The Prompt - imagining 'A World Without' with Sinéad Moriarty

RTÉ News​

a day ago

This week on The Prompt on RTÉ Radio 1, guest writer Sinéad Moriarty's writing prompt is 'A World Without'.
Sinead chose three pieces blind from the shortlist:
C B Dunne - Looking At You Like You Were Unbreakable
D Black- Ground
G Faller - Birdsong
J Godsil - A World Without Me Is Now Impossible
T Mixon- A Pile Of Hurt
A Pembroke - The Fractured Nest
S Schlecht - Seed On Fertile Ground
The first of the pieces selected for broadcast is by Jillian Godsil from Arklow Writers Group – her piece is a crafty take on the prompt imagining how it is now almost impossible to be forgotten with AI and digital tools to preserve us.
"I used to imagine the world without me as something noble," she says. "A quiet vanishing. A gentle fade into the background hum of memory and mismatched stories. The kind of disappearance people toasted with bittersweet wine and said things like "They were one of the good ones"..."
Jillian imagines "A world where "gone" is negotiable. Where you don't die, you just get archived. Where your kids don't light candles, they just ping your avatar and say, "Mum, quick one, how do I cook a ham?""
Sinéad Moriarty and The Prompt's presenter Zoë Comyns discuss the pros and cons of persisting as digital versions of ourselves.
With a completely different approach to the prompt, Sebastian Schlecht imagines a being who accompanies and almost haunts the narrator from within:
'There is a little man. He lives in my heart. His favourite pastime is playing the drums. He likes to play in the middle of the night - once I fall asleep, when all is calm inside of me. Only when nothing but my blood is humming quietly does he start his act.'
Sinead felt this piece handled that feeling of when 'you're in the grip of whatever worries you have and you can't think straight'. Schlecht said he 'woke up one night with my heart racing — almost like a mild panic attack. At first, my thoughts went into panic mode, but I was able to calm myself quickly. It wasn't a new feeling to me. I recognised it as a stress response rather than something dangerous — something happening in my body, not something that is me.
"That sparked the image of a little person living inside my body. With the image of the little man came the thought that fear might not actually be mine. That it is sometimes inherited — a kind of generational fear, passed down from the people who came before me. That expanded the emotional world of the piece."
Listen to last week's edition of The Prompt with guest writer Edel Coffey
The final piece for this episode is written under the pen name Alice Pembroke. The author is a professional writer with several published books, currently parenting two small children while living in a nesting situation that inspired this work. She told The Prompt she would use a pen name due to legal sensitivities. "Family law proceedings in Ireland are subject to the in-camera rule," she says, "meaning that cases are heard behind closed doors to protect families' privacy. However, this also restricts discussion of matters like maintenance, access, and custody. Court-ordered reports, where assessors interview family members to recommend arrangements, are particularly sensitive. 'Nesting' (where children stay in the family home while parents move in and out) is often proposed but, due to the housing crisis, can leave separated parties stuck without secure accommodation."
Alice's piece The Fractured Nest is a mix of fiction and memoir but outlines the complexities and psychological stress caused by this nesting arrangement.
'This is the court's solution. A "bird nest" arrangement. A home that stays steady, with parents drifting in and out like weather.'
This piece moved Sinéad, who 'feels viscerally the story of love and loss, in the world that she now has to navigate.'
'Every week, I carry my life in the boot of my car—half a wardrobe, a laptop, charger, shampoo, and a book I am always too tired to read.
On the other weeks, I disappear. I rent a room, small and scentless, with laminate floors and a humming radiator. I keep the blinds closed. I speak to no one. I wake up with the shape of them still pressed into my arms, their voices echoing in the crumple of the pillow. I wonder if they notice. The absence of my coat in the hall, the missing clutter of my tea mugs by the sink. Do they scan the house for me and find it flat, colourless?'
"It transports you into another person's life," Sinéad says. "The power of this is that without having experienced it you feel every single bit of pain and loss that she's experiencing."
Sinéad Moriaty's most recent novel Good Sisters is out now and her next book The In-Laws will be out in July, both published by Sandycove.