Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara and other Writings

by Tim Robinson

In these fourteen related works we witness a great writer, artist and cartographer united with his subject, conveying the vivid experiences of a quarter-century of exploring and mapping the Aran Islands, the Burren and Connemara. ‘Islands and Images’ describes the Aran Islands themselves; ‘Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara’, the title-essay, elevates the map-maker’s craft into art; ‘The View from Errisbeg’ integrates the landscapes of Galway Bay, the Burren and Connemara by way of topography, botany and geology; ‘Space, Time and Connemara’, centrepiece to the collection, surveys the archaeology and human geography of the West, its settlement patterns, families, dispersals and privations, its missioners and the modern tide of tourism and mariculture; ‘A Connemara Fractal’ is a fascinating autobiographical digression through Cambridge and the convergences of mathematics, geometry and geology, towards landscape-theory and the Book of Connemara as yet unwritten; ‘Place/Person/Book’ introduces Synge’s masterwork, The Aran Islands; ‘Listening to the Landscape’ takes for its theme the Irish language and placenames as an emanation of the land; ‘Four Threads’ connects four archetypal figures – smuggler, rebel priest, land-agent and wandering rhymer – to their histories in nineteenth century Connemara. Other texts rehearse the potencies of discovery, botanical (Erica mackaiana in Roundstone), archaeological (a Bronze Age quartz alignment in Gleninagh) and personal. Some are anecdotal, some meditative; each is individually conceived as a work of literature. Tim Robinson has been stepping into spacetime since 1972, mapping the unknown by way of the known. With Setting Foot on the Shore of Connemara he captures the numinous in a net of words and images, and creates his own illuminated manual of memory.

Genres: Ireland

224 pages, Paperback

First published April 18, 1997

About the author

Timothy Robinson (1935 – 2020) was an English writer, artist and cartographer. A native of Yorkshire, Robinson studied maths at Cambridge and then worked for many years as a visual artist in Istanbul, Vienna and London, among other places. In 1972 he moved to the Aran Islands, and in 1984 he settled in Roundstone, Connemara. In 1986 his first book, Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage, was published to great acclaim. The second volume of Stones of Aran, subtitled Labyrinth, appeared in 1995. His last work was the Connemara trilogy. He died of Covid-19 in 2020.

Reviews

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've heard Tim Robinson called Ireland's modern Thoreau, a claim I can't really endorse. (Way less nature writing, more cartography and anthropology. A bit of oral history for good measure. Excellent writing throughout.)

Although I didn't love this book, I loved parts of it and it's quite good. Robinson is at his strongest when he discusses landscapes; at his weakest, I think, with larger historical summaries. He is not a writer of history; he's a writer of land and its variety and meanings.

This book is one of the few instances when I'd recommend not reading from start to finish, but selecting a few essays based on your interest (oral history, literary history, placenames and language, etc.) and getting a taste.

I found a couple of the essays to be a bit of a slog - but I'm glad I stuck with it because some of the final essays are the best in the book. I personally recommend "Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara" and "Listening to the Landscape." Above all, avoid the mistake I made and read it when you have the leisure and patience to take your time.

Tim Robinson conveys his inspiring philosophies beautifully - made me think for fun.