‘Steeped’ was a word she used’

That first cut of granite, scraped and shaped, was put on boats and floated out on buoyant tides, followed by sons and daughters. Eleven babies scooped out, delivered, left an unseen wound in a small woman with an independant spirit, whose sacrifice was unrequited. No one heard, as hers was not the sanguine or bullish story that this new republic cared for, on it’s second thoughts. There are many ways to cut out a tongue and poverty is one. My mother grew steeped in it. She rose out of this submerged language and sense of otherness. She saw herself in rockpools and sheets of wet sands, as an elemental force; her skin taut over protruding wrist bones and strong calf muscles, barefoot and untamed with a mane of copper, unbelonging. She didn’t take the garments given to her by church and state. Late at night, she sewed gowns of automony and liberty and wore them in solidarity. She hurled ideas of family law and rights for women, like boulders out into a sea of tuts. My grandmothers table stands here in the tides of time, in ebbs and flows, cyclyical rhythms and measurements that women understand. Forget me not, I her say.

Bernadette Hopkins ‘Forgotten Places’ Performance Fanad. Co.Donegal 08/08/2020.

Filmed by Jacqui Devenney Reed