Strong Motherlines:
Aftermath in the Visual and Written Art of Eithne and Sarah Strong

‘Aftermath’ is a freighted word and encapsulates not only trauma but the perseveration of the repercussions of that injury, suggesting the lingering impact of damage, and orienting us towards a trauma-informed historical perspective. In this talk, I explore how ‘Aftermath’ serves as both a facilitating and complicating concept to examine the intertwined yet distinct careers of the writer Eithne Strong (1923-1999) and her daughter, the artist Sarah Strong (1949-). Eithne Strong, despite her prolific and consistent output spanning five decades, has largely faded from the annals of 20th century literature. Unlike her contemporary Patrick Kavanagh who holds a prominent position in mid-century Irish letters, Eithne Strong remains overlooked, despite A.A. Kelly’s insightful comparison of Strong’s book length poem, Flesh … The Greatest Sin (1980) to Patrick Kavanagh’s The Great Hunger (1942). Kelly observed that in Kavanagh’s poem, ‘man was tied to the soil’, while in Strong’s poem, woman is ‘tied to her fertile womb’, shedding light on why Eithne’s contributions have yet to be fully incorporated into a national literary tradition that relies too heavily on a public/male, private/female dichotomy.

The work of her daughter, Sarah Strong, an Irish visual artist residing in England, confronts this historical exclusion through her diverse artistic expressions, including mixed media and poetry. Sarah’s work represents both a profound reclamation of her mother’s legacy as an unconventional woman and writer from the shadows of literary history, as well as her own artistic process of recovery from the overshadowing aftermath of an era that not only pathologized female creativity but also paradoxically idolized and punished mothers. Specifically, I examine how Sarah’s poignant 2014 Film, I Hear Fish Drowning, and her powerful 2023 exhibition, Washing Soot off Stained Glass (staged to coincide with the centenary of her mother’s birth) cast new light on Eithne’s work while asserting Sarah’s own artistic trajectory. Through these works, Sarah seeks to embody a multi-faceted revival of Eithne’s oeuvre and simultaneously seeks to confront and transcend the aftermath of being Eithne’s daughter in the context of these times.