almost as if youknow, it took on a parental

(09:23):
role, perhaps by the end of thatpilgrimage.
Yes, that's absolutely right. Ithink Ireland now has a
different sense to me that Idon't have my father living. So
what what is Ireland? Is itbecoming a father? Should I be
there? And, you know, I, I thinkthat's quite difficult for lots

(09:46):
of people when they lose aparent or parents that that
crisis of identity becomes muchsharper. And I tried to resolve
it. I just, you know, near theend of the book, I said, came to
love the itinerary of flux andjust the idea of flux has been
in me my whole adult life sinceI left Ireland and I go back there

(10:07):
to work I go back to write thereI go back to be with family. But
a lot of my kind of artistic andintellectual life has been very
firmly based in London, I alsolived in New York, and I love
the city, it's just this otherpool that is connected to spirit
or soul. Or if you believe inany of that, I don't know.

(10:31):
Well, it's interesting because,of course, mythology, or
spiritual or, obviously,religion comes into play in this
book, and you refer to the rivergoddess. But also, I think there
was a wrestle there, if you likein terms of those ideas around

(10:52):
feminine power, and there was aline, I think this was from
another article and you said,"I've been taught a subtle
shunning of anything femininewith power."
Yes, well, Haven't we all. Imean, I was very involved in
feminist struggles in the 80s.And I thought, you know,
overthrow the patriarchy, youknow, we're changing language,

(11:15):
we're changing how we take upspace, it felt very, very
positive and kind ofprogressive, and, you know,
unfailing, and then we look, youknow, 30 years later, we're
having similar debates around,you know, whether it's equal
pay, or you know, domesticviolence, there's so many things

(11:36):
that women haven't been able totake the power that's theirs.
And then there's a sort ofessentialism around the idea of
the Goddess that, you know,somehow it's about this innate
female power, and that excludesmen or I just find it sometimes
very inhibiting, and evenclichéd, sentimental, maybe,

(12:00):
when I heard, I didn't reallyeven know that the riverbank I
grew up next to came from theIrish and bannaí, which means
Goddess, and is alsoconnected to the word for woman.
And I didn't realize there wasthis powerful, you know,
enactment of healing and goingto the river for cures and
setting up shrines and all thosethings that would have happened

(12:22):
when they they saw the sort ofanimistic quality of the river.
And that I kept kind of turningaway from it, the whole walk,
and later, I thought, I'm goingto have to address this and look
at it. And, and since then, Ithink there are quite a few
artists beginning to do thatmore and beginning to revisit it

(12:43):
as a way to counter the balanceof, you know, overconsumption
through capitalism and the malestructures of power. And I can
really see the really potentenergy in that metaphor now, and
much more than I did. And Ithink I wouldn't have had that
if I hadn't walked the riverbeen, you know, on it, and in it

(13:05):
for eight days. And really, thatwas, that was really kind of
unexpected, but I'm glad thathappened. And it was funny,
because when we'd finished thefirst draft and showed it to the
publisher, he said, You're bothholding back, go in again, you
know, go deeper, and there wereareas we were holding back
around the Troubles and thefeminine power for me. So it

(13:32):
it's, it's often, yeah, when youthink you're gonna get away with
dealing with something in a muchmore, perhaps easy or, I don't
know, a way that you realize,no, no, no, you have to go in
there again. And you know, andwe grew up with Cahalane, and

(13:53):
Finn McCool. And it was, youknow, these gigantic male
heroes, and they even you know,threw bits of land, you know,
they picked up Lough Neagh and threw it to a giant in Scotland.
That's how we got the Isle ofMan. I mean, it was very
atavistic and powerful, but thewomen were never in those
stories. The wife of you know,Finn McCool was there, but it

(14:14):
was it was really interesting,because I think it was that
writer, it's Marlon James, Ithink he's a Jamaican writer
and he said, I, I started to doresearch because I didn't grow
up with my own mythologies. AndI feel like, you know, I'm just
beginning to tap into that needfor a deeper respect for an

(14:38):
ancient culture and also thelanguage that came out of that.
Irish which I wasn't taught inschool because I had an English
Protestant schooling.
Yeah, you know, it really doestap into so many interesting
considerations and certainly thecourage to go deeper, because we

(15:02):
are talking about deeplytraumatic histories, and also
coinciding with deeply personaltimes in your lives, as you were
saying, Craig lost his mom, yourfather was very frail. And
perhaps it's worth noting that2021, of course, when you would

(15:23):
have been embarking on thispilgrimage, marks the 100th
anniversary of when the NorthernIreland border was established.
And that has raised so muchtrauma, historically, that still
resonates today, I wondered howmuch more that perhaps impacted

(15:47):
your, your thoughts and feelingsas you undertook that journey?
Yes, absolutely. I was veryaware of that. And, and
occasionally, in the moreProtestant areas, you'd see a
little, you know, happybirthday, 100th birthday, but it
was a very sad, small sign quitemuted on a roundabout. And I
thought, you know, there's nobig, really big celebrations

(16:09):
here because it feels there issuch a lot of deep ambivalence
and deep conflict around thePartition of Ireland. And its
its continued awkwardness, youknow, being part of the UK, and
half the people not being happywith that. And now, it's really
interesting demographically, asyou probably know, for the first

(16:32):
time, Catholics outnumberProtestants in the north. So
what is that sense of identitygoing to be? The idea of being
unionist and Irish and a lot ofUnionists are applying for Irish
passports, because they want themobility and freedom of going
into Europe. So I think there's,I think a third of the people

(16:54):
now young people don't identifywith either side. And that all
of that we were very interestedin, in exploring and being open
again to learning about.
Yeah, and it's interesting thatthrough this book, you pose
the question, Can this be anIrish poem? And is that the same

(17:17):
way as raising those questionsaround Irish identity?
Belonging, where we belong,changing borders, shifting
identities perhaps, is that isthat the purpose of that
question? Can this be an Irishpoem?
Yeah, because a lot of people inNorthern Ireland call themselves

(17:39):
Northern Irish, not Irish. So Ikind of I've, I've always
identified with a much broadersense of Ireland. And now of
course, there's this wholemovement. It's almost like a
citizens assembly movementcalled Future Ireland. And
they're having cross communitydiscussions and debates to

(18:01):
really say, we can't wait forthe politicians to do this. What,
how do we envisage, envisionthat? And how could it be run?
And in what form and shape andso yeah, what what would a
future Ireland be like? And andWhere would people like Craig
and I fit into that if we don'tlive there, but we're very

(18:22):
psychically connected to it, andstill working through a lot of
it in our in our own writing.
Yeah, and of course, the river,I understand is often labeled as
the Bann divide. And you know,this is very significantly
symbolic, isn't it, of divisionof polarization. Sadly,

(18:45):
yes, the East is more towardsthe wealthier side and the West,
like the west of Ireland, is, isseen as much more poor and
deprived. I mean, we didn't seean awful lot of evidence of
that, but I think it's stillinvoked. Yeah. Very much.
And so, and so you choseto leave Northern Ireland, I

(19:12):
think around the age 18. Andit's actually a line from Craig,
where he says "She didn't knowthat in choosing Trinity she
was treading in a lineage ofProtestant control and
discrimination. The very reasonfor the troubles in the first
place."
Yes, yeah. Well, I was 18. Iwanted to stay in Ireland. I

(19:35):
definitely didn't want to go toEngland. And I ended up you
know, not even realizing howsignificant Trinity was in terms
of being the ProtestantUniversity, I looked into that
history later, but it meant thatI was in Dublin when the hunger
strike strikers were dying, andthere was a huge, you know,

(19:56):
upswell of emotion and it wasvery confusing. As I had been
brought up, not in the Unionisttradition, but in a Protestant
nationalist tradition if youlike, and, and yet I had no way
of expressing it or talkingabout it, and just being in
Dublin at that time, that thatmoment where I had to choose to,

(20:18):
as I say, enter history throughanother door. And I remember, it
was, it just made complete senseto me to be supportive of that
liberation struggle. And then,you know, as I, as I grew
politically, I got, you know, Icould see the links with
apartheid South Africa, stuffthat was happening in Nicaragua.

(20:39):
I mean, I've always been awareof those power structures. And,
you know, then kind of delightedto know that there were all
these revolutionaries who wereProtestant, like Wolfe Tone,
people who tried to lead Irishrebellions against English
occupation. Yeah, that's, that'ssomething I've been very

(21:04):
passionate about.
And so, and so even then,at 18, would that have felt like
a brave act in some ways to tohead south? Or was it more
relief? Because I understandfrom the preface, there was

(21:27):
already a lot of of hurt, yourefer to being at a disco in
1976 and hearing about thebombs in Colerain, if I've got
the right pronounciation?
Yes. Colerain. Yeah, that wasmy father's shop that had been
his Grandfather's, so yeah, it wasgutted. And yeah, it had a lot

(21:50):
of repercussions for my family,he ended up in hospital very ill
with it. And it just again,sealed the idea of I want out of
here. And, and, you know, hehad, he had been very open to
employing Catholics andProtestants. And it just felt
like there was no way forwardout of it. Going to Dublin was

(22:14):
the sort of tradition forProtestants from the North. But
it was more when I identifiedmore with nationalism that that
was seen as, you know, perhapsmore unusual, but there were
there were plenty who who didand my parents would have been
quite nationalistic as well. Sothere was that in my background.

(22:38):
Yeah, and you you say thatyou're your dad after that
incident of the bombing, that hewas quiet for a long time. And I
wondered if, you know, a longtime might have been describing
a significant period of trauma,processing those events...

(23:01):
Yeah, I mean, he hada breakdown, he was in the
psychiatric unit for quite along time and kind of was
troubled a lot for the rest ofhis life in many ways. And he
gave up the business quite soonafter that, and yeah, it was a
it was a big, yeah, it was atrauma. Definitely.

(23:25):
Yeah, yeah. So by the timeyou've gone to Trinity, you are
carrying pretty hugeexperiences aren't you around
fear and risk and threat?
Yeah, um, in a way we wenormalized it so much and I
wasn't living in Londonderry orBelfast so in no way did I feel

(23:45):
I was affected like otherpeople. But I remember bringing
an American friend I met back onholiday and we were all saying
Oh, it didn't really affect usthat much. It was just we had to
do this, we have to show our bagson when to shops, we have to
watch out for any unattendedparked cars, we have to do this
and that and he was saying all these things are part of

(24:07):
how you had to cope. It's notnothing. It's not a normal
society. And it really yeah, itstruck home how we we really
accommodated a lot of what wasvery, very abnormal and you can
see it in Anna Burnsfantastic novel Milkman, the
way the sort of Para Militarypatriarchy has such a stronghold

(24:32):
on how you behave, how youthink what you say. And I think
in some ways, those thoseattitudes are very, very
enforced in the north still. Andthat's one of the reasons why I
find it quite difficult to bethere.
Yeah, yeah. Living in a in agrip of fear. And actually, this

(24:54):
was something I noticed inrelation to your work Famished,
that you also referred tosilence, you know, having just
reflected on your father beingquiet for a very long time. And
you talked about a secondgeneration Irish woman who

(25:17):
apparently could never say thewords the famine, but left a gap
in her sentence. And it wasabout recognizing that that
silence was really a statementof trauma.
Absolutely, yeah, there wassurvivor's guilt. And then there
was just the the trauma of whatpeople had gone through. And one

(25:39):
of the dedicees of that bookwas a young woman who was sent
to Sydney to, you know, lots ofIrish women, I think 3000 were
sent to Sydney as part of thisscheme, the Earl Grey orphan
scheme. And they, you know, theywere to provide wives for men,
and one of them was declaredinsane when she arrived. And

(25:59):
this doctor looked at her andsaid, No, she's not insane.
She's just needs tenderness andtime. And I find that just
really humbling that, you know,this woman could, could come
through it and just wonderwhether, how she survived really,
but yeah, it was, it was a verydifficult subject to go back to,

(26:27):
I felt like I didn't knowenough. Seeing the the boats
coming in, across theMediterranean made me think of
the coffin ships. And then Ithought, well, I don't know
enough about the coffin ships,where were they going? And why
did so many people die and, andthen this, at one point, I saw
this, this photo of QueenVictoria on the tube, and it was

(26:50):
a bit of an exhibition about herlife, and someone had scratched
in graffiti across her forehead,the Irish famine. That was in
2012. So that was like a good,you know, five years before I
began that research, and I justfelt this bolt of recognition
and wonder who'd written thisand I didn't know what Queen

(27:12):
Victoria had done during the famine.When Ireland was part of her
Empire, and next door, and itreally just kept haunting me and
kept coming back, you don't knowenough find out and inhabit it,
and habits and voices and thehistory and creative voices as

(27:33):
well. And it was a reallyfascinating and difficult
journey, but it felt like Icouldn't turn away from it. It
was just so demanding to bedone. And it really was an act
of lament and an act of, ofmourning, really, that a lot of
the lament and mourning wasn'tdone because people didn't have

(27:56):
the strength to do it, or theyleft or they died themselves.
And just looking at thatincredible schism in Irish
culture, there's less cultureafterwards and less lamenting by
women. It was a really such ashocking and profound split in

(28:20):
what had gone before. And yeah,it was, it was very powerful
really being being around it forquite a few years. And as you
said, at the beginning, then Ididn't really feel like reading
a couple of minutes from it in apoetry reading, I felt like
having a performance with musicand with this extraordinary

(28:42):
vocalization, like almostvocalizing the blight, and to
create a space where peoplecould release some of that
emotion and silence. Andhistorically, historians say,
oh, there's been plenty aroundthe famine and plenty of,
you know, memorials all over theworld. But as I say, a brass
statue can't speak. And havingsome of that spoken was really

(29:07):
extraordinary. And I always dida q&a at the end because people
need to sit afterwards andrecover in a quiet sort of safe
space. And it was reallyincredibly powerful and
compelling.
Yeah, and, and even just goingback to the visual that

(29:30):
triggered this, that image ofIrish famine being scrawled
across the forehead of QueenVictoria really feels like
you're looking at a punk album Abit like the Sex Pistols, God
save the Queen, you know, it'sthat kind of rage that necessary
rage and statement, but in youknow, in this in this much,

(29:55):
much, much earlier, historiccontext. How did you manage
dealing with such a terriblehistory of a deliberately
induced famine in terms ofanger, and partly you're

(30:16):
managing, I suppose, thecuriosity of understanding that
the truth about that history,but it's the it's the courage to
face it as well.
It is, oddly not as depressingand heavy as not knowing. You
know, once you do the research,it's depressing. But you also,
it's also why I've set, you know,a big section of the middle of the

(30:39):
book as those acts ofresistance. You know, you always
want to know what people did howthey broke the windows of
bakeries, or they slashed openthe the sacks that were carrying
this awful corn that they had totry and cook and, you know,
women lead lots of thoserebellions. And I just felt so

(31:00):
excited and empowered by hearingthose stories. And I looked for
them in the research, I soughtthem out, and this woman who got
fined for walking across thelawn of some Anglo Irish
landlord, and, you know, so Iwrote a voice poem, a sonnet in
her voice, and that feltincredible to pull these stories

(31:20):
together and live in them again.I got sick quite a bit. I
had the flu twice I had, youknow, I was, I was not, you
know, I felt like I wasdefinitely carrying a lot of it,
and walking around with theseblankets around me and thinking,
yeah, I'm really living part ofthis experience, and going to

(31:42):
that place, like Dolock valleywhere many people died on a
starvation walk to try and getinto the workhouse and, and
being there with my waterproofson and my walking boots and
thinking of them and their barefeet. And it was very somatic.
Absolutely, but in the end, Ijust, I just felt really clear

(32:07):
about the role of Britishimperialism in that struggle.
And then Eritrea and in India,you know, I tried to look at it
in a more global perspective,and also looking at the world
hunger know, and food insecurityand all these things we depend
on coming from all over theworld and the the sort of luxury

(32:30):
and terrible waste of that. Soit felt like it was engaging
with very contemporary issues aswell, which was quite, you know,
important for me in terms of mydevelopment, so it wasn't, in a
way, just a national structure.It was an international picture

(32:53):
I was trying to build.
Yeah, and it's, it's, it'sinteresting, although,
personally very harsh on youthat similarly to when you are
writing If the River is Hidden,and as you were saying, your
father was very fragile, andsadly, he you did lose him a few

(33:14):
months later. But at the time ofwriting Famished I understand
you were also dealing with othersadnesses I think you lost a
very close friend, a friend thatmay have been dealing with
cancer. So you have spoken abouthow much grief and fear can go
into your poetic process. Andit's, it's happened

(33:35):
significantly with with both ofthese books.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I reallybelieve in the metaphor of
metaphors healing, I believewhen you're stuck in something,
whether it's terrible pain orloss or fear. Once you have a
metaphor, somehow, you can seeit outside yourself. You don't

(33:58):
carry the suffering, you know,as the Buddhists say, you know,
everyone suffers, but you learnhow to suffer well. And writing
helps me to suffer well. Youknow, you being around someone
who was who was dying andincredibly frail, and then the
compassion for him becoming thecompassion for those million

(34:21):
people who died and the millionwho emigrated and being very,
very aware of mortality and thetransience of life and, and I
mean, I have a meditationpractice and that definitely
helped me to have the courage tolook at it directly and keep
looking. I think that's, that'svery important with you know,

(34:45):
poetry of witness. This ideathat you keep going back to look
at it and write about it peoplethink oh, we've written about
the Holocaust enough, butclearly we haven't have they're
still deniers we have to findnew ways. To embody it again.
I've always been fascinated byhow poets have done that. And

(35:09):
yeah, there's a wonderful poetcalled Ilya Kaminsky, who's
actually originally from theUkraine and lives in America.
And he wrote a beautifulcollection called Deaf Republic.
And it becomes a kind ofmetaphor for a totalitarian
state, you know, the people whoare rounded up because they
can't hear. And I just, yeah, Ithink it's very liberating. And

(35:34):
it does nourish you when whenyou either read it, or you write
it yourself.
Yeah, it's very interestingreference, because actually,
that came up in my interviewwith the poet Adam Kammerling
also in this season, who writesabout the intergenerational

(35:54):
trauma of his Jewish heritage,and Ilya Kaminsky was a
reference point. Would you saythat going back to your
journey, your pilgrimage, If theRiver is Hidden, that that was a
revisiting of intergenerationaltrauma?

(36:19):
Yeah, so I would say that, yeah,I think, I think I sort of feel
like, you know, if it took manyyears to address the family, it
was kind of working its waythrough my mind. And in a way,
the troubles have also been likethat for me, how do I go back, I
don't want to go back. I don'twant to look at it. But it's
also what I carry. And it wasintergenerational, because Craig

(36:43):
is 20 years younger than me. AndI love the idea that we were
connecting through, through oursteps through, you know, very
different histories. And, andthen, yeah, the sense that, in a
way, I'm the only one in myfamily, whether there's only one

(37:03):
to finish university, and theonly one who lives, you know, a
life that is much moreunconventional than what I was
brought up to be. And, and Ithink that finding, going back
to find a voice and belonging,when you have kind of rejected a
lot of the culture that wasoffered to you are expected to

(37:25):
use to follow is also importantwork to, to create a belonging
that is very plural, and verytolerant.
Yeah, that's interesting. AndCraig actually raises this, in

(37:46):
one of his prose sections, Inthe River is Hidden, and it's in
reference to you he reflects onyour life and says, "Despite the
years of homophobia andsectarianism, the landscape
didn't question her presence." Sois the landscape, a place of

(38:07):
home?
The landscapes very much a placeof home? Yes. And I've always
felt incredibly connected to itand protective of it. And that's
also another thing that wehaven't really addressed that
that kind of growing threat tothe landscape through pollutants

(38:29):
and insecticides, pesticides,all of those things. And I
suppose yeah, I feel that itdidn't judge me. And I always
went back to it in myimagination where I couldn't
hold the struggles of the Northin many ways, but I, I always

(38:52):
felt like I stayed connected tothe land. And there's that bit
in that where I realized thatfor many years, when I went
back, I was always looking outof the side of my eye for a guy
moving around in the field whodidn't look as though we
belonged. It was always like acity man in the country wearing
you know, like city close, and Iused to think, what's he doing

(39:15):
there? And is he with anotherman? Are there weapons, there's
something hidden that that senseof the land also being a place
where bodies were hidden likeJean McConville, who was a
mother who was taken away andand killed. And you know, those

(39:35):
those things are still part ofthe scar, I guess, for many
people. And it was reallywonderful to just go and walk on
the land and not feel like I wasgoing to come across something
extremely violent and unexpectedin that way.

(39:56):
Yeah, and when youjust mentioned what was
hidden again. Notably, you doask along the way, Where are the
women's places? Yeah, this isafter noting a series of orange
lodges or very male, Orangemen,male spaces. Yeah

(40:18):
orange golf clubs and Men'sSheds. And the Mason
Masonic lodges, I mean, it'sextraordinary every mile, there
was some place for them to meet.And they were all quite
barricaded as well. And then thewomen, I don't know where the
women meet it, but there weren'tmany places built for them,

(40:40):
that's for sure.
Yeah, and one of the places thatperhaps you do acknowledge,
sadly, is the women that wereforced to cross the sea, and you
really were referring toabortions, and having to almost

(41:02):
leave in secret and carryingcarrying yet more burdens. But
that almost was one of perhapsthe only places that could be
identified as one of theirplaces.
Yeah, isn't that tragic? Thatthey had to yeah, and they still
have to travel Paula, I mean,it's, it's now you know, they're

(41:25):
legally born to provideabortion, but they don't do it.
And that was the one thing thatcame out of the whole exposure
of the DUP around Brexit, andwas that, you know, their, their
disgusting, sexist, you know, anti female politics, you know,
all of that was exposed, andpeople were saying to me, I

(41:47):
didn't even know what that allmeant there. You know, people in
England had so little knowledgeof it. And what they got away
with under the sort of cape, thedark cape of the Troubles is
quite extraordinary. And, yeah,they still have to have to
travel. It's not being you know,lots of kinds of rape crisis

(42:08):
centers and abortion clinicshave been forced to close and
have had terrible abuse as well.
It's so shocking, isn't it andwhen we're in the context, now
of the increasing abuse andoppression of the women of
Afghanistan, you know, it's acontemporary conversation.

(42:32):
Yeah, absolutely.
Because you actually raiseanother line that I think is is
yours, is making the point thatyou say, but women are not always
people, who will protect us. Yeah,who will protect us from our
protectors?
Yes. Yeah. I know, I was justlike raging them Yeah, I was

(43:00):
just thinking, you know, we knowall this sewage is going into
the rivers and the seas and thecompanies are you know, get away
with it all the time. They getfined a little bit but you know,
people ring up and and report itand nothing happens and it's,
it's just absolutely horrifyingall over the UK the amount of
poison that we're putting intothe environment. And yeah, I

(43:26):
think that was a very sort ofstrong connection with the land
as you know, kind of being madeinto a junkie through the
phosphates and nitrates that arebeing poured into it and this
idea that, you know, like riversthat the George Monbiot has, has
tried to champion the river whyand it's actually completely

(43:48):
fettered, and, and disgustingnow and most of the Bahamas is
still healthy enough, but it'sit's not going to be if they don't
stop building these poultryfarms all the way along it and
pig farms, it's gonna get sodestroyed and beyond usable.
Yeah. And isn't it interestingthat, you know, at the beginning

(44:12):
of of this conversation, orearly on, we were talking about
the significance of the rivergoddess, you know how at a
time when there would have beensuch deep respect for the river,
the idea of the river goddess,and yet now, you witnessed such
terrible disrespect and harmanother layer of harm in a

(44:35):
history that has already beenconstructed upon layers and
layers of harm.
Yeah, no, that's right. Maybe Ishould read that piece about
being inspired by what'shappened in Bangladesh where the
river is considered a person inlaw. And that's happening in

(44:57):
lots of indigenous communitiesand then how again. The question
is who will fight for it and whowill take it to the law court? I
could just read a few stanzasabout about that, if you like?
Shall I?
That'd be wonderful. Thank youthat's fantastic because it gives
the listeners context. Thank youvery much.
"We vigil walk, we vigiltalk, when a river is hidden so

(45:22):
as what enters it. In law inBangladesh, rivers are people.
But women are not always people,who protects us from the
protectors?. Before long theGoddess will be fettered,
disenchanted, another dead zone,craving a phosphate fix a

(45:42):
nitrate high, we'll find new waysto bury the poison fire. The
moon is on her back. I seenothing but black water. Whoever
doesn't hear the Banshee willsurely die."

(46:03):
It's beautifully put together,but there's so much sadness
isn't there? That your, that yourwork is essentially
responding to?
I think so Paula. But you know,more and more I know, there's
the epigenetic relationship withgrief and trauma that's been

(46:25):
proved around women who werepregnant in 9/11 in the family in
Holland, in the Second WorldWar. And undoubtedly, it was
carried by the survivors of thefamine, but also, there's
epigenetic joy. And, you know,if I hear a fiddle and my foot
starts tapping, you know, how,how, is that passed down? Is

(46:48):
that in my genes is that youknow, so incredible
laughter and recognition andpleasure and solace and fun in
the book. And especially when weperform together there's there's
a bouncing off that iscontaining sadness, but it's
also celebrating life andphysicality and sensors. And,

(47:14):
yeah, so I think I'm probably Iprobably respond to both all the
time. But I think there's,there's a tendency when you
start to write to definitelywrite out your sorrow. And then
later, you have to really becareful not just to be pulled in
that direction, because alldarkness needs light to define

(47:38):
it, you know, there. So I'vebeen much more drawn to
resilience, exuberance. As wellas, as the sadness, it has more
fun in it, certainly thanFamished. But it's, yeah, I
don't, I see the books as kind ofif you're, if you're struggling,

(47:59):
and you're drowning the book isthe raft isn't it, and it's it,
it gets you to the other shore.And then it's, it's, it's done
its work for you. And thenhopefully, it can take people,
you know, down the river andtheir own rivers as well. So

(48:19):
that hopefully our pilgrimagebecomes other people's
pilgrimages, through the writingor through their own journeys.
Yeah, because then you talkabout bearers of meaning. So for
example, you, you weremaking the point, actually, in
terms of women, are the bearersof meaning historically, but not

(48:42):
necessarily seen as the makersof meaning. Or, or that's just
simply erased from history, youknow, in terms of where they
have been the makers of meaning.And would you say that your
experience through thispilgrimage, almost really

(49:04):
established your own existenceas a maker of meaning and
especially as a woman?
I think, I think I've probablyall my books have done that in
some way, you know, whether Iwas talking about being an

(49:28):
immigrant and experiencing antiIrish racism in the 80s, and
then coming out as a lesbian andreally putting that story in
that I didn't feel had beenspoken at all having the right
to speak about nationalism as aProtestant and I just felt like

(49:49):
how, yeah, can I? Yeah, my, my,my gender is part of that
pilgrimage. Definitely. But it'salso much more as a journey
person, I just feel like I wantI want this, that awareness of

(50:11):
the protecting the land to becarried by everyone for everyone
to care about it and foreveryone's compassion to be
ignited. It's, it's, I suppose,partly why I was, you know,
drawn to working with Craigbecause he, he has such a
aliveness in him. And he's sucha, he's so connected with the

(50:34):
natural world, and he wasforaging and eating things as we
walked along. And, you know, hebrought his his own relationship
to land, which, you know, isn'tparticularly gendered. So, you
know, it's I'm not sure if itestablished it, but it certainly
continued what I've been tryingto do in my work for a long

(50:55):
time. And I think just being inthe body in the landscape was
very different from in Famished,I'm not so much in it. Excuse
me, maybe in that poem, where Italk about eating and looking at
the 25 countries that the simplemeal where everything I'm eating
has come from 25 countries andbut yeah, being in the body was

(51:19):
very significant. Having really sore feet and, you know,
sore limbs and still walking.Excuse me. I think it probably
did connect back to Famished ina way.
Yeah, and perhaps moreaffirmation then than

(51:40):
establishing. Yeah. It's interesting. You
know, we mentioned earlier howyou pose the question, Can this
be an Irish poem? As you as youprogress along this journey. Can
this be an Irish poem? And ofcourse, you do conclude with

(52:01):
this can be an Irish poem. So isthat a statement of affirmation?
Yes, yes. Is it is definitely.And we felt by the end of it, it
the land did belong to us, andwe belong to it. And we had
something to say which weweren't sure we could at the
beginning, quite honestly, wedidn't know. And now the

(52:24):
question for me is, can thisjust be an Irish poem? Isn't
that the poem that can speak toeveryone? So it's, it's taken on
a different resonance for me?Can it be more than an Irish
poem?
Yes, because as I mentioned inmy intro, because for me,

(52:48):
personally, it feels like this,this lovely call and response
throughout, you know, whetherit's between you as friends,
your memories, or ancestors, butas I mentioned, also to the
displaced, and what I had, in mymind was literally, all of the
displaced across the world,which, frighteningly, is

(53:09):
estimated now to be 100 millionpeople forcibly displaced, 100
million refugees in the world.
Yeah, at least, at least. Yes.And also, I do feel
the kind of luxury of thatchoice of choosing to walk and

(53:30):
not having to carry everythingwe owned, and not having, you
know, being homeless in it andbeing you know, separated from
your culture, your land, yourpeople. I mean, it, there is a
moment where I just feel likethis is so obscene because I've,
I've, you know, I don't need todo this, and people in the past
have to walk to escape trauma orterror or for work on it. I was

(53:58):
very aware of thosecontradictions of privilege,
really.
Yeah. And it's also astonishing,isn't it that when we can talk
about statistics like that, andeverything we've talked about
today, that reflects uponterrible terrible histories and

(54:18):
acts of cruelty. Attitudes ofcruelty, however, continue to
exist. And so in terms of yourwork as a writer, as a poet, and
performance poetry, is that ahope perhaps, to encourage and

(54:41):
instill greater compassionamongst us all?
I think it's definitely adriving thing for me to keep
expanding my sense ofcompassion. Keep being open,
keep being aware of beinggroundless, and things changing

(55:03):
and loss being part of what,what, what it takes to, to exist
as a human. And this question ofcruelty, I mean, it's, it's in
us all, where, you know,constantly negotiating with acts

(55:24):
of unkindness. And I thinkthat's why it makes it very hard
to make judgments when there's awar, like in the Ukraine. And
when we we have things we can'treconcile in ourselves, you
know, we can't, it's people weno longer speak to, or judgments

(55:45):
we make or feelings to be asgenerous as you wish you could
be. And I've always felt like,the poems take me there, the
poems show me a way of findingcomfort or insight or
transformation through them. Andif that can work for other

(56:05):
people, it's fantastic. Itsurprises me when it does. And
it's it's more that negotiationwith the insight really, that
that brings the poem about, andthen that goes out into the
world hopefully, and helps andhelps people to reconsider or

(56:31):
look more deeply or pause.
Yeah, and I wondered, Imentioned, you know, you're the
Associate Professor in Creativeand Critical Writing at the
University of Greenwich and howall of this informs your
teaching. What it is you're encouraging, we've mentioned

(56:52):
courage a lot. It's taken a lotof personal courage for you to
confront some of the issues andeven to undertake the
pilgrimage. But there is a veryimportant role isn't there
around courage in whatever formthat may take and also
encouraging curiosity beingprepared to explore. I wonder if

(57:19):
these are value points that comeout in your in your own
teaching?
I hope so. Yeah, yeah. I mean,I've always taught international
poets, whether it's the Turkishpoet who spent a lot of time in
prison, Nâzım Hikmet or, morerecently, Claudia Rankin, who
wrote Citizen, which was allabout, you know, black men

(57:42):
really being picked up or killedby the police in America, but
micro aggressions around race,issues around difference and
understanding difference andexpressing it all of those
things have always driven mywork. And then probably more
laterally, questions ofmindfulness on how to help the
students with the incrediblechallenges, they have the huge

(58:06):
debt and the huge rent andworking while studying all the
things I didn't have have to do.And I think just helping them to
understand how to process someof the anxiety and use writing
and reading for that. That's,that's very important in my
work, definitely. And, and I geta huge amount back from them,

(58:33):
from their amazing energy andinsight and their non binary
adventures on. So yeah, it'sit's good to be a working poet.
I think that that's important tome. I don't want to be too
detached and off in a remote spotall the time. I dream of it but

(58:55):
I don't think it's actuallygonna create important work
necessarily.
And of course, mindfulnessreally does encourage us in
reflection, it's oftenreferred to as gentle curiosity.
It's mindful that people areapproaching their traumas so to
do that carefully. And with thatin mind, I opened this

(59:20):
conversation with you noting howat the beginning of this
pilgrimage, you and Craig bothfelt like fraudsters. So in
terms of that process ofreflection and perhaps with your
bringing your skills ofmindfulness to that reflection,
how would you say you felt atthe end of that journey? What

(59:43):
was that arc moving from feelinglike a fraudster?
Well it was incrediblyexhilarating to touch the
lighthouse at the end of the Bannmouth at the end of Portstewart
strand at the end of 8 daysabout 85 miles of walking and
going along the river and, andthrowing the sycamore stick into

(01:00:07):
the sea and the sycamore stickin some cultures, a student told
me this, he's Romanian. And hesaid, It's the stick for the
adventurer. And I thought, youknow, I, I'm in my 60s, and I
went on this adventure, becauseI felt like there was some
answer and you just come up, Iguess, with more questions, but

(01:00:28):
your, the base of you isbroader, you're kind of you're
expanded in the world, you feelmore generous, you feel kind, or
you feel like, you have beenpart of the land. I mean, like,
at the end, I say, you know, I'mlike a hobo, I've not lived
around corners, I've lived, youknow, out in the air and being

(01:00:50):
under the sky and seeing whathappens. And that was incredibly
liberating. And I think, youknow, I sort of intimated is
like, losing a lot of thoseclassical material comforts
is a bit a bit like sheddingshedding stuff before you go
into another realm or something,you know, it's, it's really, you

(01:01:16):
know, the path becomes theclock. And we're so completely
bound by by time and pings andour little machines or devices,
I mean, we used an old fashionedmap, we hardly ever used Google
or had our phones even on and itwas, it was just so freeing to
be in a completely differentelement. That's what it felt

(01:01:39):
like, and, and just incrediblysatisfying. You know, you set up
this challenge and, and yousucceed in doing it. It's and
then actually, the writing wasmuch, much harder than we could
have imagined. But that it wasreally when the work began after

(01:02:00):
the walk.
That's really interesting. I didlove actually reading that
choice to do this organically,you know, good old fashioned
reading a map and not relyingon, you know, geolocation, sat
nav type stuff with satellitesspinning around your heads,
because I felt that was reallyramping up the importance and

(01:02:25):
the value of curiosity, yournatural curiosity, leading you
along your own journey, otherwise, you're effectively
only being led, aren't you?
Yeah, that's right. That'sright. And the not knowing was
incredibly hard, actually, afterthe walk as well, not knowing

(01:02:48):
both of us went off and wroteand then came together and cut
and pasted and worked out thethemes and how were we going to
approach it, we didn't even knowif we wanted to do it
chronologically. But that wasthat was a very kind of tender
time. You know, for months, we'dmeet up and rehearse things and
read things. And Craig hadlearnt the bodhran in lockdown.

(01:03:11):
So he was playing that andthat really brought us back into
the rhythm of walking. And in away how to get the aliveliness
and the yeah, the alacrity ofthat walk in the writing
afterwards. That was thechallenge. And it was absolutely
terrifying at times, you know,he was despairing, and I was

(01:03:31):
picking him up and then theywould the rules would reverse
and of course, that's the joy ofcollaborating when you have
those two energies and and thenwhen we performed with we've
performed it with a flautist,and then with a fiddler, and
then it becomes something else,it becomes like a song, some
sort of walking song, and weboth sing, and it's, yeah, it's

(01:03:56):
been such a surprise.
And it's interesting becausewhen you have to think what is
it that helps you to keep going,you know, when you're
physically exhausted. This is byno means an easy walk. It's
physically grueling, it'semotionally demanding, you know,
and it and it takes courage. Youknow, it can be a frightening

(01:04:20):
process, even with the thingsthat you're revisiting, or your
publisher saying, nice, try, goback, go deeper, go closer to
what's difficult, go closer totrauma. None of that is an easy
ask. So are things like musicand rhythm, a way of coping, is
that a way of creating thecourage that you need?

(01:04:43):
Yeah, when we brought on thebodhran, and it was like a third
element between us and we'venever worked with another
writer. I've worked withmusicians before and that was
really strange because we telleach other stories and then he
would go away and writesomething and which became his,
and then, you know, I would bewriting something he might have

(01:05:04):
told me say about hisgrandfather or his aunt who,
whose husband got shot. And itwas just a really interesting
exchange that was generous, andit was expansive. And all the
time, we didn't know, hard tokeep it in the air. And yeah,
once we got on stage, and we hadthe flute, and there was a

(01:05:26):
little QR code at the front ofthe book, which plays the flute
and a bit of the walking andwhat we were saying as we went
along, which we recorded, and itwas, yeah, fascinating to
triangulate with music. And Ithink that lifts it into a whole
other dimension really, in interms of the two voices, and

(01:05:49):
then this third element, whichis the river or the road. Yeah.
So as I'm conscious I'mcreeping over the hour, and
stealing your time. What wouldyour reflections be on the
series question Can art save us?So obviously not a yes, no

(01:06:12):
answer it's a deliberately boldquestion. But we've been talking
about really huge histories thathold a lot of trauma and a lot
of difficulty. And obviously,poetry, as as as an art form is
is a form of expression that'shelped you. So I'm curious what

(01:06:34):
your reflections on that on thatquestion are? Or maybe you've
got lines of poetry that answerthe question better?
What's the question?
Just just looking at the seriesquestion, Can art save us?
Oh, I see. So your seriesCan art save us? I think if we

(01:07:00):
don't have art, we're going tobe in a much worse state. We are
going to be less connected,we're going to be less joyful.
We're going to be less curious.It's going to become much more
punitive, cruel. I mean, theaffirmation, the joy, the

(01:07:23):
solidarity, the insight, all thethings I get from art, visual
art, poetry, music. I could notimagine surviving without them,
I couldn't imagine the dealingwith what we have to deal with,
with art having those moments ofexpansiveness. And yeah, just

(01:07:46):
someone else giving you what'sgone on in their mind, having
caught you know, we're allliving in the state of terrible
uncertainty and fear and what'sgoing to happen with the future
and just to be in someone else'smind in that, that quiet space
of their creativity is sonourishing, and then you can go

(01:08:06):
out and be an activist or youcan go and look after your sick
parent, or you can decide toadopt or you can go and, you
know, help refugees in Greece? Idon't I don't know. But without
it without that holding yourhand without that giving you
the courage to do it. I thinkit's it's almost it would be

(01:08:27):
impossible. I couldn't imaginethat. Of course, it saves us all
the time every day. It's it'sgot to be there. And yeah, thank
goodness for art.
And, and perhaps, inevitably,The River is Hidden is reviewed

(01:08:50):
as "a vital work" moving and vitalwork and highlighting that it's
written with heartbreakinghonesty, and integrity. So,
Cherry, I can't thank you enoughfor your time to talk so
specifically and carefully aboutthis history in Ireland around

(01:09:16):
the border between Ireland andNorthern Ireland, Northern
Ireland, and to have suchcareful insights. I really do
appreciate your time and beingprepared to go so close to some
personal traumas of your own.Thank you very much for joining
me today.
Thanks, Paula.