Bogland: Between the Sights of the Sun

Join us in a celebration of International Bog Day and our boglands at Seamus Heaney: Listen Now Again. On Saturday 26th July, join us for a special event with a panel of five guest speakers brought together by Tóchar Community Stories, a public engagement storytelling initiative under the Tóchar Midland Wetlands Restoration working with people across the eight counties of the Just Transition region in Laois, Kildare, Offaly, Westmeath, Galway, Tipperary, Roscommon and Longford.

The panel speakers include: poet Jane Clarke, a Roscommon native whose work explores themes of nature, land and climate change; composer Ann Cleare, from Birr, whose work Terrarium draws on aural recording of the buried bog at Lough Boora Co Offaly, connecting us to a vanished mesolithic lake; and Michael Long, a volunteer leader at Cabragh Wetlands, Co Tipperary, who will share the story behind the Cosmic Walk they have created, tracing the bogland to our origin story as a people and a planet, and how the community there became custodians of the land and its habitats. Artist Shane Hynan, from Co Kildare, whose photography draws on the landscape of the bogs, will share his work Beneath | Beofhód, and connect with the National Library collections, while community historian Seamus Corcoran, of the Lemanaghan Bog Heritage and Conservation Group, will tell the story of the treasures the bog holds for us in place and belonging far beyond what we extract in energy.

The event will be followed by a short tour of the exhibition with a particular focus on Heaney’s work responding to our relationship to nature, land, history and the bogs.

Tóchar Midland Wetlands Restoration is co-funded by the Government of Ireland and the European Union through the EU Just Transition Fund Programme and managed by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.