For the new Lyric Feature documentary Among the Heather Rocks - the first of two programmes broadcast during Seachtain Na Gaeilge with bilingual Irish poets - the poet Annemarie Ní Churreáin took the radio producer Claire Cunningham back to the Donegal Gaeltacht, where she grew up. Listen to Among the Heather Rocks above.
Below, Annemarie tells us about the places they visited, and their relationship to her poetry.
I grew up in the heartlands of the Donegal Gaeltacht in a place named Cnoc Na Naomh. As a child my bedroom window looked out onto the hilltop where it's said that Colmcille and his peers gathered to convert the local lands from Paganism. At some stage during my teenage years a stone altar was installed on the hill along with a holy cross that lit up each night. Growing up, I took all of this for granted but I marvel today at the fact that my girlhood was spent among the shadows and echoes of pilgrims who flocked across centuries to this site of sacred ceremony. The tradition of worship on the hill where I lived may predate Christian tradition.
Among the Heather Rocks is a new radio programme that revisits the Donegal landscapes of my poetry. Bloodroot (Doire Press, 2017) is a book that explores the mistreatment of women and girls by church and state but it’s also a book about coming of age, belonging and my fascination with Irish history and place. When radio producer Claire Cunningham suggested that we record an interview to contextualise Bloodroot, I knew that our first port of call should be my neighbour Lucy Ní hAodhagáin, founder of Wild Awake, whose work as a community facilitator aims to rekindle ecological and cultural resilience through the restoration of ancestral life ways in Ireland. Drinking hawthorn tea at Lucy’s kitchen table, we reflected on our shared love of folklore, ritual and wild corners of Donegal. The Poison Glen (Gallery Press, 2021) is my second poetry collection. It’s inspired by an auspicious beauty-spot in Dún Lúiche which is associated with the story of Balor of The Evil Eye, a Fomorian giant who locked his daughter Eithne into a tower on Tory Island and stole her three infant sons. In my retelling I was keen to acknowledge the ways in which stories live in the land. To discuss my Balor poems, Claire and I visited historian Dr Brian Lacey who now lives in the glen where Balor and his estranged grandson, Lugh, entered into battle. Brian offered illuminating insights into how this ancient myth still thrives in the local community.
Poetry opens a portal, allowing us to pass between worlds and it's my hope that this new radio programme will give listeners a chance to discover the liminal nature of Donegal.
Among the Heather Rocks also visits the Donegal County Archives where I wrote Ghostgirl, a commissioned pamphlet responding to records of the Stranorlar Mother & Baby Home, Donegal. The home originally opened in the nineteenth century as a workhouse for the local poor and continued as such throughout An Gorta Mór. By 1924 it had transformed into a state-run home for unmarried pregnant women and their children. It was operated by the Sisters of Mercy and admitted 1,646 unmarried mothers between 1922 and 1964. The youngest maternity admission to the home was 13 years old. With the help of county archivist Niamh Brennan, I delved back into the archive’s leather-bound books and found myself drawn again to the handwritten records of my Donegal foremothers.
Alongside interviews, Among the Heather Rocks features music by my long-time collaborator Michael Gallen who is also based in the west of Ireland.
Poetry opens a portal, allowing us to pass between worlds and it’s my hope that this new radio programme will give listeners a chance to discover the liminal nature of Donegal. Flanked on one side by the wild Atlantic and on the other by a border, it’s a mysterious county steeped in beauty, roots and community. We closed out the programme with words from Pól Penrose, director of the annual Donegal Bród Festival - Ireland’s first LGBTQ+ festival in the Irish language. Among the Heather Rocks celebrates the central position Donegal holds in my imagination. Poetry has always been for me an extension of the place I come from and its living culture.
Annemarie Ní Churreáin is the 2025 UCD/Arts Council Writer in Residence and the poetry editor at The Stinging Fly Magazine. Among the Heather Rocks will be broadcast on The Lyric Feature (Sundays at 6pm on RTÉ lyric fm) on March 9th 2025. You can listen to more Lyric Features here.
