Aoife Lyall
Motherhood is something that everyone is connected to, yet so much of it is undocumented in history and unexplored in literature. Being supported by National Lottery Funding through Creative Scotland gives me the opportunity to further my literary exploration and interrogation of motherhood, and to empower others to do the same.
My first collection Mother, Nature (Bloodaxe Books, 2021) focuses entirely on pregnancy and the early weeks and months of motherhood. It was written and edited in any and every spare minute I had over the course of three pregnancies, two maternity leaves, and the first lockdown of 2020. With two very young children at home, and the demands of teaching constantly changing in response to the fluctuating circumstances we continue to find ourselves in, I found my capacity to write severely limited. I couldn’t see how it would be possible to write the next collection any time soon: it felt that, just as I was hitting my stride, I was going to have to slow right down, or maybe even stop.
This funding has been life-changing. It means I can step back from teaching and concentrate fully on writing my next poetry collection, one that focuses on the broader socio-political, cultural and historical systems that shape motherhood. It will give me time to read and write, research and reconsider the ideas and expectations I have always taken for granted: ones I assumed I had to live up to, or steer clear of. It is these ideas that continue to shape my relationships to my children and my mother, and to other mothers who themselves are grappling with these new identities formed from, or in opposition to, the way they themselves were raised.
Seamus Heaney understood that ‘the aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.’ This funding is not just a financial award: it is an affirmation. It tells me, and everyone else, that this subject matter is one of value and worth. And there is no greater gift to those of us trying to write ourselves and others out of silence and into the world.
Find out more about Aoife’s writing on her website, Twitter, Instagram or on the Bloodaxe Books website
