My Time In Space

by Tim Robinson

In an essay from 1996 collecton Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara and Other Essays, Tim Robinson noted that ‘we are spatial entities, which is even more basic than being physical entities, subject to the law of gravity’. In this dazzling new series of essays Robinson examines aspects of his own ‘time in space’, moving from his childhood in Yorkshire, to a deadly moment on a Malayan airstrip, a pilgrimage to the midnight sun, adventures in the art-worlds of Istanbul, Vienna and London, and finally to the spaces of the West of Ireland which he has interpreted with incomparable attention and fidelity over the past three decades. The essays explore problems in mathematics and mapping, the human implications of the arc of a missile the feelings of a sceptic upon approaching divine ground in the company of a mystic, and other encounters of the empirical with the numinous: Robinson has an uncanny capacity to write convincingly about both. The sequence ends with an angry outburst against the continuing destruction of the Irish countryside and a moving hymn to the delights of his own house and garden at the edge of the sea in Connemara. My Time in Space is the latest instalment in a literary corpus of singular integrity and endless fascination.

232 pages

First published May 21, 2001

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

[Paul Keyes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Musings of a true artist, philosopher and mathematician.