mundyewalsh Annette and I met in Florence about 10 years ago when she was there for a writers residency. This autumn I asked her if she would like to collaborate on a Christmas note that spoke about traditions that bind us, and the importance of slowing down. Enter the Oiche Nollag Note Set.
She has a new book of poetry out called Holdfast about botanist Ellen Hutchins and that is what we’ll be talking about below. Hope you enjoy it.
Annette Skade has lived on the Beara Peninsula for many years. Her poetry was first published in the SHOp poetry magazine in 2010. Her collection Thimblerig was published in 2013 after winning the Cork Literary Review manuscript competition and her eco-poetry sequence Holdfast was published by Channel Environmentalist Magazine, Dublin in August 2024. She was awarded a first class MA in Poetry Studies in 2012 and a PhD on the poetry of Anne Carson in 2021. Her poems have been published in Ireland, the UK, Australia and the US, where her poem was chosen for The New England Review, Irish Poets in Tribute to Eavan Boland Issue 2023. Recent and upcoming readings 2025 include Irish Writers Centre Climate Writing Sessions , West Cork Literary Festival,, Bere Island Arts Festival and Swerve Lit Lounge . Current work explores human relationships with the night sky and the impact of light pollution on biodiversity.
Ellen Hutchins was a 19th Century botanist who lived in Bantry while caring for her mother and brother. During lockdown you began to research her life and work: where did you find out about her and what caught your attention?
Ellen died in 1815 so I see her world as an 18th century one. There was no cheap postal service, parcels to fellow botanists had to be sent with others travelling to Dublin or London. Travel was extremely difficult and medicine was of the 18th century kind. However, she had a microscope, now in the possession of the Ellen Hutchins Society. It was back in Bantry for the Ellen Hutchins Festival in August. She received books and art materials from her brother in London.
I began to research about the importance of seaweed to biodiversity and our ecosystem when a license was given for a company to machine harvest the kelp forests in Bantry Bay. Local activists were fighting against this and I read a report which made it very clear that kelp was of vital importance to so many creatures, such as crayfish, sea birds and many types of fish. The report also stated that while the canopy of kelp forests had been researched, very little research had been done on the understory of the kelp. I had heard of Ellen Hutchins prior to this research but I began to focus on her a lot more at this time, particularly as I knew that she lived in the same area that I did. I found a copy of Mitchell’s compilation of the letters between Dawson Turner and Ellen Hutchins at UCD library. At the back of Mitchell’s book was a list of all the samples of every plant species taken by Ellen and the date and place those samples were collected. I realised that through this I knew exactly where Ellen was on many given days and times, and many of those places were very close to my house. I was completely hooked!
Due to the actions of local activists, no harvesting took place. However, I felt an urgent need to highlight the importance of seaweed in my writing, and my first poem about this was published by the Dublin based Channel Environmentalist Magazine, who later published Holdfast.
Describe your relationship with nature, before and after studying Ellen.
I grew up in a council house a few miles from the centre of Manchester, a stone’s throw from at least three cotton mills. Strangely, even though it was so close to a big city, the area was semi-rural and there was farmland next to the house. We were officially in Lancashire, then the area was moved into Greater Manchester, and maybe that impending reshuffle saved the land from encroachment for a while. We were allowed to play on this farmland and had great fun making dens out of brushwood, digging for treasure, usually in the form of small pieces of pottery, and running through the tall grass. If we were lucky we would see a startled hare take off from near our feet. The area we were allowed to explore grew the older we got. I always wanted to be in nature. I started by walking through the ‘gully’ (the vale of the polluted river Medlock). Then, as soon as my mother would allow it, I used the canal towpaths to get further into the hills. Sometimes I walked with friends, but was happy to spend the day on my own walking the footpaths in the foothills of the Pennines close by. I’d take a book with me for the times I rested. Soon I found I could get just one bus to make the journey to Glossop from where I could walk into the Peak District National Park.
Considering this now, I see I was always seeking green. I had little money but would camp, stay in Youth Hostels and walk. One of my most memorable holidays was when I was sixteen and spent two weeks walking in the Snowdonia National Park with a school friend, staying in youth hostels along the way. We hired boots to walk up Snowdon. My favourite was a basic youth hostel halfway up a mountain with no running water and no road to it. I was in heaven. I was never intrepid, but I was always walking and being with nature as wild as I could find it.
From my late teens I had a family and lived in inner city Liverpool, then London for a few years. I hadn’t time to get out in the countryside except for day trips on the train. Soon though I was back living on the edge of cities where the countryside was easy to get to. Around the age of thirty I came on holiday to Beara. I was dizzy with the beauty of it and after a few visits I left my job and moved here. It has not always been easy, especially as I miss my family, but living in a place of such natural beauty has been such a gift. It inspires all my creativity and restores my soul every day.
Around twenty years ago, I was having a difficult time. I was walking as usual through this incredible countryside but I would get to the end of my walk and realise I had noticed nothing because I was too much inside my own head. I decided to change things. If thoughts began crowding in as I walked, I began to focus more carefully on the things I was seeing. One way of doing this was to name the things I was looking at. It is hard to think negative thoughts and name plants and animals at the same time. Living in an area where the landscape and seascape is so magnificent, you are always looking at the plants, birds and animals close by but you also continually look to the distance: the mountains; the horizon; light on the water. This type of walking imprinted these things in my mind and body. Unbeknownst to me, this walking, looking far and near, naming where I could, was a precursor to poetry.
What I hadn’t done as a child was to walk the seashore. The sea was nowhere near us and going to it was a cause of great excitement. On train, coach or car journeys to the coast we played the game ‘First to see the sea’. I have always lived right by the sea in Beara. For many years I swam every day, except those days when the sea was too wild. I walked the shore. I watched its moods. I saw the seaweed, and the wreck amongst it. I saw how the strand changes from summer to winter. I lived for many years by a small strand called Trá an Duillisc (The Strand of the Dillisk or dulse) and I taught at a school called Trá Phraisce (The Strand of the Sea Lettuce). I could identify carrageen on the shore, and used it if we had colds or added it to food. One year a marine biologist brought us to the strand and showed us its wonders, and the glory of seaweed hit me with full force. It is so easy to overlook it, or see it all as one amorphous mass.
I became fascinated with Ellen because I was already interested in the things she was interested in and was already walking where she walked. I thought of her determination in breaking into what was a male dominated world. After reading her letters and researching I know more about seaweed, its structure, its resilience and its importance to our ecosystem. The letters that Mitchell had not published also give insight into her personal life and struggle with illness. I don’t think my relationship with nature has changed that much because of Holdfast, except in as much as it is always changing and growing.
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