Holdfast

by Annette Skade

The Channel team are delighted to announce our first single-authored book project, a very special poetry chapbook by two-time contributor Annette Skade. Growing out of a single poem published in Channel Issue 2, Holdfast is a moving tribute both to the work of nineteenth-century botanist Ellen Hutchins and to the seaweed around which Ellen built her life’s work.

We can’t wait to celebrate the launch at Bantry Library as part of the Ellen Hutchins Festival, on Friday 23 August at 6.00pm. Visit the festival website to find out more.

Pre-orders are available below, with domestic and international shipping rates available.

Front cover of Holdfast, showing the title and author name in a red-bordered text box, intersected by an image of red seaweed, on a yellow background

Cover featuring work from seaweed by Marina Dmitrik

Ireland: €15.95

International: €19.00

Confined by lockdown to her home in Bantry Bay and witnessing its changing face in a time of environmental degradation, Annette Skade began to comb the landscape and archives of her locality in search of connection to the life of one of its most famous residents: nineteenth-century botanist Ellen Hutchins, who collected hundreds of seaweeds, lichens, mosses and liverworts and discovered several new species in the course of a short life spent tied to Bantry as a carer for her mother and brother.

Holdfast is the fruit of this creative inquiry – a poetic sequence taking its shape from the algae studied by Ellen, moving from tip to anchor-point; an act of friendship across centuries, and a paean both to the work of a great scientist and to the resilience of seaweed.

Annette Skade was born in Manchester and has lived for many years on Ireland’s southwest coast. Her award winning first collection, Thimblerig, was published by Bradshaw Books in 2013. In 2021 she received a doctorate from Dublin City University for her research on the poetry of Anne Carson. Her poems appear in poetry magazines and anthologies in Ireland, the UK, the US and Australia.