Writing By the Sea - Sr Mary Wickham RSM

Congratulations to Mercy International Association’s (MIA) Head of Communications Brenda Drumm! Not just because she’s just completed one year with MIA but because Brenda recently won first prize in the Memoir section of the annual Writing Competition of the Write By The Sea Festival in historic Kilmore Quay, County Wexford, Ireland. Apart from a significant monetary prize and a sculpted glass trophy, winning the competition brings an aspiring writer into the spotlight and ensures publication in a literary journal.

Much of Brenda’s professional life has been centered on communication: with the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference and later with the Disability Federation of Ireland. Brenda was the Media and Communication Manager for the 9th World Meeting of Families and the related Papal visit to Ireland in 2018. It is clear that making meaning from words and images is her forte.  In between her busy and vibrant role for Mercy International Association, to which she has already brought her own flair and creative energy, Brenda is devoted to the care of her family in County Kildare, and in spare moments pursues the more niche aspects of creative writing such as poetry and crafted memoir.

What prompts this activity? (Why doesn’t she just go home and make soup like normal people? Or play golf at the weekends?) Brenda says, “My love of books, reading and poetry is something that was nurtured by my parents and by several teachers that I was lucky to have.  One of the first to spot my passion for words was Sr. Finbarr Geoghegan RSM who taught me in fourth, fifth and sixth class in the Mercy Primary School in Belturbet, Co Cavan. She challenged me to read beyond my comfort zone and to never be afraid of big words. In post-primary school it was a lay teacher in Loreto College, Cavan who encouraged and nurtured my love of prose, poetry and writing. I have always written short stories and journal pieces. I write everyday in MIA whether it is articles, reflections or short content for social media. It can sometimes be difficult to find left over words after a busy day of writing and editing but I have always tried to write something for myself each day after work. I find it helps to make sense of a day.”

“I have written short stories over the years but I always feel that my fictional characters are a bit rubbish and they’re not believable. Whereas when I’m writing memoir it’s about me. It’s not a vanity thing, but I know that what I’m writing is real, and it’s true. There’s maybe therapy in committing some of this to paper and letting it fly. I also firmly believe that being in Catherine’s House in Baggot Street has unlocked something in my writing.”

Ireland has more writers per square metre than most places, so even to progress from the longlist of thirty contenders and be shortlisted with ten others from amongst the large number of international entrants is an honour. To win the first prize suggests a quality of work where form and subject, tone and method all combine to create something of extraordinary merit. What did the judges see in Brenda’s memoir that earned her the top award? The official commentary from the judges was as follows:

For the reader there is no looking away. The skill of the writing ensures we stay with the narrator and are moved by writing that treats a most difficult subject with both tenderness and an unflinching rigour.

Brenda says: “I don’t normally enter competitions and I’m not sure what attracted me to Write by the Sea,” she says, suspecting the word limit was a major factor.

Having promptly forgotten she had entered, she was pleasantly surprised when she was first longlisted, and then shortlisted over the summer.

“Honestly I thought it would stop there - that was enough of an honour for me to make the shortlist,” she recalls.

“When the email arrived in early September, telling me I had won first place, I was surprised and delighted. That quickly turned to slight terror when I realised I would have to stand on a stage and read my piece in front of an audience of strangers. In preparation for the event in Wexford, which saw writers like John Banville, Claire Keegan and Paula Meehan take to the stage, I rehearsed the piece but never managed to get through a reading of it without some of the words catching in my throat. I convinced myself it would be alright on the night and it was. Even though I did have to pause a couple of times during my reading, I delivered it to a warm and generous audience. It was surreal to hear something that has lived inside me for so long being put out there into the world.”

Being true to the genre, Brenda’s memoir is based on her life experience. The winning piece, titled “In Heaven There Are Beaches” is set in the not too distant past and begins with Brenda sitting at a Rome airport reading a text and a draft poem from her adult daughter, who is a gifted writer herself. The poem recalls a time in the more distant past - almost twenty years ago - when Brenda was seriously ill over many months, and her daughter then a small child. Brenda’s memoir conveys some of Emma’s childhood responses to visiting her mother in hospital and observing her convalescence and recovery. It was an illness that took Brenda to the brink of life, and has made her, she says, grateful for each day since.

Brenda tells her story with candour and not one whiff of self-pity. The winning piece is essentially a duet featuring the mother’s developing awareness of the impact of the illness on her daughter, and the daughter’s varying perceptions as a nine-year old to a now 28-year old. The scenes shift between the now of recovery and the then of grave illness, ranging over the child’s emotions of fear to anger to grief, and the mother’s instinctive desire to protect the child. Where Brenda was coping with a body that was very ill, she was always in mother mode. The memoir, of just over 1000 words, is riveting.

Brenda’s prize-winning memoir is a stark and uncompromising account of the impact of serious illness on the patient and the entire family, a celebration of survival and of each day’s offerings of life, and a poignant retrospective on the formative influence of the whole experience on both mother and daughter and their ongoing relationship.

Congratulations Brenda on this fine achievement. May more words flow!

Oh, and Brenda tells me that when she’s not writing or tending plants in her glasshouse, she can be found making homemade soup and her Grandmother’s brown bread recipe!

by Sr Mary Wickham RSM

Mary Wickham is a Sister of Mercy from Melbourne, Australia. She grew up by the sea in the west of Melbourne. Mary’s ministries as a Sister of Mercy include work as a secondary teacher and tertiary lecturer in the fields of Literature and Education.

Celtic Spirituality and the history and landscape of Ireland have enriched and informed Mary’s writing over the years and she has run many Retreats and workshops related to Celtic Spirituality. Her father was born in Rosslare, County Wexford, and her mother’s grandparents were from the area around Ballymacward Co.Galway, and the Scottish island of Islay.

Her poetry and reflective articles have been published in numerous magazines including Cyphers, Creation Spirituality, Poetry Ireland Review, Review For Religious, Aisling and Madonna. Chief amongst a number of prizes and commendations, her poem ‘Four Hundred’ won the Max Harris Poetry Award.