Spoken word poet Erin Fornoff's acclaimed show We Are An Archipelago explores friendship, homecoming, ageing, and the courage to embrace change late in life, as a hurricane approaches.
Told through poetry and live music, the piece features Erin and singer-songwriter Patrick O'Laoghaire (I Have A Tribe)
Below, Erin Fornoff tells the semi-true tale that inspired the show, which tours to venues nationwide this May as part of the Bealtaine Festival, Ireland's national festival celebrating the arts and ageing.
We Are An Archipelago, my epic poem turned performance, is inspired by an astounding true story I snatched from local gossip and couldn't shake from my mind.
My mother’s neighbour Bill was a very old man – ninety-nine years - who still lived on his own, in a house which was a kind of time capsule. He was from an island, Ocracoke, off the coast of North Carolina, some nine hours by car away. I would visit him to discuss the basketball team of our shared alma mater.
Ocracoke is a bit famous, locally – known for a unique accent with slang left over from Shakespearean times, and for the Lost Colony, a centuries-old mystery involving a group of settlers from Ulster and England who disappeared in the 1500s. They left only this island's name carved on a tree.
The islands in the archipelago of North Carolina's Outer Banks, where Ocracoke sits, are cast apart and remade by weather – one island is cleaved in two after a hurricane, or two become joined up as one after the winds settle. This felt like a handy metaphor.
Watch: Erin Fornoff reads her poem Home for Pantisocracy
So Bill was from Ocracoke, away eighty years, his wife long-gone and his children scattered. People who've grown up by the coast never seem to lose their yearning for the water. There seems to be a sense of withdrawal for the sea, one which- like homesickness in general - doesn’t fade with time.
Bill had carried that homesickness for eighty years. He decided he didn’t want to spend another day without the smell of salt in the air. At ninety-nine, he decided to move back to Ocracoke, alone. He lived there, on his own, until he was 105.
His son, who lived far away, had had enough of this flight of fancy, this illogical return, and declared that it was time for Bill to come back inland and move into a nursing home. Bill, who had made a choice about where he wanted to live out his life, did not want to go. His son came, and against Bill's will, packed up his things, and helped him into the car.
On the drive off the island, Bill passed away.
When I tell this story it provokes one of two reactions. Some react with sadness that Bill’s choice wasn’t honoured – they see it as a tragedy. And others say, 'What a badass’ – they are struck by his own choice to live and die on his terms. It’s clear to them that he chose to go, when he went.
We Are An Archipelago is my telling of this story, and of what I hoped happened to him as he lived on the island – a friendship, an adventure, a brush with joy and awe. I tell the story backed by a band: Patrick O’Laoghaire (I Have a Tribe), Oisin Walsh-Peelo (The Fynches) and Dominic Mullan (Mary Coughlan) offering soundscapes and songs.
It’s an epic poem of Bill’s own epic, extraordinary story.
We Are An Archipelago is touring nationwide as part of this year's Bealtaine Festival, with performances over the coming weeks in Loughrea, Ennistymon, Antrim, Clare, Dublin, Kerry and Bantry - find a date near you here.
