03/06/2026
I find lots of treasures on my walks, I have a studio full of seed pods, dried leaves,
feathers and bones! They are more valuable to me than jewellery and ornaments…
As today is the feast day of St Kevin there is a lovely story telling of a blackbird nesting in his
hand. I thought I would print one of the blackbird feathers I found… I love the way feathers
print and as with botanical monoprints like fingerprints they are all beautifully unique. For me bringing these treasures back to the studio and making monoprints from them is a way of
honouring them.
Seamus Heaney wrote a poem St Kevin (there is a reading of it on Youtube if you want to
hear it) St Kevin and the Blackbird (1996)
And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird.
The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside
His cell, but the cell is narrow, so
One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff
As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands
And lays in it and settles down to nest.
Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked
Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
Into the network of eternal life,
Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand
Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks
Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.
And since the whole thing’s imagined anyhow,
Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?
Self-forgetful or in agony all the time
From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms?
Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth
Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?
Alone and mirrored clear in love’s deep river,
‘To labour and not to seek reward,’ he prays,
A prayer his body makes entirely
For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird
And on the riverbank forgotten the river’s name.
