Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara and Other Writings

'Islands and Images', the first essay in this collection, describes the Aran Islands themselves; 'Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara', the title-essay, elevates the map-maker's craft into art; 'The View from Errisbeg' integrates the landscapes of Galway Bay, the Burren and Connemara by way of topography, botany and geology; 'Space, Time and Connemara', centrepiece to the collection, surveys the archaeology and human geography of the West, its settlement patterns, families, dispersals and privations, its missioners and the modern tide of tourism and mariculture; 'A Connemara Fractal' is a fascinating autobiographical digression through Cambridge and the convergences of mathematics, geometry and geology, towards landscape-theory and the Book of Connemara as yet unwritten; 'Place/Person/Book' introduces Synge's masterwork, The Aran Islands; 'Listening to the Landscape' takes for its theme the Irish language and placenames as an emanation of the land; 'Four Threads' connects four archetypal figures - smuggler, rebel priest, land-agent and wandering rhymer - to their histories in nineteenth century Connemara. Other texts rehearse the potencies of discovery, botanical (Erica mackaiana in Roundstone), archaeological (a Bronze Age quartz alignment in Gleninagh) and personal. Some are anecdotal, some meditative; each is individually conceived as a work of literature. Tim Robinson has been stepping into spacetime since 1972, mapping the unknown by way of the known. WithSetting Foot on the Shores of Connemara,he captures the numinous in a net of words and images, and creates his own illuminated manual of memory. In these fourteen related works, we witness a great writer, artist and cartographer united with his subject, conveying the vivid experiences of a quarter-century of exploring and mapping the Aran Islands, the Burren and Connemara. 'Potent and original.' The Irish Times 'Robinson's prose speaks more powerfully than a camera ... captivating and totally rewarding.' SUC Bulletin 'Belongs in every cultivated Irish home.' Michael Viney, The Irish Times 'In these glittering essays he is by turn historian, archaeologist, geographer, cartographer, botanist and, above all, a ravishing storyteller.' Penny Perrick, The Times In these fourteen related works we witness a great writer, artist and cartographer united with his subject, conveying the vivid experiences of a quarter-century of exploring and mapping the Aran Islands, the Burren and Connemara. 'Islands and Images' describes the Aran Islands themselves; 'Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara', the title-essay, elevates the map-maker's craft into art; 'The View from Errisbeg' integrates the landscapes of Galway Bay, the Burren and Connemara by way of topography, botany and geology; 'Space, Time and Connemara', centrepiece to the collection, surveys the archaeology and human geography of the West, its settlement patterns, families, dispersals and privations, its missioners and the modern tide of tourism and mariculture; 'A Connemara Fractal' is a fascinating autobiographical digression through Cambridge and the convergences of mathematics, geometry and geology, towards landscape-theory and the Book of Connemara as yet unwritten; 'Place/Person/Book' introduces Synge's masterwork, The Aran Islands; 'Listening to the Landscape' takes for its theme the Irish language and placenames as an emanation of the land; 'Four Threads' connects four archetypal figures – smuggler, rebel priest, land-agent and wandering rhymer – to their histories in nineteenth century Connemara. Other texts rehearse the potencies of discovery, botanical (Erica mackaiana in Roundstone), archaeological (a Bronze Age quartz alignment in Gleninagh) and personal. Some are anecdotal, some meditative; each is individually conceived as a work of literature. Tim Robinson has been stepping into spacetime since 1972, mapping the unknown by way of the known. With Setting Foot on the Shore of Connemara he captures the numinous in a net of words and images, and creates his own illuminated manual of memory. "In these fourteen related essays we witness a great writer and cartographer united with his subject, conveying the vivid experiences of a quarter-century of exploring and mapping the Aran Islands, the Burren and Connemara." --Book Jacket This is a collection of writings by Tim Robinson. With the author, the reader explores Connemara, the Burren and Aran Islands, experiencing his initial impression of these islands and his rationale for mapping them in the early 1970s.