Riversdale

Introducing Riversdale: Ireland — 10 Sonic Poems, Vol. 1 — a new collection of sung poetry where Irish storytelling, folk music and psychological surrealism meet.

Were It Begins

Alistair Sherwood is an Irish-UK singer-songwriter, acoustic guitarist, teacher, poet and creator of Sonic Poetry—an approach that brings poetry, melody, voice and atmospheric sound together while allowing the poem to remain at the centre of the work.

Neither conventional song nor spoken word, his Sonic Poetry draws on the traditions of Irish storytelling and folk music, combining quirky narrative with leanings towards psychological surrealism. Humour, memory, human behaviour and the natural world provide recurring points of departure.

Alistair emerged from the landscape surrounding Clara Bog Nature Reserve in County Offaly, Ireland—one of the finest remaining raised bogs in Western Europe, shaped by more than 10,000 years of natural history. That early relationship with landscape continues to inform a wider interest in nature, environmental stewardship and the cultural memory of place.

Alongside Sonic Poetry, his songwriting is rooted in spiritual Celtic folk and unconventional sea-shanty storytelling, exploring the point at which music, poetry and narrative begin to overlap. His album Riversdale: Ireland — 10 Sonic Poems, Vol. 1  brings this approach together in its first collected form.

 

Picture - Clara Bog Nature Reserve

Many the visitor has seen Ireland’s only native land reptile – the viviparous lizard, sunning itself on the Boardwalk. Newts, dragonflies, damselflies, butterflies, caterpillars, and frogs all make regular appearances. Listen carefully and you will hear the curlew, snipe, stonechat, willow warbler, meadow pipet and skylark. Some of these birds are seen at regular intervals as you walk along the Boardwalk. The site is also a host to Birds of Prey including kestrel and merlin.

Coming Soon - This Is What I Remember

This Is What I Remember brings together the poems from the first two volumes of Alistair Sherwood’s Irish Sonic Poetry. Moving through memory, psychological surrealism, nature and the animal world, the collection explores the curious territory between lived experience and the imagination that reconstructs it. Childhood, landscape and ordinary encounters are revisited through an offbeat narrative lens, where humour frequently sits beside uncertainty, loss and wonder. Gathered on the page for the first time, these are poems concerned not simply with what we remember, but with what memory makes of us — and what we make of memory.

Somewhere Between Memory and Elsewhere

There are more stories waiting — some sung, some written, and some that have wandered off in entirely different directions.

Enter The Sonic Poetry