Roisin Markham

This post was originally drafted in March, I’m unsure why I did not publish it at the time.

Since May 2025 I’ve been building a deeper link to the area know as Lady’s Island Lake in Wexford.

I spent time by the waterbody that is Lady’s Island Lagoon on a monthly and sometimes weekly basis.

Following is some creative writing and sense making.

Watching swans upended

listening to birds I did not know

staring into murky waters wondering about the depths

the lapping sound of water into a foamy shoreline

quietly observing

if she could talk what would she say?*

This lagoon or lake as it is also called is a waterbody in crisis.

There is an active campaign Save Lady’s Island Lake holding the county council and EPA to account. 30 years reporting about the river catchment pollution with no action to stop or redress ecological harm. Yes it needs to be addressed. It’s complex or so I am told, but is it? Inputs do harm = reverse harm stop inputs.

Livelihoods load 60 tones of nitrogen into the lake as run off from agricultural activities.

In rural communities farmers refuse to believe that their work is impacting the lake as significantly as it is. The scientific facts say otherwise. The tension is significant.

This is an area of rich but depleting biodiversity centuries.

The area has tangible and intangible heritage. The landscape dotted with ruins, ring forts and druidic sites holds centuries of human activity.

It is a place of spiritual pilgrimage.

The pious sanctuary not afforded to life under water by those of us who flock to the water.

We adore it, use it, boat and float on it, photograph it, birdwatch, biodiversity invest and lament, hound heritage here all so we can be soothed and inspired by it.

Our satiated capture, as local Alan Potter’s poem states “A lake is a landscapes eye”.

I was invited last year to join a group of artists to give voice* to the lake. We have been meeting monthly since September. Layering our work, relationship with lake and land, listening, a softness between kin, being curious. It’s a kind of delicious depth that I am wading into. A new to me group of humans attending and caring through creative expression.

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As I drove down toward the seaward side at the bottom of the lake near the South Wexford Coastal path I passed a car parked. A photographer watching and photographing swans, a mega white zoom lens resting on the drivers door window.

It’s unusual not to meet a photographer down by the lagoon.

I am fascinated by how the rocks appear scattered like they have just rolled off a hill to the lake. Except there is no hill – probably moraine glacial deposits. I want to know more about these rocks – who might be able to tell me?

This time of year the contrast of colours has a stark quality to it.

Washed out greyness heightens the contrast, the reeds pop in a muted hue.

I search my colour vocabulary for the description of the colour not as away to own it or conquer it with human knowledge but as a presencing.

English offers me not words well. I wonder does Irish have a distinct word for reeds ready to be picked for thatching and what is the colour of that word, the mouth feel as you speak it, the cultural references, points in the body. Does it create pattern in your mind when spoken out to the landscape?

I’m curious how language and what we speak shapes us.

Around the reeds the lake flows disturbing the smooth water

unable to process the dismantled calm the sounds pull me

a hidden rock is gurgled over like a constant surprise

but the colour evades me,

perhaps it’s that this reed I know it in many hues

here the yellow brightness is pulled out the muted pale tones between orange and yellow dip into browns and dark versions of green.

pale muted tan,

taupe

sage – dark olive green – khaki

oh what word feels right to describe this stalk standing in the water

the contrast of two weeks and 60km apart:

I begin my creative work with documenting, photography, possibilities, creative explorations, reading, a mind-map and a zine or two. Words begin to form perhaps poetically.

I made bad art. It was very satisfying. I plan to make more.

I discover making long lists of words, descriptive to me is part of assembling information that informs my relational journeys.

I like documenting things, it makes me a good researcher and deep listener. I wonder nearly being deaf as a child form ways which I access sense making with deeper understanding.

A quiet watching.

I want to be in the wild open space of Lady’s Island Lagoon

a place of awe, beauty and birds

a sanctuary of pious pilgrimage 

it is not that for all

ecocide squeezes out the last of her aliveness 

green-blue algae thrives

we flock there with overwintering birds

attracted to diversity, despite adversity here

to float a top, skimming

look from the land

stories held within her

myth stoic memory

stones like they’ve rolled down a hill

boats upon her surface 

below, what we refuse 

our disconnect, capture for capital

our need above all else 

tasty butter and beef 

at what cost?

the death of a Lagoon is delicious.

Written by Roisin Markham 30 March 2026, as part of deeply connecting to waterbodies and the Artist collective ‘The Lake has no voice’