Áit agus Anam: Remembering Tim and Mairéad Robinson

An interdisciplinary, online conversation celebrating the lives and legacies of Tim and Mairéad Robinson, who passed away earlier this year. Join us for our ‘zoom regatta’ where our guest speakers discuss fieldwork and friendships, old and new, and pay homage to the couple’s extraordinary contribution to the region and world of nature writing. Speakers include poet Moya Cannon, cultural geographer Dr Fidelma Mullane and historian and nature writer Dr David Gange.  

We are especially delighted to also have members of the Clifden Arts Festival committee involved, with contributions from Brendan Flynn and Des Lally on their memories of Tim and Mairéad’s connection to Ireland’s longest running community arts festival. Chaired by Dr Nessa Cronin and co-hosted by the Centre for Irish Studies and Moore Institute, NUI Galway and Clifden Community Arts Festival.

Contributors

Moya Cannon is an Irish poet with six published collections, the most recent being Donegal Taran-tella (Carcanet Press, Manchester, 2019). In her poems, archaeology and geology figure as gateways to an understanding of our relationship with our endangered earth. Music, particularly traditional Irish music, has always been a deep interest and is a constant theme. She has received the Brendan Behan Award and the O’Shaughnessy Award and, in 2011, was Heimbold Professor of Irish Studies at Villanova University P.A.. She has edited Poetry Ireland Review and is a member of Aosdána. Her Collected Poems is due from Carcanet Press in 2021.

Fidelma Mullane is a cultural geographer and curator specializing in the study of vernacular culture. Advising, teaching and publishing as a specialist and advocate, she concentrates on the topic of historic vernacular building traditions, and on the promotion of culturally appropriate contemporary building practices. She recently curated 'Photographing the 1950s’, an exhibition of selected photographs of Ireland as captured by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange and Robert Cresswell.

David Gange is a historian and nature writer based at the University of Birmingham. His most recent book, The Frayed Atlantic Edge, which involved kayaking all the Atlantic coastlines of Ireland and the UK was joint winner of The Highland Book Prize and shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing.

Viewing the Session

Credits

- Photographs courtesy of Anna Bowman, 1973
- Video by David Kelly, Moore Institute, NUI Galway