Wake of the Whale is a hybrid docutext of poetry and creative nonfiction that tells the story of the twentieth century whaling stations in Co. Mayo, and the legacy of whales in Irish waters today.
Join the authors for readings from the book, followed by a Q&A.
About the book:
Wake of the Whale (Mayo Books, 2024) By Alice Kinsella and Daniel Wade
A breaking of the surface, too smooth to be a wave. A spray. That this is here, our Mayo waters, this huge creature. A man guides the harpoon.
Explosion.
The tethered whale blows
Final breaths
The greyscale boat follows
in its wake.
It is a little-known fact that from 1908–1922, two Norwegian owned whaling stations operated in County Mayo, not far from the area that would be at the heart of the Corrib Gas Controversy a century later.
Watcher has lived in Mayo most of her life. When she stumbles upon this fact she becomes, like many before her, obsessed with the whales. While she pursues whales on Mayo shores, she reflects on Irish colonial history, the threat of the climate crisis, and asks:
What is it that makes the men hunt them? What in the whale cries
’Come, I am here for the taking and when I flee you, it is an insult’?
Mariner tries to answer this question. Through poetry influenced by medieval sagas and sea shanties alike, he tells the story of not just one whaling voyage, but of the history of commercial whaling itself. He endeavours to give voice to the working Irish men of a community since dissolved.
Together, the authors weave a conversation that challenges our deeply-ingrained assumptions about both human and animal nature.
Blending history, poetry, and documentary, Wake of the Whale asks: are the attitudes that brought whales to the brink of extinction now threatening our own?
Advance praise for Wake of the Whale
"An utterly brilliant and visual-physical-poetical exploration of the fate and mortal beauty of the whale in Irish waters. All the pity and majesty of their existence, and ours, is laid bare in Alice Kinsella’s dreamlike work which, like Melville’s Moby-Dick before it, defies all description and arouses the deepest empathy."– Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan or, the Whale
“Kinsella & Wade's magnificent new book extends the tradition of sea-shanty singers, Melville's classic novel, and a deep history of whaling as cultural practice into the 21st century. Newsclips, archival photographs, poetry, & political challenges to preserving the Anthropocene all fuse together to tell us an essential new tale from “the sea [that] has a thousand spouts.”” – Mark Nowak, author of Coal Mountain Elementary
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