Interview with Poet, Miriam Gamble

Continuing my repostings of interviews, here's Miriam Gamble.

Thanks very much for agreeing to this interview. Could you introduce yourself to the readers please?

My pleasure, Kate – many thanks for asking me.

I published my first collection, The Squirrels Are Dead, with Bloodaxe just over a year ago and just before I moved to Glasgow, where I currently live. I’m originally from Belfast. I work as a subtitler for a media company at the moment, though I’ve also been a university tutor in literature and creative writing, a bookseller, a barmaid and a pony-trekking guide. I love animals – I’ve got two cats and a horse, all of whom got bundled over the Irish Sea when I moved last year.

How did your collection with Bloodaxe come about? (a dream publisher)

Through a couple of things, I think. I’d been publishing poems in journals and magazines, and then there was the Eric Gregory Award in 2007 and the tall-lighthouse pamphlet, both of which will have put me on the radar, so to speak. There’s always a reading the night after the Gregory Awards are given out, and Clare Pollard was at that – she subsequently co-edited an anthology for Bloodaxe, Voice Recognition, which some of my poems were included in. So Neil Astley, the editor, had seen my work in there, and also in the pamphlet. I didn’t send a manuscript in the first instance; he got in touch and requested one. When I signed, I didn’t have a full collection – only about three quarters of one. It was another year and half or so before the book came out.

 How did you get into poetry?

I started writing when I was an undergrad student in Oxford, though I suppose in reality it goes further back. My mum says that, when we were kids, my sister’s favourite bedtime books were stories, whereas mine – singular – was The Quangle Wangle’s Hat by Edward Lear, and that I didn’t care about the narrative so much as the sound of the language. So we’ll say it started with Lear. Eliot and Donne were the poets who made me want to try my own hand at it. But I wouldn’t say I started taking it seriously, or thinking I was anything other than terrible at it, until my early twenties, when I was a post-grad student at Queen’s in Belfast. There was a lot going on there – lots of inspirational people around, lots of events, and, crucially, a writers’ group, chaired by Sinéad Morrissey. After a year of procrastinating and being too embarrassed to show up in case everyone thought my stuff was rubbish, I started going to that, and I’ve never looked back, really.

What do you consider your highlights so far?

It’s a highlight for me if I write a poem I’m proud of, and that I didn’t know I was capable of writing. I think you have to work like that, rather than looking for bigger pictures all the time. And after all, individual poems are what it’s about; you don’t have anything if you don’t have poems that you yourself believe in. But there have been a couple of important turning points. Finding the group at Queen’s was one – I’d probably never have stuck at it if it hadn’t been for that, or only in a ‘I’ve written this and I’m putting it away in the drawer now’ kind of way. Then, I won an Eric Gregory Award in 2007, which led to me getting a pamphlet out with tall-lighthouse – my first publication. That was really exciting. And there was the day I opened my email and there was a message from Neil Astley. You can’t beat that on a Monday morning! More recently, I’ve been given a couple of travel awards, which I’m very much looking forward to using.

What, if anything, would you do differently if you knew what you know now?

You make it sound as though I know the secret of life, or have just returned from the underworld or something! Nothing, really, poetry-wise. I couldn’t have done things differently anyway – I can only write what I can write, and if other people like it, they like it, and if they don’t, they don’t. I’d not be able to style myself to a trend or anything; nor would I want to. Serendipity has always played me a good hand when it comes to important things: I went to Queen’s by accident, because it was in Belfast and I was going out with someone who wouldn’t move away at the time. It was the best place I could have gone, but I didn’t know that or do it on purpose; I only found out when I got there. Doing a PhD has got me nowhere in terms of jobs, but I wouldn’t not have done it for the world. It’s been the happiest period of my life to date, and the most productive. I wouldn’t have started smoking when I was 18 because I thought it looked cool. That’s the only thing I’d change with hindsight.   

Which poets, living or dead, do you recommend people search out and read?

How long have you got? I’ll give you an abbreviated list, based on what’s got me ticking over the past couple of years, and on people I return to again and again. Elizabeth Bishop is one of the few poets I read tirelessly and whose brilliance I’m always surprised by anew. Janet Frame and William Carlos Williams blow the top off my head; also Edwin Morgan and Les Murray. I’ve only recently got into reading poetry in translation, so that’s (literally) opened up a whole new world. Federico García Lorca, Pablo Neruda and CP Cavafy are all excellent. With regard to more recent work, Sinéad Morrissey and Paul Muldoon rarely put a foot wrong. Well, Muldoon does sometimes, but only in the service of trying things that others wouldn’t dare to try, and saying things that others wouldn’t dare to say. I think he’s the most important English language poet of our time. I love Frances Leviston’s first book, and Meirion Jordan’s – both far too young to be as good as they are. Simon Armitage’s most recent book, Seeing Stars, I found exhilarating, political, deeply disturbing and absolutely right. I’m also a recent convert to Glyn Maxwell. Brian Turner’s Here, Bullet should be read by everyone, force-fed to everyone, poetry buff or otherwise. Finally, I’ve just discovered Ailbhe Darcy. Please read Ailbhe Darcy. I’ve only read a handful of poems – I haven’t had time to read the book, Imaginary Menagerie, yet, though it’s sitting on my desk waiting to be devoured at the first opportunity. The poems I have read are startling – startlingly good.

What advice would you give to aspiring, new poets?

Am I in a position to give advice? I think probably not, but if you’re asking, you’re asking. 

• Don’t do it because you want to be applauded for it. 
• Do it, if you’re going to do it, because you have to. 
• And don’t write fakes. Or if you do write them, don’t publish them. People will know, and worse, so will you. 
• Live somewhere where you can have an intellectual life, and friends who care about the same things as you. But don’t spend all your time with them! 
• Send out to magazines, and enter competitions, and don’t be surprised when you don’t get into the magazines and don’t win the prizes. Don’t be surprised, and don’t give up. 
• When you get poems back, turn them round and send them to another magazine. 
• Have mates you can compare rejection slips with over a pint, or several, and laugh about it. 
• Read poems. You can’t, and shouldn’t, write poems if you don’t actually care about reading poems. 
• I should probably say self-promote, but that s*** turns my stomach. I can’t stand it when poets hoor themselves about. We live in a celebrity culture; that doesn’t mean we have to contribute to it. I’m not saying poetry should be ‘above’ all that – it shouldn’t be, and isn’t, and if it were it would be redundant – but, well, it ought to have standards. And you want to get there because your work is good enough, not because you have some shiny website. 
• Finally, (and this is Anne Enright’s wisdom, not mine): “Failure can kill a writer slowly. Success can do it much more quickly”. That’s one to keep in mind, I think.

What have you got coming up?

Well, I’m working on a second collection – that’s the main thing. I’ve also just completed a bit of a side project with a visual artist, Douglas Hutton, who’s based in Enniskillen. You’ll remember Douglas, Kate, as I think you’ve also written a poem in response to one of his paintings. 

Oh yes. Douglas, I can only apologise...

He has an exhibition showing at Enniskillen Castle Museum at the moment, and I’ve written some poems to go along with the paintings. It’s on until the middle of February; the opening was last weekend. Beyond that, I’m just about to move to the Isle of Skye: my fiancé, who’s from Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, has got a one year Writer in Residence job at the Gaelic College there. God knows what I’ll do for work, but I suppose something will come up! And I have the travel bursaries I mentioned before. I won the Vincent Buckley Prize this year, which means I get to go to Australia for a couple of months in 2012, and I also got a Somerset Maugham Award from the Society of Authors, which has to be spent on foreign travel. I’m thinking Spain with that – Andalusia, land of Lorca – and maybe also Malta. I was involved in a translation workshop over the summer where I met and worked with a Maltese poet, Adrian Grima, with whom I’d like to collaborate further. So, a bitty year, but an exciting one!   

I'm also on Poetcasting, which is a site that keeps recordings of folk reading. I've some poems in the first edition of Poetry Proper. And I've a whack of stuff - recordings again - on the Seamus Heaney Centre Digital Archive, which is the PhD project of Paul Maddern.

Thanks for agreeing to do this.

You’re very welcome. Good talking to you.

Interview with poet and publisher Pat Boran

This interview first published on writing.ie.

Continuing my repostings of interviews, here's Pat Boran. Dedalus link here

 Pat Boran is a poet, fiction writer, publisher and radio broadcaster, as well as the editor of the highly respected Dedalus Press. 

Pat has been well known in the poetry world for many years now and has published four collections of poetry: The Unwound Clock (1990), which won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award, Familiar Things (1993), The Shape of Water (1996) and As the Hand, the Glove (2001). His New and Selected Poems was first published by Salt Publishing, UK, in 2005 and reissued by Dedalus in 2007. In 2007 Pat Boran was elected to the membership of Aosdána. In 2008 he received the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry in St. Paul, MN, USA.

Thanks very much for agreeing to this interview. Could you introduce yourself to the readers please?

Well, I'm a poet and non-fiction writer (memoir, observation pieces) who sometimes also writes fiction (for both adults and children). I've done a small bit of TV presenting the books programme Undercover, and have presented the RTE radio programmes The Enchanted Way and The Poetry Programme over the last few years as well as a short period as a fill-in presenter on Rattlebag.

I was Programme Director of the Dublin Writers Festival for a number of years and, since 2005, have been the editor and publisher of The Dedalus Press,  one of the longest running literary presses in the country (25 years old last year) and, by coincidence, also my own poetry publisher. (Maybe it is that only poets would take on the job of running a poetry press!)
As well as producing books and organising events for the press, I also produce an occasional podcast (AudioRoom: New Writing from Ireland, available on iTunes Link) and contribute occasional reviews and pieces to literary publications. I like to be busy and feel it's part of my calling to engage with writing and publishing in a broad variety of ways.

But I'm also careful to give myself time and space for my own writing. To date I've published over a dozen books of poetry, translations, fiction and non-fiction, among the most recent being New and Selected Poems (2007) and the memoir The Invisible Prison (2009).

You've seem to have been part of the Irish poetry scene for a long time. How did you first get into poetry?
My first contact with the poetry world was a period of volunteering for Poetry Ireland. I was, like most people I knew at the time, unemployed in the mid 80s and early 90s, and wanted to keep myself occupied and stimulated, so rather than completely giving myself to my own writing 24 hours a day (not always a great idea for a poet), it seemed to me wise to connect in some way with the larger literary world.
To some extent the best poems write themselves (though one does have to create one's own luck, and to be ready when it happens), and for that reason spending too much time with one's own obsessions is not always the best thing. There's also the fact that, nowadays certainly, most poets do other things, have other professions, and I think in general that's a good thing. The range of experience represented in poetry is expanded when someone who actually knows something about science, or gardening or cookery feels able to join the larger conversation and make a contribution to it. Maybe it's a good thing that there are so few 'full-time' poets.
Having said all that, in the early years especially I had no real intention of pursuing poetry. In truth, I think I wanted to develop as a songwriter, and my first efforts with writing were in making songs (few of which survived in my affections!) For one thing I suppose I enjoyed the immediacy of playing music, of sharing and communicating with other musicians on a live basis. But in time the impulse seemed to take me towards the words and away from the music (though playing music, as a hobby, is still a major part of my creative day and it may well be that I'll go back in that direction at a later stage).

What do you consider your highlights so far?
It's hard to think in terms of highlights because the real (brief) thrills are when something seems to work or to click into place, especially if a poem has been resisting for a while.
It's of course reassuring when one wins a prize or some kind of other recognition, but in truth the only thing that will satisfy the urge and desire to write is those occasional moments of discovery, when the pen seems to have a mind of its own and all the writer has to do is to keep up. Some people call it 'inspiration'; musicians might call it something closer to 'jamming' or 'improvising'. But the real highlights of a writing life are when one connects with that sense of something bigger, when one feels in tune with it.
The great Emily Dickinson wrote 1775 poems, only 7 of which were published in her lifetime, and all of them anonymously. Of course, hers is an extreme example of finding the highlights and the validation in the poems themselves. But it should serve to remind anyone setting out to write a poem that the audience (such as it is) may not be one's peers or social circle at all. Though most of the best poems are made from the language of their time, poetry sometimes has much more on its mind than the poet may be able to recognise in the moment.

As a jobbing poet, you've worn many more hats than just a writing poems one. Which hat did you or do you enjoy wearing the most? 
I would choose writing over almost anything else, though I very much enjoy the compensatory aspect of other kinds of work. At times the form (and genres) of my writing has changed considerably over the years, depending on the situation I found myself in, the company I was keeping, the books and voices I was being exposed to. In that sense, writing is not independent of a life.
I'm an autodidact (in that I never attended university) and for that reason I suppose I've always made an extra effort to keep myself abreast of what's going on around me, getting involved in a wide range of literary pursuits because that's what I most wanted to learn about.
There's a stereotype of the poet as ineffectual and perhaps not terribly reliable, the last person you'd call if you needed a tyre changed or a pipe unblocked. I've always resisted that notion, being wary of anything that relegates poets or poetry to the category of obscure irrelevance or high priesthood.
I love poetry because it seems to me the most vital and compelling use of language, because it's condensed and largely portable, because it informs and guides and entertains and occasionally seems to shine a light into the heart of life's mystery. For that reason, I want to keep the link between it and the lived life as strong and direct as possible.
I suppose I've made a conscious decision over the past twenty or so years to make my living from writing-related activities, convinced as I am of the importance of writing and reading for the culture, and consoled sometimes when my own writing is not at its best that at least my work with and for other writers contributes to the greater good.

Dedalus Press is one of Ireland's leading poetry presses. How has the press evolved since you became editor and what do you foresee coming in the next few years?
 Dedalus was already 19 years old when I took over. It was the beginning of a time of great changes in the publishing world, changes which have continued apace. As a sometime musician (and busker in my earlier days), I've always been interested in the way music finds its way to its audience and I suppose I wondered if a similar approach could be taken with poetry publishing.
Book design, typesetting internet publishing and publicity, all of these were new arcane arts to me, but I like the idea of taking on new things and trying to figure them out. In a way, much of the most exciting innovation in publishing (as in the music industry) has come from small presses, in part because they are more flexible, because they've always had to work smarter and be more innovative than the major imprints for whom almost all change is treated with suspicion.
The age and gender profile of Dedalus didn't seem to me to represent the Irish poetry world as I now knew it, and so that has changed considerably over the last few years. The look and tone of the books, too, is bound to echo my own views and tastes, though I have always felt that a publisher's 'house style' need not be (and perhaps should not be) maintained at the cost of innovation, risk, even experiment.
I suppose I see Dedalus as an opportunity to celebrate some of the broad range of poetry styles being produced in Ireland. Some poets write verse (ie regular forms), some do not. I do not believe that these cannot be represented by the same publisher. Neither do I believe that the internet is the enemy of book publishing. The mission is to bring what one believes is good writing to the widest possible audience. As that audience moves and grows and perhaps looks for poetry elsewhere, so too must the publisher move and grow, and sometimes attempt to anticipate change.
At the moment the audience for eBooks, for instance, is growing exponentially, though there is little sign (as yet) that poetry readers are entirely happy with the way the lines and stanzas of poems are liable to be mangled or wholly ignored by e-reading devices. When and as that changes, I expect that Dedalus will be increasingly involved in those changes. But we will remain committed to readings and physical events based around Dedalus books. The digital complements the physical but doesn't do away with the very real need for it. (Video did not after all kill the radio star, despite what the hit song predicted!)

For all the poets reading this who are working towards a collection, what do you look for and what would stop you reading?
Risk. Difference. Strangeness. Perhaps a certain sense of ambition or forward motion. These would be part of what I want to see. The vast majority of the manuscripts I hesitate over but then feel I cannot publish have good individual poems in them. They fall down, however, in that many of the poems could have come from anyone, anywhere. They've often been over-written, over-revised, had too many of the compelling edges knocked off them in a poetry workshop.
Every editor or publisher wants to find something new and strong and original and good. But, as Dr Johnson said of a 'good and original' manuscript he once received: the parts that are original are not good and the parts that are good are not original. When an unsolicited manuscript arrives it's often possible to tell, almost right away, whether it's going to be interesting or not. There's something about the poet who types everything in capitals, or in computer cursive script, or who adorns the margins with clip art, something that says the poems are going to feel perfunctory at best, that all of the creative energy has gone into the wrapping, the presentation. Simple is the way to go.
Send the strongest poems and only those. Make an editor ask for more: it so rarely happens. And remember that most poetry editors and publishers, as I suppose I've already made clear, are people who do it for the love of it and often for very little or no personal reward. If they are 'the experts', they are experts only insofar as they probably read more manuscripts than anyone else and therefore are probably going to be less forgiving than your mother or husband or sister of your obvious weaknesses.
That said, if an editor doesn't like your work, and if you're PRETTY SURE you've written something that deserves to be read (and, no, there isn't any fail-proof test of genius), send it off somewhere else. But do read the journals or publications of the editor you're writing to: there are tastes and fashions and styles in poetry as in everything else. Sending sonnets to a haiku journal is the poetic equivalent of trying to get a camel through the eye of a needle.
Dedalus Press guidelines: http://www.dedaluspress.com/guidelines.html

What have you got coming up both at Dedalus and for yourself?
At Dedalus I have new collections of poems on the way from Eva Bourke , Katherine Duffy  and Gerard Fanning and after that from Joseph Woods  and Macdara Woods
I'm working on a small publication (bilingual French and English) for a Dedalus event in Paris on Bloomsday coming, and after the summer (the summer is when poetry publishers, or this poetry publisher at least, catches up on the books he actually WANTS to read), in early autumn I'll publish an anthology I'm working on at this very moment, poetry and prose fiction to raise awareness of the charity organisation Shine, helping people with mental ill-health.
'Despite the recession,' as the slogan on one recent Dedalus postcard puts it, 'poetry's never looked so good.' That can be read in a number of ways. I hope that Dedalus books have a confidence and a professionalism that can represent Irish writing at home and abroad. But poetry is also looking good in the sense that the citizens of this country have been so mistreated by so many arms and agents of the state in recent times; the integrity and importance of poetry and the arts stands in stark contrast to the grubby dark-dealing of the bankers and speculators and politicians who licensed their rampage through our heritage.
These are difficult times for us all, and, as paltry resources become even more scarce, perhaps crucial times for poetry, creative writing and the arts. It's great to see writing.ie come online and help, as the new technology can do, to make new links and solidify the existing connections between the many parishes of good writing that make up this tiny island of ours.

Interview with poet Enda Coyle Greene

For January I am republishing some of the interview I've done with some lovely writers. Enda published her second collection, Maps of the Last a couple of months ago with Dedalus. Link here

Hi Enda and welcome. First, how did you get into poetry?

I think it was rather that poetry got into me when I was far too young to be intimidated by it. It was probably the musicality of a poem like, “Mise Raifteirí an File”, for instance, that drew me in. When I was growing up, I was surrounded by music as my mother was a piano teacher and had trained as an opera singer. My siblings played instruments, the violin and the guitar, and both went on to a lifetime’s active involvement with music. I was the eldest, and I think the assumption was that I’d take over the mantle of piano player. But although music is and always will be central to me, I kept being pulled towards words. As a child it seemed to me that poetry was music on a page, the best poems jumped out at me like heard tunes.
Because there was always music in the house, and I associated poetry so closely with music, I never thought that the avid reading or writing of it marked me out as being special or different in any way to my friends who had other, probably much healthier, interests. I had a couple of tiny poems published when I was about nine or ten and remember thinking how strange it was to see my own name in print underneath them. It felt as if somebody else had written them. It’s still like that sometimes.
I wrote all through my teens and early twenties and there is a box out there somewhere, full of my angsts and adorations. It went missing sometime in the late ‘70s and I hope it never shows up.
But for reasons of my own I never really considered submitting anything I wrote as an adult – until I joined a writing group and started sending out to journals and competitions simply because that’s what everyone else was doing. It was good for getting me to try to complete a piece of work instead of constantly revisiting it. I can quite happily spend hours moving a comma in and out of a sentence so deadlines are good! 

I have heard it said that every poet be able to write in form, much as every driver should be able to parallel park. Do you find writing in form restrictive or liberating?

Whether it’s liberating or restrictive all depends on how you approach it. I know that if I were to sit down with the intention of writing a sonnet, for instance, that the impetus of the poem could be very likely ‘stopped’ because of that intention. At the earliest stages of a poem’s gestation, when it’s still extremely tenuous, I try hard not to impose myself too much on it. But unless one is writing Haiku – and that’s such an interesting consciousness – I don’t think anyone ever sits down with the shape or length of any poem already decided; that a poem is going to have say, four lines per stanza, six stanzas in total, or whatever. Even if you write in free verse all the time it just doesn’t work that way, does it?  
However I do know that staying within the defined contours of a particular form has sometimes prevented me from getting distracted by a subject to which I’m perhaps a bit too close. If I had a poem like that buzzing around in my head somewhere, I might turn to form to see if it would free me into writing a poem that is centred, more honest. And it often has, so yes, that would be an example of form being liberating.
There’s that famous quote from Adrienne Rich about form being like asbestos gloves to be used for handling a difficult subject – and Anne Sexton said something similar – with which I would concur.
In an interview a year or so ago, Paul Farley said that, “Engaging with form – any form – means that there’s at least a chance you’ll say something you weren’t going to say.” I hope he doesn’t mind my quoting him verbatim here, but I remember reading that sentence, recognising the experience, and agreeing so wholeheartedly that I actually cut out the interview and kept it.  
Again, with me it’s that intent thing – I might have a vague idea, more of a feeling really, and if I try it in form, sometimes the form just seems to take up the resulting poem and surprise me.
In the end though, the poem that wants to be written is invariably the one that will be written, irrespective of whether you’re using form or writing in free verse. It’s what falls out on the page that matters so it’s best not to have too closed a mind about it.
I also feel though that if you are accepting of the traditional forms, and can see why they have endured, you might be inclined to be more open and curious about other perhaps experimental ways of making your own poems.
Ultimately I suppose my view would be that if form is part of the armoury or equipment of being a poet – and it is – even if you don’t, or can’t use it, you shouldn’t abuse it. Some poets write in form, some poets don’t, and some poets do some of the time. And parallel parking? Most drivers can, and as you well know, I avoid it whenever possible… 

How long were you writing before your first collection was published and how would you summarise the path you followed?

I’ve always felt that there is enormous pressure on poets to produce a first collection,but a lot of it can be self-inflicted. When your poems start appearing in journals etc. you get asked about a book until you almost feel obliged to declare that you’re working towards one. I probably said as much myself at times. But in reality I had so many other things happening – a family, a job that demanded a lot of my time and attention, and a contingent life – that I resisted allowing something as central and necessary to my own existence as writing poetry to come on board as any type of pressure.
All I really wanted to do was to concentrate on the poems as they arrived and to hone each one as well as I could. I published in magazines and won prizes for single poems but didn’t even think about a manuscript until I featured in a couple of full manuscript competitions. That was probably when I finally stopped prevaricating and decided that I must be somewhere in the vicinity of a book.
I think it’s important not to bring out a first collection until you’re ready for it, and at that stage I still didn’t feel that I was. Maybe it’s just me, but I always say that once that book is out there you’re going to have to live with it.  
At that stage I had a manuscript into which newer work was being slotted in while other poems died a natural death or just fell by the wayside. Then I had a year in which I was continuously writing poems that seemed to belong more to a narrative that was emerging. I found that while I still had everything worth keeping from the original manuscript, including some of the very early poems, the collection had completely shape-shifted.
When I submitted it for the Kavanagh Award it had thirty-something poems, one of which I decided to take out of the eventual, published book.
That’s the long answer – the short one would be that I took my time!   

You’re working on your second collection now, many poems of which you started on your MA in Queen’s Belfast. How many would you already have published in magazines first before you decide to collect them in a book? How do you think a second collection is different to a first, typically?

I like to leave a poem to ‘set’ before I begin to think about submitting it. I could be walking around doing something else altogether when an alternative way of saying a line might randomly strike me, and it’s very frustrating if the poem is already out there walking around in the wrong shoes.
I tend to use my writing time for actual writing and when I’m not actively engaged doing that, I organise myself into sending out mode. There is a completely different energy required for deciding which poems to send where, writing covering letters and then proceeding to either the post office or the ‘send’ button.
But I think it’s important for poems to have had a life of their own in the magazines before they are collected. It’s good if a poem can sit comfortably beside poems by other poets and it can give you a feeling for what is working, what isn’t, and what perhaps never will.
Of the poems in ‘Snow Negatives,’ the majority had appeared in journals. With the newer work I’ve magazine published quite a few and am currently living in hope for the others! I wouldn’t set myself a quota or anything like that but it’s nice to have some publishing credits in there.
As regards the difference between a first and second collection, I always think it’s a bit like what bands used to say years ago about that much-mythologized second album. For the first one, it’s like you’ve had your whole life almost up to the point of publication to produce the work, while with a second or subsequent book it’s done a little bit quicker.

What would you say that writing non-fiction pieces for Sunday Miscellany takes from and gives to your poetry?

If I’m facilitating a workshop or a class I always re-iterate that old maxim about ‘frisking’ every poem for the superfluous word and the duplicated or redundant image because it’s something I always do myself. Even when I think I might be finished with a poem, I always hold it up and give it several good shakes to see if anything falls out! My least favourite poem is the ‘baggy’ one and it really doesn’t matter to me who has written it; I’ll read it with my mental red pen working overtime all the way down the page. If I find that I’m writing one myself, and can’t prune it, I’ll step away from it and let it go stone cold before I approach it again.
I would apply the same principle to any piece of writing, whether poetry or prose and I wouldn’t see that either one detracts from the other. In fact, writing poetry is
probably very good exercise for saying what you want to say in a non-fiction piece that has to have a clearly defined word limit. In return, I often find that the clarity of thought and precision of imagery needed for a successful piece of prose can only have a favourable influence on whatever poem I might be working on. The two disciplines compliment each other most of the time. 
   
What advice do you have for new poets?

My advice to anyone beginning to write poetry would be:

1. I know it sounds obvious but if you are writing poetry, you have to read poetry. Read the journals, print and online, and you’ll have the excitement of being struck by a poem by a particular poet and you’ll remember the name the next time you come across it. You might even go out and buy a full collection by that poet. Poetry journals and publishers need all the support that the writing community can offer. If you are writing, don’t forget that you are part of that community.
2. Join a good writing group or workshop. And don’t switch off or shuffle pages when someone else’s poem or story is under discussion. If you fully engage with the constructive criticism being offered, you’ll learn more for your own work.
3. No matter how busy your life is, try to set aside some time every day for yourself in which to write. Take control of some small corner in your home, then shut the door behind you and just get on with it.

What are you working on now?

I’ve recently finished working on the manuscript of my next collection so, for the moment anyway, what’s done is done and I think I can move on a bit. But I still have to decide on a title for it!
I’ve started to make poems that feel very different to anything I’ve done before and am taking each one as it comes. I’m also writing prose and that’s always something I enjoy doing.

Thanks Enda. Here's a link to the first collection, the highly recommended and accomplishe Snow Negatives published by the Dedalus Press.

Interview with poet Adam White

Photo Credit: Paul McVeigh

Adam White is from Youghal, Co. Cork. After many years working as a carpenter/ joiner in Ireland and in France, he studied English and French at NUI Galway, where he began reading and writing poetry. He has recited his poetry at venues in Galway, Tipperary and Cork, at the Electric Picnic, and at venues in Italy, England and France. His first collection, Accurate Measurements, was published by Doire Press of Connemara, in April 2013, and shortlisted for a Forward prize for best first collection. At present he is living in Normandy.

His poems are inspired by his travels in and out of Ireland, by the value of the work we do in making sense of our lives, and by the love of doing a beautiful task well. But his poetry is also about the craft of writing, about the poet’s search for, and delight in, the words that come closest to what we feel we have to say.

There's a great review for Accurate Measurements in the Irish Times and in the Irish Examiner and you can buy the book direct from the publisher, Doire Press here

Welcome Adam and thanks for agreeing to be interviewed. How did you first get into poetry?

Though I liked the few poems I had come across when I was younger, and especially liked song lyrics, I had to go to university, and to get into reading poetry regularly, to want to start writing.

I like the way it was actually a chance thing, or the result of the coming together of certain circumstances. In the final year of my English degree I asked to be put into a seminar on the short story, as I was reading a lot of those (I never read poetry in uni up until this point). Well they put me into the modern Irish poetry seminar instead, probably to make up the numbers, and we had to read all the big Irish poets of the last fifty years. I loved it. At this time a friend of mine told me that there were poetry “slams” on once a month in the Crane Bar in Galway. These were the North Beach Nights, run by John Walsh and Lisa Frank of Doire Press. So we went along to see what a poetry slam was and I found out that it was really just reciting your two poems (you needed two to enter the slam) any way you choose to. I went home and wrote two and brought them with me to the following month’s slam.

The thing is, the quality of the poetry we were reading and discussing in the seminar was such that you got to distinguish between a good poem and a poor poem; it just helped you to refine your taste in poetry. So I wasn’t going to go along to the slam with poor poems. I did my best and John was impressed! I found Seamus Heaney’s stuff about farm life and making things, like butter, or a thatched roof, very interesting, so I wrote a poem about roofing a house (I used to be a carpenter). Between getting on so well at the slam, and being encouraged by John and Lisa to keep it up, and reading for the seminar, I’d caught some kind of poetry bug, and still have it four years later.

Which poets and/or poems in particular stuck with you from that course?

I remember liking John Montague’s love poems, but it was really Seamus Heaney’s first two collections that I read over and over again and continue to read now. I love the childhood poems at the beginning in Death of a Naturalist and then ‘Trout’ and ‘Waterfall’, where I first saw how good he is at describing movement. I always look for poems with characters, or people, in them, so I often go back to early poems like ‘Docker’, and then ‘The Forge’, ‘Thatcher’, The Wife’s Tale’ and ‘Mother’ in Door into the Dark. Any poems where physical work is described, or even mentioned, stuck with me, as that is really into in my own poems, so ones with fishermen, or ‘Churning Day’, about making butter, left their mark. As soon as the course was finished I bought some more of his books, but I suppose the books where you discover a poet and what he is trying to do will always remain the special ones.

Do all your poems work as slam pieces or read poems? Do you think there are some that work on the page only and some out loud only?

There is really only one poem in the book that was written with slam in mind. It’s written in two paragraphs, no line breaks, so it’s easy to find. I wrote it to a rhythm I had in mind, almost like you’d write lyrics to an existing piece of music, and it was specifically for the Cúirt slam in the Roisin Dubh in Galway. 

I don’t really like the idea of “slamming” poetry at all (I’ve been to too many slams where the poet is just trying to get people to laugh). I prefer reciting poems that are genuinely important to me, from memory if it’s required, and trying to get that right, doing justice to the poem, and pausing if/where necessary, which isn’t as easy as I thought it would be (I suppose you know that). I much prefer readings to slams, although at the slams you can usually get a pint or two in. Rarely at readings.

Why did you choose Doire or did they choose you?

They were very positive from day one, so as soon as I had a good few poems written they approached me and said they’d a press and would be willing to publish a collection of poems by me if/when I had enough of them. So yes, I walked into a bar and the people running the poetry evening there just happened to have their own little independent press going on out in Connemara!

I really enjoyed your book. You must be delighted with the reviews; the Forward nomination though is the absolute top though. Fantastic. Did it result in lots of sales? How did you hear about the Forward prize shortlist?

I got a message from Lisa to call her at the house whenever I got the chance. When school was finished (I was working in a secondary school in Normandy at the time) I did, and she told me about being chosen for the shortlist. I had never heard of the Forward Prizes, and didn’t know what John and Lisa had entered my book for, of if they had entered it for any prize. So this was all very sudden, as I was just getting used to the fact I had a book out and sending it to friends and family.

I’m sure Doire got some orders on their site, and I managed to sell some down in Cork as a result of being in the Examiner and Irish Times (which was a direct result of the Forward shortlist).

I was invited to a festival in Italy. I think the nomination had something to do with that, or with Dani Gill at the Galway Arts Centre thinking of me when the people in Italy said to her that they were looking for someone to come over from Galway. That was a great time.

Looks like you've been moving around quite a bit. Where are you now?
 
Yes, I left Galway in the summer of 2010. I got a two-year contract at the uni in Angers, and moved up to Normandy after that. We moved further north this September (following the work), and now live just outside Honfleur, which is just across the river from the big city/port of Le Havre. But the aim is to get more work down south and move again in the summer. With a bit of luck it'll be the last move.


Down south for the summer, the opposite of the snowgeese. Are you carpentering?
When I say down south, it's not the south of France I mean! More the south of the north of France.

No carpentry right now, no. I did a year of that in Brittany a while back, but now it seems (like Ireland) to be a bad time for the building trades, and anyone I called up said they were not taking anyone on, more letting people go. So I got some work teaching English at a secondary school. I did spend July in Germany though, reroofing a house my brother just bought. That was great. Great weather. A lot of work. We worked for a month without a day off.

Your carpentry inspired some poems. Has your teaching?



No, the teaching hasn't inspired any poems. The teaching is too much working with the head and not enough working with the hands, whereas that's where many, or most, of the poems come from.

Are you writing? Are there other English language writers around?

Writing away, yes. I quickly had an idea for a second book, so have got stuck into that. Not that I'm writing lots, or quickly, but I do feel I'm going somewhere with it. I've only been in this region since September, so don't know many people, and don't know any writers. The only English language writers I ever met in France were in Paris. They run monthly bilingual readings.

What have you got coming up?

Not much coming up now really on the poetry front. Lisa at Doire is trying to get some people they've published into readings/festivals, but nothing is sure for now. I've heard of a couple of bilingual festivals in France, but have yet to contact them. Just writing now, and after all the stuff that went on in August, September and October (a lot of flying), which was great to be involved in, it's actually nice to get back to normal life.

Lastly any tips for new writers? 

I would say read anything you like, but read it devotedly, until you’ve learned something from it. I did the same with Ted Hughes when I discovered his poetry. I read him every day until I got a sense of what he was doing, of the kind of atmosphere he was trying to create. I would recommend learning different things from very different poets, for example comparing Ted Hughes with Philip Larkin by reading a lot of one after reading a lot of the other. 

I would say it's not really possible to be a writer without being a reader first. I know it sounds obvious, but I also know some people who struggle to write, but never seem to read.

Thanks very much and a Happy New Year

To read an earlier interview with Adam by Paul McVeigh see link. Includes a poem Accurate Measurements

Dublin Genius - A Day of Ideas

The fabulous, glittery Poetry Divas will be taking some time out from their festivities in the bosom of their friends and families to take part in Dublin Genius on Monday 30th December.

Dublin Genius, A Day of Ideas, will celebrate some of Dubliners’ best known talents: literature, comedy, and non-stop talking!

There's loads going on so if you need to shake the cobwebs out, come into Dublin. And what's more, it's free!

The Little Museum will be hosting a History Ireland Hedge School, which will cover the breadth of Ireland’s literary history. Taking in Joyce, Stoker and Roddy Doyle, some very special guests will be on hand to underline why Dublin has historically been such a city of words. Writers carrying that torch into the 21^st century, such as Dermot Bolger, will be reading their works and starting conversations in Smock Alley Theatre (the city’s oldest theatre).

Nearby in Dublin’s Twisted Pepper, the irreverent political cabaret that is Leviathan will be examining the role Ireland’s great writers have played in the political life of the country in its usual enlightening manner, while the Irish poetic tradition gets the slam poetry treatment in a swathe of pubs across the town.

A packed programme of cultural events, from poetry slams and literary readings to science exhibitions and comedy, kicking off at 2pm and running til late. Dublin Genius is an opportunity to experience the “cultural capital” of our capital. It organised by the lovely lads that bring us Mindfield at Electric Picnic, Leviathan.

We are on sometime between 6 and 6.30pm in The Church, Mary St.

Check out the programme here leviathan.ie/nye-dublin-genius.pdf

Wordlegs

Hi All, I'm going to take a break from online stuff for January to kick start some writing. I'll repost some interviews for January starting with a brand new one on 1st January!

And watch out for details of a Poetry Divas gig after Christmas.

Meanwhile I bring you details of an online mag Wordlegs that I will be editing for poetry.

Note the following:

• Writers should be from or living in the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland.

•  There is a strict submission limit of 500 words in flash fiction or 2500 words in short stories or other category.

• Up to 2 short stories or pieces in other category, or 3 poems per writer per issue

More details here

Deadline 31st December

The Today Show RTE's "Publish your Novel" competition in conjunction with New Island

We are looking for works of fiction, any genre including Literary Fiction, Crime Fiction, Short Stories, children’s and YA. Please do NOT submit non-fiction, Drama or Poetry.

We ONLY accept submissions if they adhere to the following guidelines:

1) Submissions are sent by email to: editor[AT]newisland.ie with “competition submission” in the subject line

2) Attach the first 50 pages of your novel, PLUS a synopsis of the novel (no longer than 500 words) as two separate Word documents (.doc or .docx)

3) Printed manuscripts will not be accepted, nor will manuscripts contained on CDs or other storage devices sent by post

4) Entries will only be accepted between 16:00hrs on Friday 10th January and Midnight Sunday 25th January 2014

5) Shortlisted authors will be contacted before Friday 21st February 2014.