The journey from strength to vulnerability is mapped out in stitch in two very personal artworks by Trish Webb Duffy.

Many of the poems in Jane Clarke’s second collection, ‘When the Tree Falls’, speak about her father in his last years. Trish felt the vivid evocation of her dad in his old age as she connected to the themes expressed in the poems. She earmarked twelve poems from the book, planning to choose one as inspiration for the ROOTS exhibition. In the end she just couldn’t choose, so instead she identified individual words from each of the poems with which to work.

For the piece, ‘Dad‘, she selected words to reflect the strong, working man that both the poets’ father and her own father once embodied. Then, in contrast, she picked words reflecting the person they had become as the process of aging and illness slowly eroded and made them vulnerable. Trish recalled sewing name tags on her fathers’ clothes during the time he spent in a nursing home and, in his memory, she stitched the words on to a treasured paisley scarf he once wore. One side of the scarf recalls strength and the ability to do everyday activities and the other side shows the vulnerability and uncertainty of fading life. This is a story repeated in all our lives at some stage.

The second piece Trish made focuses on the question of belief that is raised in the the poem “At last! Are you here at last?” The subject of religion and a belief in an afterlife has caused many an argument between a generation who were brought up not to question religious doctrine and the next generation who have learned the need to interrogate that doctrine. The end of a loved one’s life is not the time to argue the point but to hope that their belief will sustain them and give comfort.

Half-asleep on a mattress beside his bed
I hear his question in the ember light
of the wood-burning stove.
Do you believe in heaven, a ghra? ...

'At last! Are you here at last?' Jane Clarke

Trish scanned the fabric of her fathers’ scarf and had it printed as a substrate. Again she stitched the chosen words onto a clothes tag shaped piece of cotton. These particular words have stayed in her mind since she first read them – words of faith in something beyond death itself. This piece sold before the opening night.

On another topic entirely, the poem ‘Passage‘ from A Change in the Air collection was the inspiration for the third piece Trish created. A frequent walker along the Royal Canal, Trish was aware of the National Famine Way bronze shoe sculptures which represent the hundreds of children who, during the famine in 1847, accompanied their parents on the long walk from Mahon Estate in Roscommon to the quays in Dublin. This poem focusses on a mother trying to protect her young daughter from the harrowing truth of the journey they face.

Using recycled fabrics Trish employed paints, inks and mark making tools to alter the fabric before cutting it into small pieces and reforming it into a rough, fragmented patchwork. Hand stitch and a couched line of fibre was added to represent the route from Roscommon. The patched fabric represents the confusion and loss felt by those who walked the 165km canal path in 1847. The colours used are bright and hopeful but they mask the reality of the future faced by those who walked the path to the famine ships.

When are we leaving, who'll come
with us, how'll we get to the ship?

My scrawl of a girl has me mithered
with questions.  Whisht, I tell her,

We must gather nettles and dock, 
then search for blackbirds' eggs.

She is quiet awhile till she whispers,
Ye were crying last night...

Passage, Jane Clarke

As Maureen Kennelly said in her opening speech for this exhibition, “There is an incredible sense of humility and honesty present in the way that makers and poets work and simplicity and sophistication is equally evident in these works …”. Trish’s artworks for this exhibition are a good example of these attributes.

Thank you to Trish for sharing her ideas, to Jane Clarke for her collaboration and to Bloodaxe Books for permission to use her poems. Thanks also to the OPW for the opportunity to exhibit and Kildare County Council for funding through the Arts Act Grant. To see these works up close and personal, visit the exhibition ROOTS, a dialogue in textile and poetry, in the Coach House Gallery, Dublin Castle. Open 7 days a week, 10 am – 5 pm, closed for lunch 1.15 – 1.45 pm. Some of Jane’s books are now available in the gift shop in Chester Beatty Library next to the Coach House.