Words are a winner in Patricia’s novel

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

Anybody who knows a book-lover aged around 11 or 12 will gain lots of Brownie points by presenting them with a copy of The Wordsmith, a coming-of-age novel by Galway writer Patricia Forde, which is being launched in Galway next week.

This magical book centres on a young girl, Letta, who lives at some time in the future in a place called Ark. Its people have survived a life-changing event known as The Melting. In Ark, everything is rationed – food, water, shoes – even language. Beyond Ark’s walls there is a world where imagination runs free, but the community’s leaders regard it as a dangerous and degenerate place.

Letta is a wordsmith and it’s her job to collect words and mete them out sparingly to people in Ark who need them. However, when outside forces enter Ark, Letta’s world is thrown into turmoil and she is forced into dangerous and life-changing actions.

The Wordsmith is a page-turner, as Patricia unveils the background to this strange place and the reasons why its leader John Noa is so determined to deprive people of language.

Patricia is a bright, bubbly person, fluent in both Irish and English, and someone for whom imagination has always been hugely important. She trained and worked as a primary teacher before taking a year off in 1990 to write a children’s book, a fundraiser for the community theatre group, Macnas. That was called Tír Faoi Thoinn, after an early and hugely popular parade by the group, based on an Irish legend.

Patricia never went back teaching. After Tír Faoi Thoinn, she was approached by the Arts Festival founder, Ollie Jennings to take over as its Artistic Director. She did, and under her watch, children’s events became more prominent in the Festival. Still later, Patricia went on to spearhead Baboró, which is now Ireland’s biggest arts festival for children.

More recently, she has worked as a script editor in TG4’s soap Ros na Rún and that role caused her to really examine the way people use words, and how societies lose words through lack of use.

Sometimes, the Ros na Rún writers might use English words or terms in a script, so the script editors have to translate these into Irish before the programme is recorded.

This process is often like a treasure hunt – Patricia mentions Tom MacBride in the Donegal Gaeltacht of Gweedore as being a huge help to her, because he is an elderly man and his Irish-language vocabulary is larger than that of younger ‘Gaeilgoirí’.

She points out that these days in Connemara the Irish word for throat is scórnach, and it’s an all-encompassing word. Years ago, native Irish speakers had different names for different areas of the throat, as we still do in English. But these terms have disappeared. Similarly, while we all know the Irish word for shoe is bróg, only older people can recall the Irish term for the eyelets in shoes that laces are threaded through. That word is no longer being used. Patricia points out examples from the seashore to farming where words are being forgotten. As a result, “the Irish language is dying by a 1,000 cuts,” she says.

For  more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.