We Are An Archipelago, an epic poem, tells the (somewhat true) story of ninety-nine year old Bill, who moves back to Ocracoke, the little island of his birth to live out the rest of his life. There, he meets Deena, a young pregnant woman fleeing a difficult past. Their gentle friendship sustains them through storm, birth, and trial as they remake a notion of family. Switching between perspectives, We Are An Archipelago is a moving story told in verse about the strangest of circumstances.
Evocative and often very funny.
The Irish Times
It’s torrential. I loved the rush of it and the salt and the lonesomeness and the oddness of this very memorable pairing.
Kevin Barry
Enchanting, witty, and melodic, We Are an Archipelago is so alive that it seems almost to breathe on the page. This book carried me away. Let it carry you too.
Doireann Ní Ghríofa
We Are An Archipelago fruitfully blurs the line between poetry as space and poetry as voice; the rhythm of speech and the rhythm of thought; where we are and what we are. It’s playful, subtle, and as distinctive as the place it describes.
Carys Coburn
Erin Fornoff hails from the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina and lives in County Clare. She has performed her poetry at dozens of festivals and events across Ireland, the US, and the UK including Glastonbury, national Irish tours including Ireland Is and Every Blooming Thing, and features on RTE and BBC. She performed We Are an Archipelago as a one-woman show at the Dublin Fringe Festival with 300kg of salt as a prop. Widely commissioned, she has also been published and anthologized in The Irish Times, Winter Papers, The Stinging Fly, Cyphers, Architecture Ireland and many others. Her first collection Hymn to the Reckless was nominated for the Strong/Shine Award. The recipient of Arts Council bursary and project awards, she served as the inaugural Writer in Residence for Ireland’s Inland Waterways for 2022. She is currently completing her first novel.
An Excerpt from We Are An Archipelago
I keep asking myself, is she really coming? Is this?
And her heartbeat answers,
yes,
yes,
yes.
I keep asking myself, where do I hide from all this fear?
And the waves answer,
here,
here,
here.
Breath like so many waves swarming against the retaining walls, the high foam flung caterwauling and then the head socketed into my pelvis and my thoughts became colours, I became simply a maker of sound, a splitting, and in some beginning my whole body roared wind-loud
and she was out
