Robert Macfarlane

Diving into darkness

Connemara: The Last Pool of Darkness, by Tim Robinson

issue 04 October 2008

In 1972 Tim Robinson — a Yorkshireman by birth, a Cambridge mathematician by training, and an artist by vocation — moved to live on Inis Mor, the largest of the three Aran Islands that lie off the Galway coast. His first winter there was hard and ominous: long nights, big storms, and a series of accidental deaths among the islanders, by falling or drowning. Enough to send anyone home. But Robinson stayed, and shortly afterwards began work on what is, to my mind, one of the most remarkable non-fiction projects undertaken in English.

He started to walk his island, obsessively and in all weathers, pacing off its coastline and traversing its interior. And as he walked he mapped: recording the location and lore of each bay, cliff, wall, house, field, grave and significant stone. As he walked he also talked: knocking on doors, conversing, enquiring about the origins of place-names, listening to stories.

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