Fred Johnston has such a
long writing CV, I can only summarise it here. He was born
and educated in Belfast. He has lived in Toronto, Canada, Spain and Africa.
'Orangeman', a collection of stories in French, translated by film-maker and
writer and good friend, Christian le Braz, appeared from Terre de Brume (France) in October
2010 and has
just published a second volume of short stories, 'Dancing In The Asylum,' from
Parthian Books (UK) Among his poetry achievements are Founder of Galway's annual international literature
festival, CÚIRT, in 1986. Writer-in-Residence to the Princess Grace Irish
Library at Monaco, 2004. He is the Founder of the Western
Writers’ Centre – Ionad Scríbhneoiri Chaitlín Maude – based in Galway (www.twwc.ie)
Hello Fred and welcome to emergingwriter.
You've had such a long writing life so far, I'm not sure where to start. But
I'll start at the beginning. How did you first get interested in poetry?
I was writing poetry very early on, at about the
same time that I began to write short stories. I wanted only to be a short
story writer, as it transpires. Steinbeck influenced me, and James Baldwin and
later the French writers. Dear me, but I toted things up the other day, and it
is forty-two years since I published my first short story! Poetry was always
dear to me in so much as, writing songs, which I also did from an early age, I
believed in the measured potency of words. I also believed - and it was in the
air then too - that poetry had a social and political importance; certainly,
that poets had or should have. Not many Irish contemporary poets want to hear
that now, sadly.
You write both fiction and poetry. How
do you change from one to the other?
One doesn't so much 'change' from one to the other
as permit oneself to be led into a different manner of seeing things; poetry
has one way of doing things, let's say, prose quite another: which is why it
saddens me to see young poets banging out poems which are actually merely acts
of chopped prose. I blame writers' workshops, some of the worst kind, anyway,
for this. In poetry I am dealing with music; in prose, with a sort of oration.
Each demands something quite different from you.
You also do book reviews. With Ireland a
very small place, you must often know the writers you are reviewing. And the
reviewers of your books may often know you. How do you keep the review separate
from the relationship?
I was a book reviewer for newspapers and journals
and indeed theatre and visual art for many years. I have no problem keeping the
relations between reviewer and acquaintance separate, but I have learned that
there are those who believe you are betraying them if you speak your mind.
Joyce said, and I paraphrase, that the big sin in Ireland was to
put things in print. He wasn't wrong. I expect he meant opinions that ran
contrary to the consensus, or some consensus served up by a tiny group, poets,
writers or politicians.
The cultural world in Ireland tiny, the poetry world
a tinier world within an already tiny world. Everything is personal. Everyone
connected to one degree or another. Friends help out friends, review friends:
woe betide the reviewer who speaks his mind to his friends! It is held,
schoolboy-fashion, that some poets are not to be criticised save favourably and
sanction will be sought if one attempts to criticise them unfavourably.
Of course, this attitude prevents the poet under review ever from maturing. I
believe also that a writer is not divorced in some quasi-mystical way from his
or her work; this view is not tolerated easily in some quarters.
For instance, if a poet who epigraphs his work
continually with quotes from old Soviet Union poets who were incarcerated for
their work, yet will himself never join a demonstration or write a letter of
protest to a newspaper, I see it as a reviewer's duty to point out the obvious
disconnection inherent in this. This rather more 'holistic' approach is not
welcomed in Ireland. One doesn't lose real friends by being a reviewer, it should
be said. One only loses those acquaintances whose time it was to go anyway.
Have I 'suffered' professionally from writing
negative reviews? Oh, without a doubt. But I'm against cultural love-ins, they
do the art no good at all. One should rather have art and literature that was
excruciatingly bad than art and literature that slapped itself on the back. The
word 'consensus' sounds too much to me like the sort of thing a doctor might
write on one's chart at the end of a hospital bed.
You have
embraced Facebook. What, if anything, do you get out of it as a writer?
Facebook is merely a
communications tool, for opinion, viewpoints and dissent, sometimes. But God
protect us from a day when some budding poet adds to his bibliography that he
or she 'had three poems published on Facebook.'
What advice
would you have for poets who are starting out or at an early stage of their
development?
One could be dreadfully
cynical and suggest that he or she finds some well-connected friends in the
media before writing a line. Too much of publishing and promoting poetry is a
'who-you-know' game. It has become particularly thus through the fashioning of
'poetry celebs,' God help us, and that sort of thing.
On a more positive note,
one might suggest that they stay true to their first creative impulse, that
they do not crave publication as if it were the height of poetic achievement
nor desire to have a collection of work published while they are too young to
have anything to say; that they do not look to a writers' course ever to turn
them into poets nor seek poetry prizes. Of more real value to the world is
to be the local postman.
As Eliot said, writing
poetry is a mug's game. One writes, I would add, because one has no choice.
There is no other motive.
What can you remember your first
publication?
It
was a short story published by the late David Marcus in the New Irish Writing
page of the old Irish Press. It was based on real experiences.
How did you feel, do you remember, when
your story was accepted?
I
felt very good when my first story was published, four decades ago. I was also
very young. I believed the publication heralded the beginning of an illustrious
and adventurous Bohemian career. I was incredibly naive; but these days anyone
who publishes anything is looking at once at a collection of this or that and
being encouraged to do so. Dreadfully damaging in the long run. I had one real
thing to say and I said it. I was eighteen years old. At twenty I probably had
one more thing to say. That's all. Most
things that I believed pertained only to my own view of the world. With some
contemporary writers, this affliction never quite passes.
Have you got a good writing prompt for a
new writer?
I
am unsure as to what you mean by a 'writing prompt,' as I had always thought
that, firstly,
inspiration was a personal affair and secondly that imagination worked from
there. The
writing should prompt the writer.
I guess what I mean by a writing prompt
is just an exercise a new writer could use to kick start the imagination. What
do you do? Walk? Read? Meditate? use a notebook? Memoirs? Use photos or visual
art?
I
have personally never used prompts as such beyond giving ideas time to mature.
I can't say much more about that.
Time - a great writing prompt!
I know you
write in French. Does the initial idea come in French? Do you dream in French.
Do you do your own translations? I have tried poetry translation (I speak
Dutch) but I found it extremely tough to get both the meaning and the rhythm
and nuances out.
Excellent question. I
have occasionally had dreams in part-French! The nuances. . . well, when
translating, your faced with a choice: to go for the adaptation of the poem, or
the more precise translation, which is always more challenging, naturally. But
I suppose that's part of one's job. And one's risk.
The initial idea derives
very often from a sort of verbal play, if you like; I simply want to use French
to see how it sounds, how it works text-wise. Yet just as often I have a theme
which, odd though it may seem, is more suitably handled in French. I am freer
in my writing, I think, in French - I envy very much those who can, for
instance, write in Irish as well as English. One can deal with subjects in a
very different, not to say more open and even intimate way. It's always
hit-and-miss.
I am always delighted and
surprised to have one of my poems in French take by a French publication. For
me, changing languages is changing my mind-set, my emotional response. I
suppose one literally becomes someone else. I have respect, I would hope, for
the translator's task and detest the fact that in Ireland so much of what is
published as a translation by some poets is in fact a crib from an original
translation altered slightly. That's just messing about, to put it mildly.
I think I would add that
the French have more respect for poetry than we have. We're churning it out,
paying little attention to style and some times, to form; we think emotion is
poetry. It isn't. Too many of us see poetry as a way to get trips abroad and a
handy grant. I hate to say this, but Irish poetry is far from being in a
healthy state. It needs serious critical revision. But sadly, I doubt that it
will get it. We're not who we think we are.
Trips
abroad and grants galore. I wish!
What have
you got coming up?
A new collection of poems, 'Alligator Days,' is being published by the
redoubtable Revival Press. I was extremely lucky to receive a literary bursary
from the Arts Council of Ireland and another from the Northern Ireland Arts
Council this year, and for this second bursary I am working on a project with
Lagan Poetry in Derry.
