Output details

Hy Brasil

Hy Brasil is a radio feature with fictional elements set on the mythical island of Hy Brasil which in maritime legend existed off the west coast of Ireland; the story concerns a disillusioned young man seeking physical and spiritual solitude on the island but finding it fearfully uninhabitable. Research questions included: 1 How to create a new place in which to investigate a fundamentally fearful relationship with Nature. 2 Was it possible to construct a plausible period drama in an implausible landscape – a place that could exist, but didn’t? Research was undertaken into English modernist poets like Basil Bunting, into forms that mixed fact and fiction, and into inventions of the new out of the freedom from the real – a topic going back to my PhD thesis on ecophobia. The form, between documentary and drama, made a link between parts of my work and made a unique synthesis of environmental philosophy, nature writing and poetry. Again, this was a creative collaboration with sound recordist Chris Watson and BBC producer Sarah Blunt for the BBC Natural History Unit. Hy Brasil received an initial audience of around a million and a quarter listeners and continues to gather listeners as a podcast.