Pauline Flynn discusses her poem from Issue Fourteen of The Lonely Crowd.

As a visual artist I am trained to see the detail in things. As a geometric abstract painter, I’m interested in paring back to shapes, pattern, colour and design in composition. When I began writing poetry, after I took a break from painting and did an MA in Creative Writing in Dublin, my tutor told me my poems were Imagist. I had read Haiku more than any other poetry form but when I took the poetry module and found I could author a poem, I was thrilled. Words have become a new medium that allows me to express myself more figuratively. The poems complement the paintings, and my life is now enriched by my engagement with both.

One day during a visit to my acupuncturist, I was lying on the couch, letting the needles do their work, chatting with the therapist about Icons. I was due to go to Ukraine and when I was researching artists and galleries in Kiev and Lviv I came across contemporary icon paintings. I wondered about the techniques in their making and would I be able to paint one, or to be precise, write one. Icons are written, not painted. The therapist left the room for a moment and returned with an icon written by a friend, which depicted Mary of Egypt. I was immediately taken by the image of the emaciated woman, dressed in rags, her hair grown to the ground. We spoke more about the theme of repentance, and the practice of punishing ‘fallen’ women by banishing them to the desert to repent her life of debauchery and sin. I had travelled to Jorden, Petra and the Wadi Rum so I understood something of the terrain she had crossed. The therapist recommended I get the book called Harlots of the Desert, a study of repentance in early monastic sources by Benedicta Ward SLG. An unfortunate title to my mind but the stories of the various Magdalene women in history was wonderful to read.

Before the book arrived, I travelled to view the contemporary icon collection (copies of original icons) in Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin. It is a fitting interior in which to hang icons; dark, weighted down with time and history, grand stone pillars, stained glass windows and beautiful tiled floors. The icons glow in this space. And in The National Gallery I saw the Assumption of Saint Mary Magdalene, painted in 1380. Her golden hair dripping to her ankles. I enjoy delving into the world of historical female subjects before I write about them. It’s comparable to making a trip without leaving home. I’ve also written about Hatshepsut, Olga of Kiev, and Caecilia Metella. Often its difficult to sleep at night thinking about them. What will I write, what is it I want to say? I have the same experience when I’m working on new paintings – the anticipation of what impact the work will have on me after a night’s sleep.

After reading the book, I felt a great need to write something positive for this woman and in this poem, I see her in the desert, not living a life of penance but enjoying the environment — shrubs, flowers, animals and birds. A nature that nurtures and feeds her. Free to breathe, to choose, to indulge in sensual delight, to sing her own life into being, without judgement or injustice.

Having read about desert flora and fauna in the area around Egypt and Jordan I fell into the repetatious device ‘What I like about …’.  I chose the image for each stanza and let Mary say what pleased her about each one.

Pauline Flynn is an Irish Visual Artist/Poet. She completed an MA in Creative Writing at UCD in 2010 and was shortlisted for the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award the same year. She lived in Japan as an art scholarship student and is very influenced by Japanese aesthetics, especially in relation to colour. Publications include — Resident Artist/Poet, The High Window 2024, Four Issues. Skylight 47 Spring 2024, Poetry Ireland Review, Eavan Boland Special Issue, 2022, Sixteen Magazine, Into the Light, Orbis 81, Light, a Journal of Photography and Poetry, Silver Birch Press, The Blue Nib. She lives in Co. Wicklow.

Painting by Pauline Flynn.