‘Heartwood’ for Visual Carlow as part of Culture Night 2020

This year I had the pleasure of trying out some completely new ideas in the company of some wonderful artists, thanks to Visual Carlow’s ambitious Culture Night programme.

In response to Katie Holten’s beautiful Irish Tree Alphabet exhibition, myself, FeliSpeaks, Irish Modern Dance Theatre and Tom Lane worked together with new Irish community members based in Carlow to create a piece of music/ dance/ text/ spoken word called ‘Heartwood’.

I’ve sung in a choir for many years and have been involved in a few poetry/ choral collaborations before, but have never had the chance to sing my own words. For this piece, I wrote a series of short poems inspired by the trees in Katie’s exhibition, which Tom Lane then set to music. I recorded them at home during lockdown and they provide the soundtrack to this piece! You can watch our section here, and there are more videos featuring wonderful artists available from Visual.