Discover a new poetry trail this summer in the museum galleries at Turlough Park for Onsight 2024/2025. 

Visitors can pick-up a guide at Museum Reception  (available from 1 May 2025) to explore objects from the Irish Folklife Collection through poetry. The poems are also available as part of a new online gallery.

The poetry trail is called ‘Silent Objects/Spoken Lives’. It was created as part of the OnSight annual arts initiative, delivered in partnership by the National Museum of Ireland and Mayo County Council Arts Service.

Poets, Sean Borodale, Martina Evans and Geraldine Mitchell, were specially commissioned for the project. They each selected a series of objects from the Irish Folklife Collection to work with - including a ‘ghost’ potato lamp; a red woollen cardigan; a sheep shears and a súgán rope. 

The participating poets created new works which will now be displayed for visitors alongside the objects in the museum galleries, offering new perspectives about the meaning and stories they represent. 

OnSight is an ongoing initiative to commission new works of art across various mediums, providing creative responses to the Irish Folklife Collection at Turlough Park.  

This year’s OnSight is also supported by Poetry Ireland and the Arts Council of Ireland. 

The poetry trail is on display now at the National Museum of Ireland at Turlough Park, Castlebar, Co. Mayo. 

 Admission to the National Museum of Ireland is free.  

• Find out more about OnSight 2024/2025: Silent Objects/Spoken Lives
• Listen to the Silent Objects/Spoken Lives poems