Southern Celts, Celine Kearney
Publication date: 4 April 2023
RRP: $40
Stories from People of Irish and Scottish Descent in Aotearoa
Drawing on her own family experience and insights from her PhD inquiry, Celine Kearney travelled around Aotearoa to interview New Zealanders with Scottish and Irish backgrounds. Southern Celts uses autoethnography and narrative to explore how these New Zealanders live out their cultural connections to their Irish and Scottish backgrounds. Interviews cross hemispheres and generations as well as geographic and cultural communities. They reflect the passage of time which brings constant change.
Southern Celts is a collection of interviews of New Zealanders who reflect on their connections to their Irish and Scottish cultural backgrounds. These narratives of individuals and families cover a range of related issues, including doing business, speaking and teaching Scottish and Irish Gaelic, playing music and singing, writing fiction and poetry, making documentaries, carving and sculpture, spirituality and religion, sport, and holding historical narratives of the Scots and Irish in public institutions.
Narrators also reflect on their understanding of how people with Scots and Irish backgrounds have related to indigenous Māori over the generations in Aotearoa. As we look to teach more of our own New Zealand histories in schools, these personal narratives offer rich insights for the way ahead.
Individuals interviewed in the book include:
Ann Corry, kiltmaker, Helean Kilts
Michael Fraser Milne, owner/director of Whisky Galore
Erin Hogan, proprietor, The Scottish Shop, Dunedin
Evelyn Entwistle, Scots Gaelic teacher
Michael Godfrey, Scots Gaelic teacher
Marianne Hepple, Uilleann piper
Evey McAuliffe, singer, Irish speaker
Bain McGregor, Highland piper
Keri Hulme, writer
Bernadette Hall, poet
Michael O’Leary, publisher, novelist
Laura Mills, journalist
Coral Atkinson, fiction writer
Kathleen Gallagher, writer and film maker
Malcolm Adams, master carver
Denis O’Connor, ceramicist, sculptor, writer
John Hunt, Presbyterian minister
Ann Dooley, religious studies teacher
Charlie Dunn, boxer
Stewart McKnight, curler
Ellen McCormack (née Macmillan), QSM, genealogist, Katikati historian
Robert Consedine, Treaty of Waitangi educator
Seán Brosnahan, curator, Toitū Otago Settlers Museum
“Southern Celts is a rich book, bursting with a variety of different voices, and for anyone with Scottish or Irish ancestry, this will be a particularly rewarding read, but it’s also of interest to anyone interested in other’s stories. The narrators also reflect on the passage of time, which brings constant change, and the interviews cross hemispheres and different geographic and cultural communities. Celine Kearney has done a superb job creating this book. ”
Radio New Zealand interview
Listen to Celine’s interview with Kathryn Ryan.
About the author:
Celine Kearney is the granddaughter of three Irish-born grandparents, and one born to an immigrant Irish family in Central Otago. Born and brought up on the east coast of Otago, she has experience as a journalist and a researcher, and has taught English language to adults with migrant and refugee backgrounds, and international students for over thirty years. This is the second collection of her interviews to be published.
An earlier collection of interviews of New Zealand women about their spirituality, Faces of the Goddess, drew on her own experience and understanding of nature-based Celtic spirituality. She travelled around the country between 2010 and 2013 to interview New Zealanders with Irish and Scottish backgrounds for her narrative inquiry, Southern Celts. Celine lives in Cambridge, Waikato.
Celine is available for interview
For media queries, review and giveaway copies, extracts and interviews, please contact publicist Karen McKenzie, 027 693 9044, karen@lighthousepr.co.nz, www.lighthousepr.co.nz