Donegal poet Annemarie Ní Churreáin visits her Gaeltacht roots in RTÉ radio documentary

 

Poet Annemarie Ní Churreáin goes back to the Donegal Gaeltacht, where she grew up, and explores the folklore and history, landscape, language and personal experiences that all influenced her poetry in an RTÉ radio documentary to be broadcast this weekend.

In Among the Heather Rocks, the award-winning poet takes the radio producer Claire Cunningham back to the Donegal Gaeltacht, where she grew up. 

During the Lyric FM programme, she meets historian Brian Lacey to hear more about the local myth of Balor and the Poison Glen, talks with Lucy Ní hAodhagáin of Wild Awake about reconnecting with nature and our past, views workhouse documents with Donegal County Archivist Niamh Brennan, and takes part in Ireland's only Irish-language Pride parade, Bród na Gaeltachta, before speaking with its founder, Pól Penrose.

 Throughout the programme, which will be broadcast on RTÉ lyric fm, Sunday, January 11 from 6pm to 7pm, we hear poems by Annemarie from her collections Bloodroot (Doire Press), The Poison Glen (The Gallery Press) and Ghostgirl, published as part of the Donegal Decade of Centenaries programme.

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Selected as one of the weekend highlights on the station, the programme was first broadcast on March 9 last year and was the first of two programmes broadcast during Seachtain Na Gaeilge with bilingual Irish poets.

Speaking about the places visited in the documentary and their relationship to her poetry, she said: “I grew up in the heartlands of the Donegal Gaeltacht in a place named Cnoc Na Naomh. As a child my bedroom window looked out onto the hilltop where it's said that Colmcille and his peers gathered to convert the local lands from Paganism. 

“At some stage during my teenage years a stone altar was installed on the hill along with a holy cross that lit up each night. Growing up, I took all of this for granted but I marvel today at the fact that my girlhood was spent among the shadows and echoes of pilgrims who flocked across centuries to this site of sacred ceremony. The tradition of worship on the hill where I lived may predate Christian tradition.”