‘Sharing the Shore’

a Donegal Collection 

Paintings and drawings by Joan Connor / Poetry by Noel Connor

The astounding beauty of the Donegal coastline in the North-West of Ireland has compelled Joan and I to return there for over 25 years, fostering a love of the place which we have tried to capture in this book. The collection offers our combined creative response to an area of such shared significance and our long watchful awareness of each others work.

The Gomer Press in West Wales have worked with us to produce a beautifully finished full colour hardback book. (which we are proud to publish under our new imprint ‘Hare’s Corner Press’….. the hare’s corner is an old expression for a piece of ground left wild and undisturbed on the farm where the hare can find shelter).

Once again, all profits from sales of the book are being donated to the charity Doctors without Borders (MSF UK).

Dawros Bay

This is our landscape,

the headland bracing itself

and facing the brunt

of the Atlantic head on.

And we have clambered

to that bouldered cove again,

our sculpted hideaway,

where the big ocean

makes an exhibition of itself,

a gallery of toppled slabs

and half sunken monuments.

Here I found a fallen block

sheared off from the rock face,

re-shelved it intact on the broken ledge

and gently eased it back in place.

I closed the fracture to a hairline split,

made the pattern and the contours true

and all the jagged edges fit,

last winter’s storms defied for you.

Stealing the Light

‘It is the artist’s role to ensure that the

cartographer recognizes the horizon’

We’ve sheltered here before,

storm dodging, and last night’s

uncanny calm was fair warning,

hardly a breath to bend

the dune grass and scrawny gorse,

a shoreline bracing itself

waiting to be battered.

Another deluge is on the way,

a thunderous dirge blotting out

this morning’s fine horizon

disappearing the headland,

Slievetooey’s silhouette

dissolved in a drench of inky grey

stealing the light too early in the day.

From Emerald to Indigo

This weight of cloud

can barely reach the mountains.

Its rain will fall heavy

on the Blue Stacks

dissolving the slopes

in a slew of pewter grey.

By morning,

this listless stream

slinking through the sandbanks,

this slow vein channeling

from emerald to indigo,

will rise again,

reverse its flow,

carry back tomorrow’s sky

across the flooded estuary,

return the heavens to the sea.

Chasing Shadows

The sky is racing west today,

billows of windblown clouds

bright and blowsy

climbing from the far horizon

scatter all across the bay.

Undercurrents of colour

lift and swell and shatter

in the breaking surf,

cobalt blown to ozone,

viridian frothed and frayed

to wind crazed white lace.

The sun is chasing shadows,

herding shoals of turquoise

through the glazed shallows.

Noel Connor  2016