The US-born author of a new novel set on an Irish dairy farm has expressed a fear for the future of Irish agriculture.
Ryan Dennis who grew up on a dairy farm in Upstate New York and who is currently living in Galway, held a virtual launch of ‘The Beasts They Turned Away’ in conjunction with Kenny’s book shop, Galway, on Thursday, March 11.
Ryan said that he took a specific interest in Irish agriculture in his writing partly because Ireland is one of the few places in which farming is still somewhat integrated into the social fabric of the general public.
This he said is clear with shows such as ‘Countrywide’, ‘Nationwide’ and the presence of farming in the media.
“In the US, family farming is all but entirely disappeared, and it is far from the mind of the average citizen,” Ryan said.
Still, I fear for the future of Irish agriculture. Just as the US did not learn from specific policies in Australia in 2001 that saw a majority of its family farms go out of business, I think there are certain lessons from US agriculture that the EU is ignoring, and which may specifically impact Ireland the most.
In short, there are certain policy ideologies in place that will cause Irish farms to disappear in the near-to-intermediate future, he warned.
“To explore policy impact on Irish farming, I moved to Galway and completed a practice-in-research PhD in NUI Galway that combined fiction writing and the academic study of ag policy. The most significant result of this project is a literary novel, published by Epoque Press,” he said.
“The literary gothic novel allegorises present Irish farming, and to my knowledge, is the only fiction that addresses such concerns in modern agriculture.
“It is my hope that it will help flame the debate on how to best serve Irish family farming,” said the US-born author.
The ageing farmer stubbornly refuses to succumb in the face of adversity and will do anything, at any cost, to keep hold of his farm and the child.
Rapidly Changing World
This dark and lyrical debut novel confronts a claustrophobic rural community caught up in the uncertainties of a rapidly changing world.
“I grew up on a small dairy farm in the western part of New York State and noticed that there weren’t many novels written about contemporary farming,” Ryan continued.
“This didn’t seem fair to a group of people with such intense selfhood, a lived experience much different than most people in society, and for an occupation that requires so much from the people who do it,” he said.
Farmers like my family worked hard and struggled to make it to another day. And still, their story wasn’t being told. That’s where my desire to write an accurate novel about agriculture came from.
“It was also important to me to write the farm novel out of the pastoral. Too often in movies and fiction, the field is treated as synonymous to the garden or in other words, the farm is portrayed as part of a peaceful green landscape to escape the hustle and bustle of urban spaces.
“Those who have tried to make a family farm work, however, know that isn’t a genuine representation. Instead, it’s all sweat, grit and moxie. I wanted to write a book that honoured that fact,” said Ryan.
“It was also important to me to write a farm novel that included actual farming. There are many more books out there that have farms in them than farming itself.
Presently, some of the most noted American contemporary examples, from Jane Smiley’s ‘A Thousand Acres’ (1992) to Jane Hamilton’s ‘A Map of the World’ (1994), generally avoid authentic acts of farming.
“Irish writer Belinda McKeon’s ‘Solace’ includes some field work, but in my opinion you may have to go back to Sam Hanna Bell’s 1951 novel ‘December Bride’ to see characters actually work. I wanted farmers to get to see their daily routines embedded into the novel itself,” Ryan said.