Hello, sculpture vultures., and thank you for joining me today. I’m going to start with an apology. I am so sorry not to have told you that over the summer the programming is going to be slightly out of the usual sync. I will be dropping just two episodes – one will be today, and one will be in August. It really annoys me when podcast hosts don’t tell people about their schedule changes, because you know, if you’re looking forward to a show, as avid sort of podcast listeners do, then it can be really annoying because you’re looking forward to that program, then it doesn’t come out, but it does go to show that even with the best of intentions, sometimes these things go awry. I found myself having an incredibly busy week at work, and then zooming off on holiday and not having done what I intended to do, which was to update you, but I’m going to let myself off the hook a little bit. I am managing a very busy summer. 

Our company’s just been finishing a really lovely project, doing some beautiful architectural features, huge gates, quite a few of them, just off Oxford Street. It’s called Rathbone Place gardens . . . if you are anywhere near those in town go and just have a little wander through, because it’s a beautiful little development, and it’s got these stunning gates which we’ve just done quite a bit of work on. 

The artist is called Robert Orchardson, and he works with these geometric shapes to create architectural features and other sculpture actually. But it was quite interesting because he has this lovely little description, actually, it’s quite a long description about his intention and design for the gates. And just let me just quote him slightly. He says they are geometric, tessellating forms, which stem from an interest in repeated structures that extend towards an infinite Vanishing Point and patterns that articulate infinity through a single point of perspective. He goes on to talk about the particular movement of light and these fins, and how they are supposed to look like one thing from one direction, and then pedestrians see them as flat and impenetrable from another. But you know, it’s quite a lot of highfalutin stuff, and obviously he’s an artist that thinks deeply about things. But it really did quite make me laugh, because actually, the pedestrians that are walking through these gates constantly every day during their commutes, they’ve got no idea about these great, grand ideas and concepts behind them. And quite a lot of the comments that we got were things like, ‘well, it’s just a gate innit’. And it really did make me laugh, because it just sort of reminds you how humble you really should be as a creator, because even our grandest and loftiest thoughts, our great philosophies behind our works, and the great efforts that go into them are often not appreciated by the average person, and they’re kind of really summed up in an incredibly underwhelming way. And I know personally that I’ve kind of, you know, written my heart and soul into a story sometimes, and then people say, ‘oh, what you’ve been up to?’ And I’m like, ‘well, you know, finished another book’. And they’ll be like, ‘Oh, so you wrote a book, did you?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I did’. But you know, it is a great leveler, because actually, art that we create, it’s not for other people, it’s for us. We do it because we can’t not do it. And you know, you kind of hope that a few people in the world might kind of catch a glimpse of what you were trying to do, but actually it’s not about other people. It really is about satisfying our own creative souls.

But actually, today I’m not talking about gates, I’m not talking about architectural features. I’m not even talking about souls today. I am talking to Orna Ross, who is the founder of the Alliance of Independent Authors. If you don’t know who or what they are, it’s the most marvelous international group representing all those writers and presses who publish independently.

Now she’s actually been a virtual mentor of mine since like, 2015 when I wrote my first novel. I mean, she won’t know this, and so I’m going to try not to be a fan girl when I’m talking to her, but she really is an astonishing font of knowledge. And she just knows so much about the different facets of the publishing industry because she’s worked in all areas of it, and she’s also a best selling and award winning author of many, many books. You know, I definitely can’t even list them, but they include historical fiction, poetry, non fiction, and she was published by Penguin before she decided to take back her rights and the control of her books in order to start publishing independently. 

But today, I’m not really talking to her about publishing, per se. I want to know more about a fantastic project that she’s got involved with, and that is the creation of a monument to Maud Gonne in Dublin, and all the ways, the quite unusual ways, actually, that she’s gone about it. So I began our conversation today by asking her to tell us more about Maud Gonne

Orna: Yes, so there’s so much to tell. She’s such an interesting person. She was born to a British Army colonel, well, he became a colonel at the end of his career, Captain when she was born, and two bohemian style parents. I would say to a very, very wealthy family – particularly on her mother’s side – but both families, middle class, wealthy, British. Her mother died when she was five, and that was probably one of the most formative experiences of her whole life. Her father was in the Army. He was a polymath, and he spoke five languages, and the army quickly, kind of brought him in for diplomatic missions around the world. So she and her sister, Kathleen, who was two years younger,were what was called then army orphans. They had a nurse and a governess, and would be sort of farmed out to friends and relatives, and Tommy would sweep in from his latest wherever he was, with dashing stories about whatever he had been doing and presents for them. And that was kind of the picture of her childhood, that she adored her father. Then, in her late teens, he finally got a kind of a settled staff job in Dublin, and she came to live with him in the royal barracks in Dublin, to be his housekeeper. And that was a job, a full time job, I can tell you. In those days, managing the invitations book and the whole running of a household, you know, you needed to be on the ball. And she was, and she loved all that, and was really happy with that for a while. But he died tragically, very young, 50 years of age, and she was shipped back to to England and spent some time with the English relatives again.

During her period in Ireland, she had became radicalized by seeing an eviction and a pretty cruel eviction, where she came across the woman of the house on the side of the road, and she was going to the big house for a musical party. And when she got there, she explained to the host what she had seen. And the host, of course, kind of said, well, there’s nothing we can do. They hadn’t paid their rent, you know. So their cottage had been battered down with the eviction battering ram. You know, they used to destroy the cottages rather than leave people in them rent free. So she was appalled by this, and she’s still talking about it 60 years later in her autobiography, as a complete shock to her system. And it made her think about Tommy, her father, and her whole kind of part in the system. And then she becomes interested in Irish affairs and reading Irish stuff, which was how she met the poet, WB Yeats. 

Now most people come to Maud Gonne through Yeats. She was his muse. Famously the day she called to his father’s house, he fell in love with her, and he wrote amazing, beautiful poetry. And in Ireland, every school kid learns this poetry and learns about her as the muse of Yeats, but he was much less of a figure in her life than she was in his. And she, in fact, was in love with a married politician in France, and she had a couple of children by him, but because she was rich, she inherited her parents money at the age of 21 she, very unusually for those days, could go her own way. The way she decided to go was to be an activist for Irish freedom. And she did that in all sorts of ways. So that’s the early part of her life explained

She went on to be a woman’s rights trailblazer as well, when she when she couldn’t get access herself to any of the nationalist organizations in Ireland because they didn’t allow any women in and so she started Inghinidhe na hÉireann, Daughters of Ireland, her own women’s organization. And she was also quite an accomplished artist, writer, speaker and performer. She played a big part in the Irish literary Renaissance, both as Yeats’ muse, but also as a patron, a very generous patron to a number of artists and writers and newspapers and anybody who was on the side of the cause of Ireland, she was there to help out. 

She was also a dedicated occultist, and that was another link that she had with Yeats. They would go astral flying together, and she was a medium for him. Many times she saw visions. She was always up for a tabletop or a wrap or, you know, anything that was going on in that direction. She was interested. She did convert to Roman Catholicism when she married an Irish nationalist. It was quite a political sort of allegiance as well as a romantic one, and it turned out to be a disaster. They very quickly separated, but she had a son from her marriage, and a daughter from her previous liaison. 

I think more than anything, she was a beacon of inspiration, and you see that so clearly in Yeats’ poetry, but she was a beacon of inspiration for women, for Irish nationalists, and a really kind, generous, giving person. She had an incredible presence. I haven’t even mentioned the famous beauty, and for the first early part of her life, she was an absolute, renowned beauty. And a British journalist called her the most beautiful woman in the world. Douglas Hyde, who went on to be the Irish president, has written, you know, eloquent paragraphs about how much his head was spinning from her beauty. And of course, Yeats’ poetry immortalized that beauty. So you know that she was very inspiring, but she was also somebody who had great presence, and she gave full attention to whoever was in front of her. So she made people feel amazing. And that was part, part of her inspiring qualities I think

Lucy: Gosh, I’m not sure how you can live up to being so many things. I don’t really know where to start when you tell us all those different aspects of her personality, this ethical core, began that sort of journey for her. I wonder whether that was something that it was just such a shock to see that terrible thing happen, or whether actually, in her background, maybe her father, or the kind of material that she’d read, whether that had awakened earlier in her than that? 

Orna: She had a French Republican governess who was a big influence in her life around issues of freedom and independence. I think that was one part of it. Tommy and herself had a very close relationship, and he treated her in quite an adult way from a young age. And he, in fact, was thinking of leaving the Army and going into politics for Home Rule. Home Rule was a big issue, you know, the hot topic in Ireland at the time. And so they would have had debates, and she would have been surrounded by that kind of talk. I think there was her own personal drive for independence as well.

The English relatives were very Victorian and Uncle William in particular, was a very stark patriarchal type, and she clashed with him in a big way. After Tommy died, he was quite, what he would have thought was quite normal, in terms of his expectations of what a young lady was supposed to do. But she had this very free existence, and Tommy had treated her as an equal, and she just couldn’t go under the cosh. And I think it was kind of personal for her. I think she associated the way in which she herself couldn’t get a foothold as a woman, with Ireland’s inability to get a foothold, you know, within the union. Ireland was post famine at this time, she famously did a very fiery speech about Queen Victoria, as the famine queen. And you know, so for her, I think it was very much she always saw the intersectionality between womens’ situation and Ireland’s situation and her own personal situation.

Lucy: And I was interested as well about this idea of Yeats and the muse, because the kind of sculptors I’ve spoken to often there’s quite a controversial feeling about this concept of the muse that quite often feel like it’s a kind of predatory, kind of male gaze, but it doesn’t feel like that was the balance of power between between Yeats and Gonne.

That’s right. Definitely not. She knew she was going to be immortalized in these poems. He wrote, you know, articles about her. And they were good at back scratching each other and promoting each other’s work. And she always accepted that. She very famously said, you know, on his fourth or fifth or 10th or 15th proposal, might have exaggerated slightly, but he was always asking her to marry him, and he was complaining about how unhappy it made him, and how, you know, difficult it made his life that she wouldn’t give in kind of thing. And she just said to him, Willy, you make great poetry out of what you call your own happiness, and you’re happy with that. And that’s how she saw that end of things, if you like. 

She knew she was beautiful, and she couldn’t not know, it wasn’t that important to her. She would never, ever show that she knew. And she would just kind of move through mildly amused by the attention. So she handled all of that extremely well. And as she got older, losing her looks did not in any way . . . He wrote poetry about her losing her looks, quite amusing, but, yeah, exactly. But he had no interest in her once she had, and he actually went on to propose marriage to her daughter when he was 50 and she was 23 which is a whole other story. 

This is why, as I wrote the books about Maud Gonne, I could not keep it to one volume. It had to go . . . very unusual for literary historical . . . to go into a series. But, you know, there was no way to do justice to this woman’s life in just one book. So that’s a whole, whole book in itself. But yes, she just cracked on with the work. You know, she wasn’t thinking about herself in that way. So she took all the attention that came her way and in some way, transmuted it into something she could use for the cause. So, for example, he wrote a play called Kathleen Houlihan . . . He and Lady Gregory, his partner, in the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, wrote this play together. He wrote it with Maud Gonne in mind, and she absolutely jumped at the chance to play Kathleen Houlihan, who was a representation of Ireland on the Abbey stage. She loved that, so she took it wherever it was. She transmuted it, she used it, but her head was never turned by it. 

Lucy: Tell us about the novels that you’ve got coming up, this novel series, and how it fits in with this hope of a sculpture that you’ve got. 

Orna: Yeah, so I, I’ve been writing about these guys for a long time. I did a novel way back before I was an indie author, back in the days when there wasn’t really any other option but working with third party publishers. And so I did a novel with Penguin called A Dance in Time, and it was one book, and it wasn’t enough. And also, there was a bad idea around the book of bringing it in with a present day story and blah, blah, blah, and I won’t bore you with the details, but anyway, I was never happy with it. 

Years later, when I got all my rights back, I rewrote the story and released that as Her Secret Rose, and again, was all one book, and again, I wasn’t happy. So it grew into a series I’ve been working on for a number of years now, and it’s meticulously researched, too much so, but I never knew what I needed to know until I was kind of done, and I had to work to the end of the series and kind of work my way back. So finally, it’s about to come out into the world. I’m publishing next year, April 2025, in the normal way, hardback and paperback and ebook. But as I was working on these books, it really began to incense me that she had been overlooked. And, you know, I know your listeners are all very familiar with the way in which women’s public work is overlooked everywhere, and Dublin Ireland is no exception.

So, yeah, I really felt, why do we not have a statue of Maud Gonne in Dublin, after all the work that she did, and also, I think she’s a very interesting person for these times right now. I think the reason that we don’t have a statue of her in particular, why, when it’s raised, there’s always a reason not to . . . there always was a reason to vilify Maud Gonne. 

You know, when she hid, of course, the fact that she had, in inverted commas “illegitimate children”. You know, all of that could not be revealed. She lived a secret life in Paris while she did her work in Ireland and London, and that was very much used against her during the separation. And there was a very public court case, and people largely sided with her husband. And she was actually hissed at at the Abbey theater when she went along where she had been sort of Queen of the stage a decade before. And she, you know, had to retire to Paris and lived there for some years in isolation. 

Later on, she was called a liar because she didn’t reveal some of those things. She got things wrong in her autobiography that, you know, the ways in which her personal life, her political life, her beliefs, have been used as a reason to not honor her, I think makes her a very interesting subject for our times, and I’m personally interested in that aspect of it. 

But there were lows as I began to kind of voice my thing about, why has she been so overlooked? Why don’t we have a statue? We have three statues, actually in Dublin, of Countess Markie, and she was also an Irish independence activist, but in a much more masculine mode. Maud Gonne was a freelancer. Wherever there was a need, she would go there. She nursed soldiers in the First World War. She went to Donegal and Mayo and very out of the way places to encourage people who were being evicted for no reason, and all of this kind of thing. Wherever there was a need, she went there. She became, in later life, very much a social democrat and human rights around prisoners, and political prisoners in particular, was something that was very active in her mind. Her son, Sean McBride, was co-founder of Amnesty International, and that very much grew out of her approach to human rights. So as I was kind of talking about this online, I found there were lots of other women who also felt, why hasn’t Maud Gonne got a statue? And that’s really how it came about. A big novel series and years of work wasn’t enough.

Lucy: I was gonna say, I mean, where are you? You know, running ally, podcasting, constantly writing, it just wasn’t enough. Because, I mean, seeing a big monument – and it will be a big monument, if it’s in Dublin – put in place, it’s not a small job. There are lots of areas that you have to consider before it makes it onto that kind of stage. So, I mean, have you really . . . You’ve geared up for this? 

Orna: Yes, I believe you know that I’m not under any illusions, and none of us are under any illusions as to what it’s going to take. We’re expecting it to take about five years, and we’re starting with this Kickstarter campaign, which will put us on a professional footing, which will get all of the right things in place that we are going to need in order to make the application. And, you know, the commissioning process, everything will take time, will take attention. And we, you know, we’re very aware of that. So insofar as one knows what one is doing any time, or certainly, I’m always throwing myself into things and then finding out, all right, this is what it takes. But we do. We know that it’s going to take time, and it’s going to take work, and it’s going to take dedication, and we’re all very up for that. 

Images credit: Emma Stroude.

There’s a fantastic group of volunteers and we’ve already started. We’ve done lots of things in terms of reaching out to the family and also this publicity, where we want to begin to talk about her, and talk about it not being there. The reason I personally have the creative drive to do this, on top of doing the books, is that I just feel public monuments are so important. You know, I’ll write my books, and people who read books will read them. You know, people who read books like that will read those books, and I hope they will enjoy them and find them worthy of their time. But a monument on a street is something different. It’s part of the life of the city, and you know it, it can create conversations, it can inspire young people, it can do things that a book can’t do. And so seeing so many other women who felt the same, and some men too, but it is mostly  . . . we are about 80% – 85% women on what we’re calling our committee, because we voted with as little red tape and bureaucracy as we can at this stage anyway, and just seeing the energy there. And you know how we all feel the same, and we’re coming from different angles. 

You know, people are interested in her for different reasons, but everybody is feeling, ‘no, this is wrong’. She deserves to be there, and we’re going to make it happen. And I really feel like at the moment, we’re a really exciting time for public sculpture. There’s been so much negativity about it, because, well, rightly so in many respects. But there’s this kind of, there is an energy around public sculpture, and there’s a lot of people feeling very much like they want to see a change. And so actually, it’s no wonder that it’s spreading. I mean, you are not in this field particularly, and yet it’s drawn you in somehow, because it is a unique thing. People do love their public sculptures. Like nothing I’ve ever come across when I’m working in public spaces. It’s like everybody wants to come and tell you how much they love that statue, you know? I mean, it really is quite a unique form of art. I haven’t seen that when you go to the National Gallery or something, people stand and admire, but they don’t interact the way that they do with public sculpture, I don’t think.

Lucy: I completely agree very much so, and I think that’s why there’s so much passion on the other side as well, where people you know, are toppling statues of people whose ideas and beliefs they don’t agree with. And I, you know, I think the positive side where we don’t destroy history, but we actually expand its representation. 

Again, I know these are things that your audience are super familiar with, but I think it’s becoming more as you say. I’m a writer, this is not my area at all, but I think more and more people are actually feeling that, and wanting to be part of it. You feel you’re part of something historic, if you create statues that’s on the street in a way that you never would, creating a book or creating a different kind of artwork.

Lucy: I mean, do you have any sort of notions at all yet about what you’d like the sculpture to be?

Orna: What we’ve done, what we did was . . . Emma Stroud is an Irish artist who’s renowned for her pictures of Maud Gonne that emphasize her fearlessness and her courage and those kinds of aspects of her personality and character. So we see the, you know, what the statue will actually look like is something that’s going to come from the sculptures themselves. But what Emma did for us was she did a concept that we could use in this stage, the fundraising for the initial phase one of the campaign, and she has pictured her and just . . . I love the concept. She’s sort of in middle age, and she’s in her trademark black.

I forgot to mention that the husband she had the not-great-separation with went on to be executed for his part in the Irish rising in 1916 so she immediately took back his name. She became Maud Gonne McBride – his surname was 

McBride – and she dressed in black for the rest of her life. You know, that was very much part of her trademark, or branding when she became Maud Gonne McBride. And so Emma has pictured her in her very distinctive form of dress with a veil, loose skirts that she used to wear, and, you know, boots for stomping around the place, and invariably, her Irish wolfound Dagda was out and about with her. So Emma has created that in the drawing concept, she has the dog beside her, and she’s striding out. 

Where we’d love to see her is on the pedestrian aisle outside the General Post Office in Dublin, which is a very iconic sort of . . . It’s the heart of the Irish rising in Dublin in 1916 but it’s also got a very iconic sculpture inside of Cú Chulainn, an ancient Irish hero. And it’s got all sorts of very important historical associations. Where it’s located, is a very wide street, and there’s a pedestrian aisle down the center, and we would love to see her on that aisle across from the GPO, striding down from north to south, because that is also the route that is taken by all the protest marches in Dublin. They all walk down that street in that direction. 

I think it would just be so cool to see our Maud with them.

Yeah, that’s the kind of plan at the moment. But, you know, it will go to open competition, and the sculptors will come with their ideas. And so we have no idea at all at this point what it will look like. 

Lucy: Will it be Irish sculptors only? 

I don’t think so. I don’t think so. And we have made a final decision on that, unless there is, you know, a sort of a compelling reason to do it that way, I don’t see why it needs to be at all.

The thing is, that’s just the most exciting stage where you start to see the completely unique takes that all the sculptors who submit come at this, and that’s the part of it that really just blows my mind. It’s really difficult, I imagine, for the judges who have to decide, to choose, because, you know, they all tell a different story. So I’m not envious of you on that level at all, because I’d want them all.

I know, if only we could.

It will be super interesting. And, you know, we’ll have a panel and a committee to do that, and people who are better placed to judge such things than I am. But, yeah, I think that whole process of putting it out there and seeing what does come back is so interesting and so exciting, because it’s so different, what people come back with, so I’m very much looking forward to being at that stage. 

Lucy: Tell people how they can help to support at least the beginnings of this sculpture campaign. 

So yes, please, if you could go to Kickstarter – actually, I’ll give you the audio friendly link, which is Orna Ross / More Than  A Muse. Because the whole point of our campaign is we’re saying Maud Gonne was so much more than a muse, because that’s actually how a lot of people still remember her. So yeah, OrnaRoss.com-forwardslash-more than a muse, will take you to the Kickstarter page. And on Kickstarter, you do need to sign up, but that’s so quick and easy, and they won’t inundate you with emails or anything like that. And then you can choose to make a pledge that starts at as little as one pound. And I would really encourage everybody, if you could even just do that, because the number of backers is going to be just as important as the amount we raise. So every single person who supports, even at the level of a pound, it really, really, really does help and is worth doing. We also, though, have lots of rewards. I’m doing a special edition of A Life Before, which is the first book in the series, a special edition ebook which will have all the names of the supporters in it, and also a beautiful hardback deluxe edition with sprayed edges and black ribbon and gold foil and the works.

Emma has given the two original drawings and they’ve already sold, but there are prints of both the side view and the front view of her concept. We have, what’s left now, there is a retreat – I’m doing a retreat next year in Ireland. And also there are a few other rewards, which I can’t quite remember off the top of my head now, because some of them are gone and some of them are not. But have a look down through the rewards. We try to do things at all sorts of different levels, depending on what level of support people would like to give. And as I said, there’s no need to support beyond just putting your name there and a pound, that you think this should happen, and Maud Gonne deserves a statue, because she totally does. 

Lucy: She definitely does. I’m hoping, as well, that you might come back to tell us a little bit more once the Kickstarter has finished. When does that finish?

Orna: It finishes on the 12th of August. And then we’ll be regrouping, and we’ll be getting ready to put in the application, and you know, we’ll be going from there. Then I believe that’s a process which could take a little bit of time and iteration. So, yeah, I’d love to come back and tell you how we get on at the next milestone. 

Lucy: Absolutely, and we’ll definitely want to talk to all of the shortlisted sculptors who end up throwing their hat in the ring, I dare say. Thank you Orna for joining us today. I really appreciate it, and best of luck with this Kickstarter. 

Orna: Thank you so much, Lucy, thanks for having me and Maude on the show. 

Lucy: I have supported the Kickstarter, and I really hope you’ll go over to Orna’s Kickstarter page and take a look. Today, they have surpassed their initial goal of just a very modest £3000, and I know that they’ve hit £5117, but they are aiming for a new goal of £7500, and there’s still plenty of time to support them and help them get up there. So if you’ve enjoyed the show today and you’d like to support me and my show, please do it. Please today, put your money and your time and your effort into just going over to Orna’s page and taking a look at it, and please support her with at least the one pound, very modest pledge, that she has on offer. I mean, I’d encourage you to go for the £1000. Incredible. What do they have? They’ve got . . . you can do a residential writing trip. And, my goodness, I wish I had the spare change to go and do that, because it’s in Ireland, and it’s at an incredible historic destination involved with Maud Gonne. And I would love to go and do it with Orna and Joanna Penn, who’s another brilliant writer, who also will be there. But, you know, I haven’t quite got the spare change for that one, but maybe you do, and you’d like to go and explore some writing with them. So I encourage you to do that. But if you can’t, one pound will do and you know, this would be a magnificent project to see happen. Maud Gonne definitely needs a statue. We need more statues of women everywhere. So please go and do it today.

Thank you for listening today. I hope you’ve been inspired. 

If you’d like to connect, you can find me on X or Instagram. 

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