The Shape We Make by Stephen James Smith - 25/04/2025
They asked me to open the Reinventing Ireland Panal with a poem, and I thought: "This is either genius or madness."
But isn’t that where all great ideas begin— somewhere between a hedge and a high-rise, a laugh and a lament, a famine and a feast?
I once thought I’d be an engineer, fixing circuits, shifting gear— but poetry found me. Or maybe I found myself in it.
That’s reinvention— not a change of costume, but a change of core.
So Fáilte romhaibh go léir!—welcome, one and all, to Ireland: the underdog overachiever, the place where past and future sit down for tea and a bold idea.
We Irish are shapeshifters by birth— carved from contradiction, forged in mirth.
With myths in our pockets and grief in our grin, we’re no strangers to starting again.
We’ve risen more times than we’ve fallen— occupation, emigration, tariffs and trade-offs.
But through it all, we kept moving. Kept laughing. Kept making music from the noise.
This island— this spark off the edge of Europe— built hydro on the Shannon before the rest caught the current.
We powered up from Ardnacrusha to the Port Tunnel, spied stars into being at Dunsink Observatory.
We built roads, cracked a smile— then paved a way to paradise and priced it out of reach.
We move in inches, but dream in miles.
We’ve gone from turf to tech, from tea to code, from being to belonging, from load to upload.
The “beer and biscuit” economy? That’s old hat.
Now we’re apps and labs and this, and that.
Once, we exported bodies. Now? We export minds.
And sure, they come back too— with accents that don’t quite land, but hearts that always do.
Like Prometheus stealing fire, or Lugh, master of every craft, or Midas—ah yes, we had our golden age, and it nearly choked us.
The Celtic Tiger had claws. But we learned: gold that glitters without grounding turns to dust.
So we rewired again— not just the tech, but the soul.
From Riverdance to referendum, from saying “No” to saying “Yes”—
we’ve voted for love, for change, for choice.
Heard silence, then raised our voice.
From Magdalene scars to marriage rights, we dragged the past into the light.
The boom bust us. The banks broke us.
We watched dreams get repossessed with empty rooms and promises.
A culture of “it’ll be grand,” as overdrafts deepened, and trust got evicted right alongside us.
Now we stand here— small in size, but never in spirit.
Google and Gaeilge, side by side. We don’t ask if a voice is Irish enough anymore— we just listen.
Because “New Irish”? That phrase is tired.
There’s no “us and them” when the shape we make is a circle, not a wall.
The world thinks in straight lines. But we think in spirals. In céilís and cycles.
In the laugh at a wake, the wake at a wedding, the grit in the joke and the joke in the grit.
We quote Yeats, code Java, play full-back.
We question everything— except the craic.
Where podcasts pass for confession. Where saints wore sandals— and CEOs wear Crocs.
We don’t fear chaos— we brew it up, lift it to the light, and ask: "How can we make this better?"
From the millennium bug to AI, we have new myths in the making, same fire in our hands.
So now, to you— the thinkers, the builders, the breakers of moulds.
The dreamers in the clouds, while the clouds run computing— this summit is your signal.
Reinvention’s not a pivot. It’s a promise.
To rise when it’s easier to rest.
To learn when it’s simpler to blame.
To welcome the new without forgetting the old song.
So—how will you reinvent? Your business? Your story? Your Ireland?
Ireland has never stood still. We’re still moving. Still shaping the shape we make.
And today? That shape includes you.
So let’s begin.
Or perhaps we already have?
