Book description
Islands and Images' describes the Aran Islands themselves; 'Setting
Foot on the Shores of Connemara', the title-essay, elevates the
map-maker's craft into art; 'The View from Errisbeg' integrates the
landscapes of Galway Bay, the Burren and Connemara by way of
topography, botany and geology; 'Space, Time and Connemara',
centrepiece to the collection, surveys the archaeology and human
geography of the West, its settlement patterns, families, dispersals
and privations, its missioners and the modern tide of tourism and
mariculture; 'A Connemara Fractal' is a fascinating autobiographical
digression through Cambridge and the convergences of mathematics,
geometry and geology, towards landscape-theory and the Book of
Connemara as yet unwritten; 'Place/Person/Book' introduces Synge's
masterwork, The Aran Islands; 'Listening to the Landscape' takes for
its theme the Irish language and placenames as an emanation of the
land; 'Four Threads' connects four archetypal figures - smuggler,
rebel priest, land-agent and wandering rhymer - to their histories in
nineteenth century Connemara. Other texts rehearse the potencies of
discovery, botanical (Erica mackaiana in Roundstone), archaeological
(a Bronze Age quartz alignment in Gleninagh) and personal. Some are
anecdotal, some meditative; each is individually conceived as a work
of literature. Tim Robinson has been stepping into spacetime since
1972, mapping the unknown by way of the known. With Setting Foot on
the Shore of Connemara he captures the numinous in a net of words and
images, and creates his own illuminated manual of memory. In these
fourteen related works we witness a great writer, artist and
cartographer united with his subject, conveying the vivid experiences
of a quarter-century of exploring and mapping the Aran Islands, the
Burren and Connemara. Tim Robinson, map-maker and writer, was born in
England in 1935. He studied mathematics at Cambridge and worked as a
teacher and artist in Istanbul, Vienna and London. In 1972 he moved to
the West of Ireland and began writing and making maps. He now lives in
Roundstone, Connemara. 'Potent and original.' The Irish Times
'Robinson's prose speaks more powerfully than a camera ... captivating
and totally rewarding.' SUC Bulletin 'Belongs in every cultivated
Irish home.' Michael Viney, The Irish Times 'In these glittering
essays he is by turn historian, archaeologist, geographer,
cartographer, botanist and, above all, a ravishing storyteller.' Penny
Perrick, The Times
Tim Robinson, map-maker and writer, was born in England in 1935.
He studied mathematics at Cambridge and worked as a teacher and artist
in Istanbul, Vienna and London. In 1972 he moved to the West of
Ireland and began writing and making maps. He now lives in Roundstone,
Connemara, where he runs the Folding Landscapes studio with his wife Máiréad.
