(S)worn State(s) is a poetry book project co-authored by the three inaugural winners of the Markievicz Award for Literature: Annemarie Ní Churreáin, Kimberly Campanello and Dimitra Xidous. The magnificent book is currently on display at The Museum of Literature (MOLI) in Dublin.
The book’s purpose is to remember, challenge, and re-imagine ‘worn’ narratives of women’s experiences in the context of shifting historical and cultural landscapes in the Irish Decade of Centenaries 2012-2023 and beyond. For this, each poet has drawn creatively on social history, myth and visionary poetics. The book was beautifully edited and printed by Jamie Murphy from Salvage Press.
In an extended poetic conversation, the three poets created a suite of individual poems; they then co-authored the accompanying long poem, ‘Her-Text’, which re-inscribes and ‘swears an oath’ to new and unfolding ‘states’ of being and making. The poems were created in Dublin, York, Achill Island, and at the pre-historic Boyne Valley. Across the poems, the texture of the language emerges from the Donegal Gaeltacht, Greece, Italy and North America.
At the launch last December, the public were encouraged to view individual pages behind a glass casing; on the other side of a screen, a digital slideshow of photographs depicted how the book was edited and printed. This is still on display: a rare insight into the enduring and vital collaborations between poets, editor and printer in the making of such a book/project.
And after a year in which more women and children have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military than the equivalent period for any other conflict over the past two decades, the book’s publication and launch marked a significant subversion of patriarchal ‘stateliness’ that continues to define the world. From over 200 statues dotted across Dublin’s city centre, only seven depict historic Irish women. Trinity College contains zero. The book’s grey cover is the colour of repressive state-hood, and could represent patriarchy, laundries, statues, even silence. The poets’ names in blood-red print are a stark reminder of the cost of such oppressive ‘states’.
And, in the spirit of the book itself, the readings were shared – each voice celebrated as part of a greater whole, as a broader cultural state, status, or decree in language. At the end, the poets read their shared poem ‘Her-Text’, which, which they had written, side by side, in the Boyne Valley – the birthplace of Ireland’s Ancient East and home to Newgrange.
The combination of live readings and the ceremonious unveiling felt momentous: like an emphatic, not to say cathartic, motion being passed. Such a moment carried extra zeal at the end of Ní Churreáin’s ‘Holy Communion in the New State’, which reads like a prayer against the institution of religion: ‘The ground underfoot is uneven / And the church you are entering will not protect you.’
The readings themselves were vital – Campanello in particular gave a moving performance, reminiscent of her epic (3-hour) reading of MOTHERBABYHOME for the UCD Library Special Collections on YouTube. Dimitra Xidous’ ‘artefact-‘ ironically positions itself at the centre of the page, a source of patriarchal objectification: to be / an object / in the world. Ní Churreáin’s ‘The Facts According to the New State’ engages viscerally with the violence of repressive kinds of stateliness: ‘When a child is born, / a priest must scrub the mother’s bones.’ Her award-winning collection The Poison Glen shines a light on the previously hidden systemic mistreatment of unmarried or abandoned mothers in Ireland.
After the readings, the three poets chatted with professor Lucy Collins about the work. What came across most of all was the deep bond that the collaboration had forged. They talked about their friendship, and how personal and political events over the last few years had brought them closer together. They reminisced how they’d written their proposal in a hotel while drinking whiskey, shared drafts on Google documents, and finally travelled to the Boyne Valley to write ‘Her-Text’.
Towards the end, Xidous paid tribute to editor and printer Jamie Murphy of Salvage Press. It was a touching moment for one so moved by her editor’s care and sensitivity to her unique poetic form. In terms of shape and general layout, Xidous’ poems are highly ambitious – often drawing on the book’s margin or faded print for a more nuanced status on the page. Murphy’s skillful printing was a further collaboration that fused the whole thing together.
The event served to celebrate the poets’ deep fondness for one another’s writing and special kinship. Ní Churreáin’ joked that it was as though the ghost of Countess Markievicz had been present throughout – indeed, one senses that the revolutionary, nationalist, suffragist, and socialist would surely have approved. It was all also an important example of how poetry is able to subvert and reconfigure constitutional ‘stateliness’. It all felt very celebratory. In the end, the three simply hugged one another. Then they brought Murphy onstage, and hugged him too.
Words: Christian Wethered
(S)worn State(s) is currently on exhibition at The Museum of Literature (MOLI), Dublin. A copy of the book is available to purchase from The Salvage Press.
