Three poems on flood histories in rural Ireland

Introduction

The River Corrib rushes over the Salmon Weir near the campus of the National University of Ireland Galway, and the fishermen wade out and cast their lines into the turbulent water. The Corrib Princess passenger boat starts her daily journey up into Lough Corrib, the largest lake in the Republic of Ireland. Students rush to their lectures over bridges spanning languid canals flanking the river. Water is everywhere – rain, river, lough, sea, canal, an empty water bottle bobbing on its surface, a cloudy sky. Although the River Corrib is very short, with only some 6 km linking Lough Corrib and Galway Bay and the Atlantic Ocean (see Figure 1), it has flooded the streets and quays on its banks a number of times in the city’s history. While certainly not the only type of flooding to have affected the city, riverine flooding along the banks of Lough Corrib has been historically significant, especially on the Clare River, which flows into Lough Corrib some 5 km northeast of the city. As a result, discussions of managing floods through engineering and controlling the level of Lough Corrib have taken place for well over a century.

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Figure 1.

Map of Galway city and its hinterland.

For example, in 1906, the Lough Corrib district was one of three foci of a vice-regal commission established to investigate the need for improved arterial drainage on Ireland’s rivers. ¹ Its remit included the condition of rivers in Ireland at the time, the potential solutions to flood problems and the fairest way to raise money through taxation to pay for necessary work and maintenance. The commission interviewed 146 witnesses in 26 meetings and, alongside the Lough Corrib district, concentrated particular attention on the catchments of the River Barrow in south-east Ireland and the Lough Erne district in Northern Ireland. Witnesses included Members of Parliament, landowners and their agents, and representatives of what would be today called stakeholder groups – fishermen and farmers, for example, as well as those interested in maintaining navigable river channels. The commission was, in part, necessitated by the transfer of land through the Land Purchase Act of 1903, passing land ownership from a small number of landowners into a larger number of tenant occupiers and making the coordination of river management more difficult. In the words of the commission’s chairman, Alexander R. Binnie, arterial drainage in Ireland was ‘at a standstill’, and the discussions that this necessitated offer a window into the perceptions of flooding and the riverine environment in rural Ireland in this crucial period. The commission’s secretary was a Mr Sidney W. Strange, and one can only imagine his experience of listening to interviewees’ testimony, day after day, of watery stories, grievances and ideas and then writing them up into the final report.

Over 20 years after the vice-regal commission, after the Easter Rising of 1916 and the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922, one family in the district was still exposed to the capricious nature of water. Standing on the banks of the River Clare, the Feeney household was flooded twice in 1928, once in February and again in November. Under the title ‘A father’s vigil’, ² The Cork Examiner reported how Mr William Feeney had stayed awake all night to watch over his children as the flood waters rose. Three children slept in the attic, one on a bed in the living room and another in a cot raised above the flood water on two chairs.

The following poems were inspired by a period of study in the Moore Institute at the National University of Ireland Galway, focused on historical flood memories and perceptions in rural Ireland as recorded in newspaper accounts and other documents. In a similar form to Tim Cresswell’s imagining of historical travels to Svalbard in his recent collection, Fence, ³ these poems attempt to creatively imagine the personal emotions behind the archive. First, in ‘Arterial drainage’, I expand on the idea that rivers are the arteries of Ireland and use imagery of their blocking by cholesterol as a metaphor for the main concern raised by interviewees – the blocking of rivers and drains by sediment, encouraged by a lack of ‘maintenance’ (e.g. clearing fallen trees and weeds). Rivers had narrowed, bridge arches had been blocked and interviewees noted how they could now walk across channels where they had swum as children. Ten years before the Easter Rising, there are signs of unrest, frustration and dissatisfaction. Second, in ‘Sidney Strange’, I imagine the work of the commission’s secretary, committing the fluid, conflicting and passionate environmental, hydrological and geomorphological understandings into an official record. Finally, ‘A father’s vigil’ is an attempt to imagine the personal experience of Mr Feeney, fighting his tiredness to watch over his children as flood waters enveloped his home.

These poems were also inspired by spending time both in and around the waterscape of Galway city and its hinterland and in its archives, examining the various characters that shaped, and were shaped by, rural Ireland’s rivers. It is a response to a recognition, strongly expressed as part of the creative return in geography, of the value of creative writing, particularly poetry, to the discipline ⁴ and to experiments with creative writing ⁵ as a method of geographical research. They endeavour to harness the power of diverse forms of poetry to communicate with a reader and elicit a response which may lead to increased awareness of a geographic issue or problem – in this case, perceptions of flooding, a lack of historical context for contemporary flooding and the management of rivers and natural geomorphological processes. As Magrane has suggested, poetry can indeed ‘do work for geography’. ⁶ Perhaps in a similar way to DeLyser’s engagement with the archive, ⁷ I suggest that one of poetry’s jobs could be to engage with, explore, interrogate, and present archival material in new ways.

Arterial drainage

For years, a clotting silt and sand

settled like cholesterol

around fallen trees left to leave again,

weeds rooting and sprouting, slowing the flow,

banks trampled by cattle,

bridge arches blocked,

water forced through narrower channels

choked by change

and backing up,

pressure building,

black blood pooling in capillaries,

narrowed by the weeds

of indifference,

we can walk across the river now

where in our summer innocence we swam.

we need to train the rivers

and dredge the lipid drains

before a final trauma comes,

a cardiac unrest.

Sidney Strange

‘Quite so’

he wrote a thousand times

in a black, watery ink

pouring into palaeochannels on the page,

listening to grievances

of lord and tenant alike –

the water did not stop to ask for status –

‘that was an awful year . . .’

‘the Lammas flood . . .’

‘everyone’s job is no-one’s job . . .’

in his practised hand

he straightened the meanders

of the mind,

an inky, messy anastomosis ⁸

slowly making sense.

A father’s vigil