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OnSight 2024/25: Silent Objects/Spoken Lives

Butterprint from the Irish Folklife Collection. NMI Collections F:1945.46
Poets Geraldine Mitchell, Martina Evans and Sean Borodale were selected for commissions as part of OnSight 2024/25: Silent Objects/Spoken Lives. 
The project is a joint initiative by Mayo County Council Arts Service, the National Museum of Ireland and Poetry Ireland.
 
As part of the long-running OnSight project, Geraldine, Martina and Sean were invited to explore the Irish Folklife Collection and exhibition galleries at the National Museum of Ireland, Turlough Park, Castlebar. They were asked to select objects of their own choosing from which they would create new works of poetry.
 
Underpinning this exercise was the idea of how visitors experience and interact with a museum and its objects. Often this is largely through sight and the written word. The language of the label and exhibition panel attempts to convey some of the stories behind the objects but much is lost or unavailable in the process. These texts are based in part on the museum catalogue - those notes, line drawings, index cards etc. that were created when objects came into the Irish Folklife Collection.
 
What could be said to be missing from the visitor experience is those sensory qualities we normally encounter with objects and are often missing from the catalogue record. When also separated by the physical distance between visitor and object, the experience and understanding about the history of the objects on display can be partial in nature.
 
With this in mind we asked our poets to explore the displays and objects here and create works that would open up aspects not normally encountered, to awaken possibilities, memories, stories imagined or otherwise.
 
The resulting work created for Onsight 24/25: Silent Objects/Spoken Lives went on display at the National Museum of Ireland, Turlough Park, Castlebar, Co. Mayo, for National Poetry Day, May 1st 2025. Please follow this link to listen to the poets read their own works and to a PDF copy of the poems.

The 2024/2025 programme is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Poetry Ireland and Mayo Artsquad.
 

About the poets

Geraldine Mitchell

Geraldine-MitchellSmallWeb.jpgDublin-born poet and writer Geraldine Mitchell is the author of five collections of poetry, her most recent being Naming Love (Arlen House, 2024). She lives on the Mayo coast, not far from Louisburgh. Geraldine won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 2008 and her poetry is widely published and anthologised. She has also written two novels for young readers and Deeds Not Words (Town House 1997), the biography of Muriel Gahan (1897-1995), who was a champion of rural women and the traditional crafts in Ireland.

Speaking on the project Geraldine says:

"I see this project as a richly imaginative way of introducing the often hidden, or little known, gems of the National Museum’s Country Life Collection to a wider public, in particular to people with visual or other sensory impairments. The challenge and opportunity, through words, to give priority to senses other than the visual - touch, taste, hearing, smell - in conveying the essence and beauty of made objects, is exciting.”


Martina Evans

Martina-EvansSmallWeb.jpgMartina Evans was born in Cork and lives in London. She is the author of 13 books of poetry and prose. Her latest narrative poem, The Coming Thing (Carcanet 2023) is shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry. She is poetry critic for The Irish Times and a Fellow of Royal Society of Literature.

Speaking on the project, Martina says:

"I feel extremely privileged to be chosen for this commission which allows me the time and opportunity to engage fully with the rich array of artefacts in the Country Life museum. I hope to transfer the stored magic of these objects into living poems which will enhance the readers vicarious experience of the past, releasing a dynamic sense of the lives of the people who worked with them.”


Sean Borodale

 Sean-BorodaleSmallWeb.jpgSean Borodale works as a writer, poet and artist. He has four collections of poetry published with Jonathan Cape. His debut, Bee Journal, was shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize and Costa Book Awards and he was selected as one of twenty UK Poetry Book Society Next Generation Poets. 'Mighty Beast', a documentary poem for BBC Radio 3 about cattle markets, won the Radio Academy Gold Award for Best Feature or Documentary. He has been Northern Arts Fellow at the Wordsworth Trust, Oscar Wilde Visiting Fellow at Trinity College Dublin and inaugural Writer-in-Residence at Portiuncula University Hospital. He lives in Sligo.

Speaking on the project Sean says:

"I look forward to meeting some of the artefacts in the Country Life collection, to searching for signs of their making, use and between-times, to listen in for what resonated around them in the fleeting time of their people, when they had company. I’m excited to have this opportunity now to add to the texture of the museum’s interpretation, and to being for a while a part of the life of the museum.”

The work created for Onsight 24/25: Silent Objects/Spoken Lives will go on display at the National Museum of Ireland, Turlough Park, Castlebar, Co. Mayo, for National Poetry Day in April 2025.


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Turlough Park

Turlough Park,
Castlebar,
Co. Mayo,
F23 HY31

+353 94 903 1755