Mending the Torn Fragments of a Relationship: An Interview with Sarah Strong

Abstract

Sarah Strong is a practising artist who lives in Islington, London. In this interview, Strong describes her charged and at times very difficult relationship with her mother, the Irish poet Eithne Strong (1923–99), as well as her unconventional upbringing in a commune on the south side of Dublin. She discusses her decision to leave Ireland for London after discovering she was pregnant, and contemplates the joys and challenges of becoming a mother at a young age, far from home and in difficult economic circumstances. This interview also highlights how Strong's relationship with her mother, as well as with the maternal more generally, has found expression in her visual art and, more recently, in her film and poetry.

Keywords:

• exile
• Irish poetry
• maternal art
• migration
• motherhood
• short film

Acknowledgements

The excerpt from Eithne Strong's poem ‘Statement to Offspring’ is included here with the kind permission of Dr Kevin Strong. ‘An Irish Woman Writer’ (© 2016 Sarah Strong, all rights reserved) is included here with the permission of Sarah Strong. All the images are included here with the permission of Sarah Strong.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Valerie Heffernan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9960-8213

Notes

1 The term ‘Breac Irish’ refers to the Irish living in communities where a mixture of Irish (Gaelic) and English was spoken. The term breac, which means ‘speckled’ or ‘mottled’, was first used formally in 1925 when the Gaeltacht Commission sought to define the various regions of Ireland according to the language spoken by the local population. The Breac-Gaeltacht consisted of those communities where Irish was spoken by between 25 per cent and 80 per cent of the population.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by an Irish Research Council Starter Research Project Grant [strand RPG2013-1].