Readers – Breda, Mossy and Brendan

Sound man and reader – Joe

Reader – Susan

During the summer months of 2016, artist Tess Leak and designer Orlagh O’Brien of Haiku Island Press attended the Renal Unit at Cork University Hospital. Collaborating with 24 patients during dialysis, they created a collection of haiku inspired poetry. Originally from Japan, haiku are short, three line poems often evoking the natural world.

Many of the 92 one-to-one conversations on the ward began with the participant and artists’ creative intention to make a poem together. Some haikus were written elsewhere: at home, on an iPad, in the garden and travelling to and from the hospital.

The title of this collection is from one of the poems and reflects a reoccurring topic of conversation: the deep appreciation by the patients for the ongoing kindness shown to them by the staff during their three hour dialysis sessions, three times a week, every week.

In September 2017, Tess and Orlagh invited 7 diverse voices from the town of Skibbereen and surrounding area to read aloud the entire collection of Haiku poems ‘Tiny Kind Gestures’.