Books

Solace need not mean living in a beautiful place but finding beauty in the place where we live

Catherine Drea on her debut Solace, a dance between her playful inner child and more serious inner cailleach

Catherine Drea on writing her first book, Solace

Catherine Drea
Fri Nov 11 2022 - 10:26

I never set out to be a writer. At school my English teacher, exasperated by my overly romantic essays, worked hard to get me to tone it all down so that I would do well in the Leaving Cert. There was no such thing as creative writing then, and although I was accepted into an arts degree, I went on to study art and design instead. My art teacher was very encouraging and the only other career guidance I got came up with the result ‘creative’ and very little else.

Years later, in 2011, I began to blog anonymously and started off by posting a photograph of a wild foxglove. Gradually, I built up a practice of looking, photographing and writing. As a result of the economic crash, the office in Waterford, where I had worked for 20 years, closed and our team ended up working from home long before it was as common as it is now. Living and now also working down a long boreen in rural Ireland, I began to experience what the musician Martin Hayes describes as “Knowing what’s around you and playing that”.

A year into the pandemic, thanks to an invitation from The O’Brien Press, I sat down to write my first book. Looking back on those very early conversations, the name for the book, Solace, meaning consolation or comfort, was there from the beginning. There is no doubt that the loss of a close family member to Covid and the eerie isolation of that time reminded me of the early childhood loss of our mother Addie. I began to remember through the writing some of our efforts to cope with grief and loss, how we found solace as small children and how we tried to make sense of it all growing up.

A huge part of the inspiration for the book was this peaceful patch I call home, which is like living on a green island with occasional forays across a bridge to the mainland, all bright lights and busyness. I have one foot here and one foot in the wider world. Life is like that though, isn’t it? We often teeter between contradictions and opposites, knowns and unknowns.

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As I walked, I rediscovered my inner child. Somehow, although I had lost my mother to cancer at age 9, and had very few memories of her, she had passed on some magical gifts. These gifts, of how to create space and flow, had supported me all through life. People find solace in all sorts of relationships, precious pets, work and in following a passion. For me, solace has been found in living close to nature, being creative and collaborating with other women throughout my life. All of this permeates the book, through my own story, the images of familiar everyday landscapes, and Mother Nature as she revealed herself to me.

The best writing advice I ever heard was from Alan Garner, the 88-year-old writer recently shortlisted for the Booker Prize. ‘You just start at the top of the page and keep writing until you come to the bottom of the page’. I love that. You could angst about writing forever but that doesn’t get it done! Once I began the serious business of creating the book it all seemed to form naturally. The main challenge was to stay focussed on small scenes rather than try to encompass everything.

The book became a dance between my playful inner child and my somewhat more serious inner cailleach (the old hag, crone, witch from Irish lore). The child emerges through the creative practice of photography where everything is beautiful and wondrous. The cailleach has a fierce, caring nature and a ‘don’t dare mess with me or the ancient ecosystem’ side. Now as I get older, when I look in the mirror, I notice that both of them are present.

As this was my very first book, the world of publishing was a mystery. I now understand the process more, having gone through the various stages of making the book. O’Brien Press gave me great support to write with confidence and my editor was very sensitive throughout. The book’s designer, Emma Byrne, had a brainwave to use one of my pandemic watercolours as a cover, something I would never have thought of. All the way through, I felt sheer amazement that I was going to have a real book at the end of it all.

The day the book arrived and I finally held it in my hands was a moment of pure joy. I was very nervous opening the package, wondering if I was going to like it. I absolutely loved it!

When we fall in love with our own place and with the everyday natural world around us, we become even more committed to saving it. Solace can be read in tune with the seasons, the cycles of life and Irish flora and fauna. My hope for you, the reader, is that it re-awakens a desire to look more closely at what surrounds you, to reflect on your own story and to find solace in your own patch of the world, wherever that is.

Maybe it’s not so much living in a beautiful place, as finding beauty in the place where we live.

Solace (O’Brien Press, €19.99) by Catherine Drea is in bookshops now.

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