Cell

for three voices

BY

Kathy D'Arcy

Well hello there. Are you lost? Where are you headed to, all the way up here by yourself? Oh, well, I bet you didn’t know about the cell, did you? See up there, up beyond those trees? They say it’s the only anchorhold in Ireland. Anchorhold, you know! A woman. No-one thought we had them. It’s very little known. Go on up to it if you like, that way – or is it that way? Take care on the rocks – and if it starts to rain, watch out! But you don’t want to pass it by, anyway.

Kathy D’Arcy is a Cork poet and feminist activist recently relocated to Iceland. Her collections are Encounter (Lapwing 2010) and The Wild Pupil (Bradshaw 2012). She was Chair of the Cork Together for Yes campaign and created the 2018 edited collection Autonomy, which raised funds and awareness for that campaign. Kathy has just completed a Creative Writing PhD, for which she received an Irish Research Council Scholarship: this piece is an excerpt from that work, which reimagines Irish mythohistory with the silenced voices of women to the fore. She has worked as a doctor, a family support worker and a creative writing teacher. In 2020 Kathy started the #WakeUpIrishPoetry movement which seeks to challenge abuses and harassment in Irish poetry.

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