(S)worn State(s)
Collaboration between Annemarie Ní Churreáin, Kimberly Campanello and Dimitra Xidous 

Photo Credit:  Ror Conaty | Monolith

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(S)worn State(s) is a collaborative poetry project by three of Ireland’s most exciting literary voices. Making reference to the language of testimony, the project declares the poet as witness, a witness who remembers and re-imagines women’s experiences of shifting historical and cultural landscapes in this decade of centenaries and beyond. The project interweaves autobiography, social history and myth to confront issues around reproduction, labour, and erotic autonomy and evoke a wide range of ‘states’ of female embodiment and thought, including pleasure, joy, and experiences of intellectual interrogation. It challenges ‘worn’ narratives of perpetual female suffering and self-alienation and reminds readers that bodies think, that women move and think, in bodies. Motivated by revolutionary approaches to art and politics, (S)worn State(s) takes inspiration from Irish history, landscape and pre- Christian traditions and seeks to excavate and re-make language and myth infusing the process with a rich constellation of cross-cultural perspectives i.e. that of an Irish-born poet who is an Irish speaker, an Irish poet with dual American citizenship who is a French speaker, and a poet with Canadian citizenship now resident in Ireland who is a Greek speaker. The work is characterised by visual, multi-lingual and embodied approaches to language, and influenced by literature and art that transcends the author’s point-of-view allowing the reader’s own voice to be heard.

(S)worn State(s) is a recipient of the Markievicz Award administered by the Arts Council on behalf of the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and will culminate in a letterpress publication by The Salvage Press in 2022-23. 

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​Photo Credit:  Ror Conaty | Monolith