Welcome to my wee corner full of gentle and harsh words, enchantment and disenchantment; a place where I never mince what I say. I hope you like what you see.
I'm an artist, archaeologist and writer who lives with her family on the north coast of Ireland. I'm deeply influenced by the natural world and I have to give credits for my musings to our rugged Irish landscape and the relentless Atlantic gale force winds that rattle my windows on a daily basis.
I've returned to writing in autumn 2023, some ten years after I left the world of journalism and fiction writing behind me. Those ten years were filled with many life-defining events that now deeply inform the way I see the world and consequently, the way I write. Some of those events, in a not strictly chronological order, were getting an MA in Prehistoric Archaeology and deciding I have to stop pursuing the second one (comparative Indo-European linguistics), moving countries, making my small artistic business dormant for health reasons and losing my income, starting a family, surviving a birth trauma, coming to terms with a different ability of my mind and body, realising that I'm autistic with ADHD, examining my spirituality, becoming disillusioned with the way of the world that was presented to me growing up. What I published and wrote about before these big changes now feels like a distant memory from another lifetime, much of it confined to once established magazines and websites that are now exiled into history, most traces of it buried and gone. And yet, I must acknowledge those early scribblings were a necessary stepping stone that led me to where I am now.
So, what is it you can expect from me? Essays, poetry and an odd piece of fiction while treading at the intersection of nature writing, spiritual ecology, science (especially archaeology) and philosophy. I'm an anarchist and I don't shy away from politics and addressing and dismantling the systemic wrongs our world has been built upon in my writing. Whatever I write, it has a common denominator: it's always written from a decolonial and ecocentric perspective.
My Substack is free and I have no plans to introduce paywalls. Instead, I'd very much prefer to build a community based on the principle of mutual aid. If you're in a position to choose a paid subscription, I'll be grateful as every paid subscription supports my ability to write and create. There's also an option to leave a one-off tip below.
Thank you for reading!
Grá,
Ramona
