‘A border didn't define us’

Creative writing book ‘Threads of Peace’ launched

“In one event, you can see the promise of the Peace Campus being fulfilled… bringing communities together,” Robert Burns Chief Executive of Monaghan Co Council said at the well attended launch of a creative writing project in that very building on Tuesday, April 14.

That one event was the launch of a new book of short stories and poetry, ‘Threads of Peace’, created by women living in Belfast, Dublin and Castleblayney. It provided an inspirational couple of hours, during which many of the guest speakers reflected on how far we had come since peace was secured in the North.

Blayney Blades and Ronanstown Women’s Group in Dublin alongside The Falls Women’s Group in Belfast, brought the book from conception to completion. In the works for almost a year, the beautiful publication was the product of creative writing classes. As writers shared their contributions, it swiftly emerged it had been time well spent.

Sophie Gold from Ronanstown read her poem ‘Ireland and Me’, which included the stanza: “For now, you are not just the land I found, but the home I’ve built, the home that built me.”

By way of introduction to Mary Tolan’s ‘SPLIT!’ the West Belfast woman explained: “This was just a small example of the normalisation of The Troubles as we grew up. I think it’s only now 50 years later that we’re accepting that it was actually trauma.”

The final line of Mary’s piece read: ‘Death squad they rumoured; fun was what my fifteen-year-old brain registered.’

When it came to the turn of Martina Quinn, chair of WCI Blayney Blades, the weight of her subject matter hit home with the people listening, many of them local.

‘Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way,’ which opened with the words: “The border town of Castleblayney was not immune to violence and the problems associated with The Troubles. A car bomb in 1976 shocked our community with the realisation that the ‘Troubles’ were on our doorstep.”

Carol Quinn from WCI Ronanstown paid tribute to her mother in a moving poem called ‘Me Ma’. One verse read – “I hope I did her proud, I hope I am not too loud, I carry a lot of her values too, I miss her I do, We are not in this world forever, We need to be very clever, Let’s all share, Let’s all care, Let’s all live, Let’s all give. Who did her best? Me Ma.”

Linda Molloy from The Falls Women’s Group jokingly confessed to feeling “a bit of a fraud” as she joined the group to help write her memoir. Linda’s ode to her mother, titled, ‘A Strong Woman Who Did Not Have a Voice’ recognised: ‘How difficult it must have been to be told that her role in life was the procreation of children and to have no say in how her body was being used.’ The final reading came from Mary Smith, from Blayney Blades entitled ‘A Good Example to the Rest of the World.’ It was a fitting punctuation mark to a wonderful event where she made the upbeat observation: “For so long it looked like peace was impossible in Northern Ireland. But it happened.”

Amongst the many speakers were Cathaoirleach of Monaghan Co Council PJ O’Hanlon, Lorraine Cunningham, coordinator of WCI Blayney Blades, Chairperson of Monaghan Women’s Assembly, Cllr Sinéad Flynn (SF), WCI Ronanstown coordinator Sinead Mahon, Robert Burns, Chief Executive of Monaghan Co Council and finally Susan McCrory, Managing Director of the Falls Women’s Centre.

Susan, said it was her hope that other women’s groups would be inspired to undertake a creative writing project of their own: “As we dived into the stories and moved them into a book, we started seeing something more powerful than just a piece of writing on paper.

“Thank you to the women who made the book happen. The three groups worked together, a border didn’t define us.”