Keywords Keywords

In this final episode of Keywords, presenter Zoe Comyns is guided by Maps.

Beginning with mapping a stream in her neighbourhood, writer Elizabeth Reeder celebrates and interrogates the nature of mapping - from the Ordinance Survey maps to Google Maps - and she notes the impact that maps have on our world and on ourselves.

Writer ER Murray escapes current restrictions and recalls a trip to Long Island in West Cork where her husband proposed to her with a hand-drawn treasure map. She dug up three bottles containing letters that could only be read once all of them were found. And - of course- there was one with ‘X Marks The Spot’!

Simon Ferris and Rebecca Kennedy play the parts of Tom and Rachel who are navigating their way around a seating plan for their wedding but Lockdown begins to play tricks on them. Like many of us they have to chart new journeys in their relationship as they live at very close quarters. Which film to watch? What to cook? Who uses which cup? This short drama maps the route from the ridiculous to the psychotic.

Over the past eight episodes Keywords has commissioned more than 60 writers, sound artists and producers- many established, others just emerging. As Zoe says, ‘this series is a shared space to express that imagination, fleeting thoughts, deep seated beliefs and new ways of looking.’

We hear short excerpts and poems by Niamh Ní Dhónaill, Tanya O’Sullivan, Deirdre McLaughlin, Gary Brown, Fiona H each taking as their departure point the Keyword Maps.

Danielle McLaughlin is on board a flight and is inspired by what is outside, down below - or as the old maps used to say ‘Here Be Dragons’. We’ve all been on planes where the behaviour of our fellow passengers make us feel uncomfortable. She considers these and other travellers from times past.

A sound map of Planet Earth was sent into Space in space by NASA in 1977. A Golden Record was placed on Voyager. It contained samples of music and greetings from across the globe. We hear Hello From The Children of Planet Earth, a composition by Mike Glennon that combines recordings made for the Voyager Interstellar Record.

And continuing our journey into Space we also hear a poem by Thomas Mixon, Thirty Years From Now Saturn Completes Another Orbit.

Dee Roycroft’s The Meteorology of Emotions charts the changing moods around the country in a playful piece that is inspired by the weather charts we see every night after the news - ‘a slow moving storm of grief will make its way across the country during the night.’

Keywords is presented and produced by Zoe Comyns and is a New Normal Production funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland Sound and Vision Fund.

This week presenter Zoe Comyns is guided by the Keyword ‘Patterns’.

Contributors to the episode have drawn inspiration from patterns of human and bird behaviour, the patterns we ink on to our skin and the patterns which can make a daily routine.

Writer and musician Julian Gough is trying to record a podcast with Solana Joy. They are married and like many professionals are working from their home. The regular interruptions from their cat and their small child form a humorous pattern which becomes the short feature recorded for Keywords.

When writer and artist Sara Baume visited Cape Clear Island in West Cork she learned about vagrant birds which land on the island every year. These are birds which are rerouted accidentally from their migration lines and they inspired Sara to make a series of cross-stitchings representing each species of bird.

Ruth O’Connor is a fashion & design journalist - she looks at how a new community of creatives - designers, craftspeople and costume makers - have come together recently to make face masks; each with their own intricate pattern and how they have ‘created new bonds, communities and friendships - people of all ages and backgrounds woven together like warp and weft’.

Writer Siobhán Mannion looks at how the lifelong pattern of gift-giving - ‘handknitted wools, and your vast array of patterned scarves’ - can establish deep family bonds. These are maintained, via memory and the objects themselves, after the loss of a loved one. Her short essay features music composed by Cian Roche.

Elaine Howley is a sound artist and in her composition we hear a musical treatment of how - possibly obsessive - thoughts about another person can flow and ebb in sonic waves. 'I am falling into a thought about you again. I am a thought. I am you again. I am a thought about a thought... '

The pattern of destructive behaviour is the subject of poet Kimberly Reyes’ piece ‘On Touch’. It is set in Cork where Kimberly - a New York resident - was spending time as a Fulbright scholar. She compares the patterns of yearning for love to an addiction: ‘my Black femaleness in mostly-white surroundings meant that I was romantically under socialized and just plain dumb in dating, always searching for a hit of the touch drug.’

Diarmuid Hester is an Irish writer and an academic based in the UK. He tells a story about how the detailed patterns of tattoos on his body became interwoven with an unlikely friendship with the tattoo artist - a friendship ‘laid down in blood and ink’.

This week Zoë Comyns is guided by the keyword Windows.

The Lockdown has seen many people turn to their windows as the only way of viewing the outside world, communicating with a loved one or sending messages of hope and thanks to healthcare workers and to people who are following the COVID guidelines.

And then, there’s just the slight thrill of looking into people’s windows to see how they live their lives.

We peer into the world of the radio producer and sound artist Rachel Ní Chuinn in a short audio essay written for Keywords. It features recordings at home with her daughter Fán and is about observing and gaining a sense of the world without - be it through the eyes of a small child or through the lens of a camera.

Poet Emily S. Cooper finds a slide projector in a charity shop and sets it up in her home. She finds her father’s old photo slides and goes back in time. Family stories come to life in front of her eyes.

Art critic and writer Cristín Leach has written a piece for Keywords about a set of navigational instruments that her grandfather - a keen sailor - kept in a beautiful wooden box which Cristín still possesses. This leads to reflections on the power of objects to evoke memory. ‘’I want to open the window that is the navigational display case and listen to the sound of the sea, the noise of the knowledge, the breath of my ancestors, the panting, sigh, huff and sob – of the journey.’’

Poet Amanda Bell is curious about the nature of birds and is trying to encourage the migrating birds to nest in the eaves of her house. She observes the movements of the birds through her windows. ‘’This is how we live now; through planes of plexiglass, visors, goggles.’’

In Alison Martin's story two people in a neighbour spark up a relationship through flashing torch lights at each other from their windows.

Musician Conan Wynne and radio producer Tracy Tough weave music, sounds and conversations around a recording of one man who spent years in solitary confinement in prison. A world with no windows.

This week Zoe Comyns is guided by the keyword: Common Ground.

We’re maybe more conscious now of the spaces we’re sharing with others. We’re told to stand 2 metres apart, we’re stepping off the pavement to let people by or we’re concerned if we feel that someone hasn’t given us enough distance. We’re also dwelling in the virtual world of cyberspace and sharing many experiences online that we never imagined doing only a few months ago.

Writer and broadcaster Fionn Davenport is based in Manchester and he brings his bike - and us - on his daily exercise route - a route which now demands extra negotiations, compromise and some cheerful greetings.

Poet Victoria Kennefick has written a poem called Hedgehog for this episode of Keywords. A slight departure from the well-beaten path ends up in a tangle of briars and reeds. It’s a meditation on what makes us different, but also, what can bring us together.

Neil Hegarty is a writer and he tells the story of a Sunday morning walk in his area in Dublin where he and his partner indulge in a bit of guerilla gardening. Neil describes the pleasure of planting poppy seeds and also notes that ‘these days it feels more essential than ever to cultivate a dialogue between our human civilization and all that surrounds us.’

Kate Packwood writes about how a woman’s body is not common ground and how one woman’s experience of sexual assault left her bereft ‘as truth and invention parted company’.

Journalist Bairbre Flood visited the migrant camp at Moria in Greece and spoke to people there days after a boy was stabbed to death. The common ground shared here is one fraught by anxiety, deprivation and fear.

Radhika Iyer is a journalist whose journal entry ‘Am I?’ explores how she has been made feel different. In a supermarket queue she realises that she is not in common ground. She’s the only brown person in line and her piece reflects on how the question ‘Where are you from?’ isn’t always an invitation to explore similarities between us all.

Judy Meg Ní Cinnéide is a radio producer - her great-grandfather fought in the First World War. The common ground he shares is in an unknown grave with thousands of soldiers who died in battle in Belgium. Through one surviving letter he left behind, Judy-Meg and her brother (who visited Ypres) recall the life of a man no one alive today ever knew.

This week’s episode of Keywords is guided by the keywords ‘By Nature’.

Beginning with an early morning walk, rich with birdsong, Zoe Comyns introduces us to the world around us. We’re all living at very close quarters with the Lockdown and we’re possibly getting more familiar with the natural world on our doorstep.

In her story ‘Loft’, the writer Nuala O’Connor has her characters carry bird’s eggs from a loft onto a busy bus. ‘We put the eggs into our pockets, white specked and warm, no larger than stones.’

Actor and writer Jody O’Neill takes her inspiration from the quiet roads in Dublin city and the underground network of trees coming to life in the absence of human life.
‘And now that the people were gone, they could finally get on with their lives.’

Writer Alexi Francis considers the state of being lost in a forest full of myth and magic in her story ‘Let me dream, let me forget that I’m lost’.

Paying attention to the smaller things around him is something that Bill Geraghty does in his garden. Recorded by his son, radio producer Liam Geraghty, we hear Bill pottering around his crop of onions and tomatoes and hear how he encounters a young robin redbreast.

In her Berlin apartment writer Emma Flynn records her diary as she attempts to grow plants from seeds. She compares her efforts with her mother in Ireland over a video call and observes the plants growing on her neighbour’s balcony.

Regan Hutchins and Kevin Donovan take early morning walks in the Phoenix Park which is close to their home. The sight and sound of skylarks fills them with joy and amusement.

John Smith is an Irish radio producer living in Canada and he has recorded the poet and academic Tim Lilburn. Tim lives on Vancouver Island and speaks about his struggles to feel a sense of place when he moved there. Tim found his way through language and the sounds of words describing nature. ‘Land is the language in linguistic form.

In this week’s episode of Keywords, Zoe Comyns is guided by the word ‘Light’.

Beginning in her garden with the night sky filled with stars - including the constellation Corona Borealis.

Margaret Dennehy’s poem ‘Three Little Words’ is a reflection on the language used around and the social impact of the Novel Coronavirus Pandemic Margaret is a retired teacher from Co.Waterford.

In his piece for Keywords called ‘C’, Colm O’Shea thinks about how the speed of light can separate two people on their walk.
Colm’s short fiction has been published widely. He has won many awards including The 2019 Aleph Writing Prize. He lives in Dublin.

Writer Manika Bébhinn Ramsay lives in Brazil and she recorded in the forest by her home. She compares the light in Brazil and the light of Ireland and how the gentle lights of home seem so far away now.

The artist Martin Creed won the Turner Prize in 2001 with his work Lights Going On and Off. A room was filled with lights going on and off in 5 second intervals. His was a controversial win and he explains that it was inspired by the childish prank of flicking the light switch outside a bathroom door.

Dónal Ryan is the author of numerous novels and collections of stories and has won many awards including The Guardian First Book Award in 2013. In his short story written for Keywords, a proud father keeps a row of lights in his house for his three children. When the middle one begins to play up he realizes that he needs to connect with his middle son, Joshua.

Tom Roseingrave’s ‘Cow’ is, he says, an audio experiment to investigate what happens in the darkness, and whether the voice remains the same when the lights returns.
Tom is a radio producer, writer and performer.

We return to the stars with filmmaker and sound designer Tadhg O’Sullivan. He reflects on the giant red star called Betelguese, and the ship named after it. Tadhg brings us to Whiddy Island in Bantry Bay and the site of a terrible maritime disaster where 50 people died in an explosion in 1979.

Keywords is presented and produced by Zoë Comyns and is a New Normal Culture production for RTÉ Radio 1 Extra.
Assistant Producer: Regan Hutchins
The series is funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland Sound and Vision 3 Scheme and by RTÉ