Abhaile 2024 sought to bring together members of the Irish diaspora from across the globe to contemplate contemporary return migration. The conference, dedicated to addressing the challenges and opportunities for those considering a return to Ireland, was filled with insightful sessions, engaging discussions, and practical resources on all things returning to Ireland. As no Irish gathering would be complete without paying homage to Ireland’s rich cultural tradition, Abhaile culminated in a moving spoken word piece by the talented Karl Byrne, titled ‘Returning Home.’
Karl Byrne, who returned to his native Bray, County Wicklow after over seven years in the UK, took the virtual stage Friday to deliver a piece that beautifully encapsulated the essence of the conference. His spoken word poem, ‘Returning Home,’ was originally performed at Seanoiche and captures the complex (oft conflicting) emotions of leaving, longing, and ultimately, the joyful nostalgia of coming back to one’s roots inherent to the question of where one calls home.
A member of Back for Business‘s 2018 class, Karl references ‘network connectivity issues’ in his piece, calling upon his passion for UX and coinciding perfectly with Abhaile 2024’s final panel which also aired Friday, Back for Business. In reflecting upon his professional transition with Back for Business, Karl hit upon a common theme for returnees of unexpected turns on the path home: “I found the experience really helpful at that early transition time and much good came from it. Although I didn’t end up pursuing that business idea, the ethos of what I was working on has carried through much of my studies to this day.”
We at Crosscare Irish Diaspora Support Project are so grateful to Karl for sharing with the global Irish community – we hope it resonates with you as much as it does with us.
A Note from Karl
Hi folks,
I hope you enjoyed Crosscare Irish Diaspora Support Project’s Abhaile conference and that you found it helpful on your journey back to Ireland. I’m very grateful to be part of this closing session.
Karl is my name, and as someone who lived abroad for a number of years, I wanted to share some of my experience of returning to Ireland.
There’s a pull of home, but also reasons why many of us leave, so a strong tension can exist between the two. Returning not only to my hometown, but also my family home (and although grateful to have these options) it naturally presented its own set of challenges.
Not to mention a certain virus that came along in between too and threw everything up in the air.
So this is a spoken word piece that I wrote to capture that experience, that particular period of time. Possibly because there’s a strong reflective and nostalgic element to it, I ended up weaving in lots of pop culture references, particular from the 80s and 90s. I hope they’re not too obscure.
I do have to say that many things have improved since writing this. There are still challenges of course but also many opportunities and much to be grateful for.
Hope you enjoy, thanks
Returning Home
By Karl Byrne
There’s no fanfare
No confetti
No victory lap glory day Mario Andretti
No Ferris Bueller parade with the leopard skin waistcoat all sweaty
The question is
Do folks even know you’ve been gone for all these years
Your worst fears
Not being forgotten or not being remembered
Click here to reset your password
Time and space getting blurred
Into one another, into the absurd
The reality is
No one is waiting for you to move on with their lives
I know that sounds contrived
So what am I trying to revive?
As I open up that dusty archive
Into a quasi-reality nose dive
And fragments of an old life pour out overdrive
Memories just come up and slap you in the face
Jostling for attention, to replace
The present moment copy-paste
Control C Control V
Lack of control, ah woe is me
Slowly transitioning back across that Irish Sea
I spent so much time, so much energy
Deliberating about where I wanted to be
Long walks by the sea
Long walks on the prom with my sis
Talking about all the things I missed
So much to embrace, yet so much to resist
Push and pull factors fighting on top of the list
Hard to see a future in either to exist
That’s not somehow obscured by mist
But events came to a head
And a decision had to be made
Next step on the journey post decade
So here I am
Pretending like I have a life
Making a start and playing the part
But not whole heart
Like Descartes
Things fall apart
At the roots or at the seams
This recurring theme
Of trying to build a life while on the train in a scene
Like Buster Keaton clearing sleepers from the tracks in my dreams
What does it all mean
When you’re playing the stunt man in a film on screen
Playing someone else’s character, seen yet unseen
Like Marty McFly disappearing from the photo at seventeen
All is just not quite what it seems
Doc you gotta help me, find a way, intervene
Coz I’m about to Edvard Munch on a painting as a scream
I’m about to get trapped in the space in-between
My life drawn on a canvas, what’s real, green screen
Lost in time, a machine
Delorean, Mezzanine
Inertia starts to creep
What the hell am I doing here, black sheep
Stepped in too deep
That should I wade no more faith seeps
To return as tedious as go over, too steep
Struggling with sleep
The balm for hurt minds that weep
Counting 478’s, no sheep
But cogito ergo sum
Doesn’t always add up
When the I questions me questions self in rhyme
Somehow existing and not at the same time
A dead ringer for Schrodinger
Singer
Do you have to let it linger?
Starting to realise
Just how much I compartmentalise
My so called life
Into separate chunks
Primary. Drafts. Junk
From bento box to bed bunk
Daft Punk to G-funk
But I don’t really know Thelonius Monk
All around me the kids, honey I shrunk
No fatherhood yet, but my costs sunk
Fallacy, where rhythm is life
And life is hidden
Behind a glass wall, access forbidden
You see it’s the wider context that’s so desperately lacking
I’m having network connectivity problems and it’s nerve-wracking
Servers overheating lights blinking and blacking
Living in a type of hoover, sucked in so vacking
Ever the outsider through undergrowth hacking
Shame sitting on guilt piggybacking
Where’s the Wallace to my Gromit what’s cracking
Want to turn and go back
But go back to what?
That life doesn’t exist
And I can’t shake the feeling
That a big deal for me
Is just something small in someone else’s life
My paragraph their line
Wait a sec
Incoming call, accept-decline
Choice is mine
Look it’s fine
Opportunities there, don’t whine
Or resign (yourself)
To a syndrome
Shifting baseline
System endocrine
Adrenal saw the sign
Don’t drink grapevine
Buttered oat breadline
Still space sublime
Getting closer keep climb
Fin
About Karl Byrne
Karl Byrne. Photo by Richard Hogan.
Karl Byrne is a returned Irish emigrant from the UK. In his own words:
A reluctant generalist. Along with a love for spending countless hours crafting & learning spoken word pieces, I’m a big believer in the power of design.
Having most recently moved into digital design and UX, I then returned to education in 2020 (after a long gap) to study design thinking and sustainability, two of the things I’m most interested in. Since then I’ve invested most of my time & energy in that space.
I’m particularly interested in the role that design and storytelling has in helping to address big global issues, such as climate change and nature restoration. As such, I’ve been steadily focused on trying to weave these strands together (along with some sustainable finance thrown in for good measure).
I’m also very passionate about the benefits of getting out in nature (particularly around County Wicklow), and in community building in outdoor spaces. This comes about through attending & organising events involving physical activities (including movement, yoga, running, hiking, and sea swimming).
If I had a cheesy tagline it would go something like- healthy thriving ecosystems help to support healthy thriving people.
If you’d like to find out more, you can reach me on any of the following;
You can find me on LinkedIn here
On Instagram you can catch me here
My website is www.showyourroughwork.com
And for outdoor community events on Eventbrite here
Abhaile Resources
Thanks a million to all who took part in our inaugural returning to Ireland conference. We hope you found it useful on your journey. You can watch back the panels from this year’s conference on our YouTube channel.
Our dream is for #Abhaile2024 to ignite the conversation on contemporary return migration to Ireland. You can find information on returning to Ireland here on our website. If you need support or simply want to share your thoughts, please contact us here or by emailing irishdiasporasupport@crosscare.ie.
