Isolation on Sherkin Island leads to widespread outbreak of haiku writing
Bernadette Burns of Sherkin Island: "as an artist, I love the quietness and awareness of nature all around us here"
Known as the 'island of the arts' because of its thriving artistic community and the BA in Visual Art that is taught there by the Technological University of Dublin (formerly DIT), Sherkin Island is very much the subject of a newly produced limited edition book of haikus.
Entitled Together Apart: Haiku from a locked down Sherkin Island, the book's Japanese haiku format, with its three lines in 17 syllables, is used mainly to describe nature and the changing seasons of this island off the Cork coast.
One of the contributors to the book, artist Bernadette Burns, originally from Galway, lives on Sherkin. She and her mother bought a small cottage there about 30 years ago. "We always spent our summers here, through my daughter's childhood. I was teaching painting in DIT and was involved in setting up the BA in Visual Art on Sherkin," says Burns.
Burns used to spend most of the winters teaching on the island. She and her artist husband, Fergus Murphy, have been living there full-time for over five years. Burns quit teaching to focus on her own practice.
"As an artist, I love the quietness and awareness of nature all around us here," says Burns. "We walk by the sea every day and I find the ebb and flow of the tide to be an essential and important part of my life. I would now find it difficult to not live beside the sea. It inspires my painting and other art work and also my haiku writing."
Back in 2013, artist Tess Leak ran night classes in haiku writing in Sherkin's community hall. Burns found the classes great fun and creatively inspirational. A book entitled Haiku Island was put together by the class. Another series of classes was held in 2019/2020. Then Covid-19 struck and because the islanders were no longer able to meet up, it was suggested that they continue writing haikus, sharing them on a WhatsApp group.
"It has worked extremely well for us and has been a wonderful way for us not just to share our haikus, but also to share our observations about the Haiku and about what's happening with the weather, with nature, the seasons and our lives. We also share some relevant photographs and we can get very creative with emojis," says Burns.
Burns, whose visual art work concerns itself with memory and storytelling, says she will continue to write haikus, helping her to keep in touch with the other islanders.
Enchanted by nature, Burns notices the changing hedgerows and loves bird watching, "We love watching the seabirds - the oystercatchers, the egrets, the sanderlings, the herons and the cormorants to name a few. The sea and its ever changing nature gives us all a lot to write about and gives some of us a lot to draw and paint too. I think all of us here appreciate the close bond with nature that living here gives us."
Burns says the island is always quiet in the winter. "We generally love the solitude though we do miss the social interaction of meeting in the Jolly Roger during winter weekends. We have a very good ferry service. We can feel isolated during particularly stormy weather, when it is unsafe to go out."
Writing about the summer (with a nod to the nursery rhyme, Ring Around the Rosie, and its oblique reference to the Black Death), one of the contributors to the haiku book, Patsy Atkinson, writes: 'Roses like tissues/Scented as a summer breeze/Then we all fall down.'
Another contributor, Nollaig Rowan, says that living on Sherkin during a pandemic feels very safe but could be lonely if she didn't have contact with others going through the same experience. “Even when I'm not on the island, I can write a Haiku and share it with the group," says Rowan.
As well as the poems, the book captures the lively threads of conversation which, in themselves, tell a story of life in lockdown. And it features drawings of birds by some members of the group.
- A limited number of the books, produced with the support of Cork County Library & Arts Service and Creative Ireland, is available for €10. All profits go to fund other creative initiatives on Sherkin Island. Email sidssecretary@gmail.com with 'Haiku' as the subject.
