“There’s a poem in it (Hedge School) called ‘Building the Ark’ which … realises at the end that it wasn’t Noah that saved the animals but the animals that saved Noah.
And I think that’s one of the functions of animals, in the biblical sense, and in the poetic sense, that when they come, they’re coming as messengers, but they’re also coming as liberators. They’re blurring the line, the way your trendy designers want to do between your back kitchen and your back garden, you know. They’re extending one into the other and saying, you can be outside just by thinking in an outside way…
So the hedge school is just a kind of: ‘Would yez open your eyes, lads?’ That’s what it is. And I’m saying it to myself. In fact, the birds are saying it to me. That’s how far I’ve gone down the road…”
Random thoughts on birds in gardens, the end and beginning of the world, kindness, strangers, home and the joys of walking in circles, among much else — with thanks to presenter Rachael Hegarty and producer Yetti Redmond.
The following is a link to the programme on the RTÉ 1 website: here.