Mary
Madec works with Villanova University in Ireland and has taught widely at Third
Level (English lit. and Linguistics) but only recently had a shot at teaching
writing. It's a very different process, the teaching of writing, she says and
tells us more about her journey with writing here, how she got into it and why
she stays with it.
Mary
has been working with people with intellectual disabilities for some time now,
teaching creative writing. Tell us about that, Mary.
My
husband, Claude Madec, and I set up and run Away with Words in Galway
city and county with the Brothers of Charity Services and this project has been
has been very successful. It's going for four years now. I believe in it because
I think that everybody should have a chance to express themselves in whatever
way they are able and in the way they choose. We got some local writers to come
on board to facilitate workshops - Susan Millar Du Mars and Kevin
Higgins are always there generously sharing their expertise and time as
facilitators.. The work of all our participants is moving and inspirational and
tells us, like everybody else's about their lives. One of our participants
recently won the Inclusion Ireland Art and Poetry competition
top prize in writing, to be awarded on 30th November in the National Library.
Several other members were shortlisted too in writing.
I also seeded a project
in Ballinrobe in Mayo very recently and got a local writer involved there, John
Corless so it's full steam ahead in Ballinrobe. Over the hills in Connemara
things are going great too. In this workshop, which I run we have created a
script together and are collaborating with Aideen Barry to animate
it. We received very generous support
from the Arts Coucil to do this for which we are very grateful. It will be
launched at the Cúirt festival in Galway this April so we are
very excited...
Last year
I started a residential workshop with a friend of mine, Conall O Cuinn for
writers who are starting off, and we ran the first workshops in Kylemore Abbey,
in beautiful Connemara in Co Galway. It was a wonderful setting and it did what
we wanted it to do. The idea was to provide a space where participants could
engage in the process of writing with gentle guidance and try it out , creating
new pieces in a sharing environment. We'll be back there next year..Watch out
for our next workshop at Kylemore in Summer 2012.
Do you
have monks in your classes?
No, no
Benedictines as yet! And they are sisters! And very supportive. It's hardly
surprising giving that the discipline of poetry and monasticism are not so
foreign to each other really when you think about it!
What
about your own work?
I'm
working on my second collection, title undecided. I find titles tricky. One of
the themes is based around the myth of Demeter and Persephone. It's very
exciting. I'm finding out more about the myth as I write. The collection though
is about the "truths" in my life rather than the facts, the myth providing a
scaffold to do this. I'm working with the sequencing of these with other poems.
It's interesting how poetry collections are put together. It's a challenge
really and often from what I see it's not taken up seriously at all. If a
writer makes an attempt to structure the book it becomes easier for the reader,
it sets up some kind of context for the interpretation of the
material.
The
poet Enda Coyle-Greene likens it to the order of tracks on an album, a kick ass
first track, more thoughtful in the middle and again, finish with a
bang.
Yes. I
like deliberate sectioning in collections. The usual first collection is very
autobiographical and after that, you have the freedom to do things in a totally
different way. Freedom but also a challenge to be way more creative..I like that
challenge but it's not easy!
Was
yours autobiographical?
There
was a good bit of autobiography in it - it's hard to avoid it in a first
collection. Of course it's part of what you do in poetry anyway, but it would
be a mistake to just seek autobiography in someone's work - at least to seek it
as a summary of their life story since it will always emerge in poetry as a
complex personal narrative with a purpose greater than the narration of life
events. The meaning overall is greater than the narrative and the "truth" in it
is not a simple statement of facts. I think anyone who writes can appreciate
what I am saying here.
What
have you had recently published or coming up?
I had a
sequence of poems solicited from Fox
Chase Review,
a Philadelphia based publication and in Natural
Bridge (University of St Louis, Missouri). I’ve also published here
Southward, I've also have a poem in The Stand in the UK about to come out.
They took two years between acceptance and publication. Also I had a dog poem in
the Salmon anthology Dogs Singing I don't enjoy the
labour of sending stuff out to magazines but I try to do it form time to time.
Ideally I would like a PA to organise submissions for me!
Wouldn't
we all! How did you first get into poetry?
I’ve
always loved poetry. I had a very early reaction to language and nursery rhymes.
The line between school and home was blurred with both my parents teachers at
local schools so I can’t say which influenced me most. I was attracted to the
music of language from the very start. I think, even now, I go for the
musicality of a poem first and the meaning second. Sometimes as poets, we work
too hard on the meaning, when the construction of meaning is a mutual task
between writer and reader. A poem, which takes a long time to write and in which
is invested a considerable amount of life experience should take a little time
to understand and readers of poetry get this, I think and also appreciate that
you get even more out of it if you stay with it.
I am my
own worst critic. I go on gut/instinct so I appreciate feedback from others on
what a poem means (I have a few close readers) after I think I’ve finished it.
One poem I wrote recently was triggered by an insight where a friend of mine was
present. I showed her the poem and she pointed out much more than I had
realised. Subconsciously my mind had brought that out in the poem. In our best
poetry, we are allowing things from our subconscious to come up even though we
think we know everything about what we write. Subjects choose you, which is a
strange thing to say maybe. But every poet I believe has a whole lot of poems in
there trying to get out and sometimes we are wasting our time trying to write
other ones..so being a writer is also about listening to yourself and making
that part of your creative process.
Do you
have any techniques when you write to open that up?
No. If
something comes to me though, I always write it down, a few phrases. Sometimes I
excuse myself from the company and go to the bathroom to take out my notebook!
If I lose the initial flow of words, I find it impossible to recall later so
the first stage is important. After that you are into multiple edits-some poems
might be ready after a few days of editing and others not for years. The poem
that won the Hennessy XO Prize in 2008 took two years to write. Writing can be
intense sometimes as I am always at different stages with different poems-it's
like having a gang of kids-all different ages!!
What
advice do you have for writers starting out?
It is
very important to workshop your work. If you don’t do that, you’re deluding
yourself. However, you must find a workshop that suits you, where you trust the
members. A residential workshop is a good idea, particularly when you are
starting out. You must ask yourself Is this really important in my life? Why do
I want to write?
And
honour the creative expression the most. Don’t get obsessed with publication. It
is a risk-taking step. The first refusals are difficult. Prepare yourself. I
wonder if it is harder now than ever to get a book published?
Also
share your work. Read it for feedback and affirmation. It’s a wonderful way of
making friends, different friends from those you meet playing sport, for
instance. I’ve met so many lovely people through writing who I would never have
met otherwise and got to know them at a deeper level because of
writing.
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