Arts Week with Judy Murphy

There’s a poem on the back cover of Conor Bowman’s latest book, The Half-Life of Edith Hopkins, written by an unknown poet, Ian Kelly. This marks Ian Kelly’s first time in print, but it’s not his first time writing. That’s the name that author and barrister Conor was given when he was born to a single mother in 1965, in Castlepollard Mother and Baby Home, County Westmeath.

After being adopted, he grew up in Galway City, going to school in Scoil Iognáid and, for a time, Coláiste Iognáid (The Jes).

Conor’s final four years of secondary school were at Newbridge College in Kildare. He then studied law at UCG, followed by a post-grad in Cambridge.

At Newbridge College, Conor learned from an enlightened teacher that “books don’t always have to be written by other people”.

It was a message he took to heart, even as he went on to forge a career in law.

He loves writing –  be that fiction, poetry or music.

Today, like any good Senior Counsel, files are part of his life, but, in his case, many of them relate to creative writing.

He called on them for The Half-Life of Edith Hopkins, a collection of short stories, published by Derry’s Cló Cholmcille. There are various themes and inspirations, including his own life in law.

One story draws on his boarding school days and a bizarre game students used to play. In another, a Galwayman man revisits the scene of a crime he committed decades previously, and in yet another, an author faces the wrath of the fictional characters he has created.

The collection’s title story is a novella about an ageing Galway woman and her experiences growing up in mid-20th century Ireland. These included being incarcerated in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home, where her baby was taken from her.

The 86-page story, mostly set in Ireland, also includes a detailed description of the development of the psychiatric treatment, Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT), and its use on patients – many of them women, including single mothers.

This description takes the form of an academic lecture from the 1930s, which includes a film illustrating how ECT was administered. The lecture is fictitious but the information it contains is not, and demonstrates the arrogance of many medics – mostly men – who were entrusted with caring for vulnerable people.

Conor had initially written about Edith Hopkins in another short story, which had never been published and which had lain in Conor’s files until he heard a corncrake on a visit to the West of Ireland a few years ago. That experience led him to revisit the character – and to challenge himself.

“I wondered if it was possible to write an entire narrative from a woman’s point of view,” Conor says.

He had a premise and decided to go for it, starting the action as Edith reaches the end of her life in a Midlands nursing home.

The novella incorporated the earlier short story, in which a girl witnesses something that rattles her young life.

Before that, lying in a hayfield, she hears a corncrake, the now-rare bird that had inspired Conor.

His own experience of hearing the bird made Conor decide to set this story in an era when corncrakes were common in meadows and bogs.

Pictured: Conor Bowman was born in Castlepollard Mother and Baby Home in 1965. He is pictured at a tree in the graveyard of the home, where people have placed children’s shoes, urging people to remember what was done to women and children in these places. PHOTO: CONOR BOWMAN.