Siún Carden
Siún Carden is a poet from the north of Ireland who lives in Shetland, a group of small islands at the very north of Scotland. She joined Godzilla from Mariehamn, and travelled with the boat to Björkö, Vitören, Nötö, and Seili (Själö). This year Carden is the recipient of a New Writers Award for poetry from the Scottish Book Trust. She works as a lecturer and researcher in the Centre for Island Creativity, which is part of Shetland UHI (University of the Highlands and Islands). Her academic background is in anthropology, but most of the students she teaches are social art practitioners. She teaches on an MA programme called Art and Social Practice, led by Roxane Permar.
During the Godzilla residency Carden worked on poems and finding out how places like Shetland and Baltic coastal areas are linked through their relationships with the sea. She also did some knitting. – “I’m interested in the knitting of Shetland and Ireland, and there are place-based forms of knitting around the Baltic Sea too.”
“I’m curious about the Baltic Sea because I grew up beside the Irish Sea and now live in Shetland, which lies where the North Sea and the Atlantic meet, but I don’t know much about the Baltic at all.”
As anthropologist she is also curious to learn more about how people (even with our drawbacks) coexist with other species in the Baltic Sea area.