You end up going to university?
I dabbled a wee before I went to university. When I was working as an electrician, every now and again I’d be called into the office to work as an estimator In my downtime I’d write short stories, or the beginnings of short stories. I had a look at some of my writing from that period a little while ago and it looked like it was influenced by Syd Barrett. It wasn’t too bad but it was a bit weird. I was also reading a lot of George Bernard Shaw, and that’s why I was humming and hawing It was between doing Philosophy and Creative Writing.
What course did you end up doing?
When I got to University, I did Creative Writing with English Literature, and on one of my first days possibly the very first day, I had Ciaran Carson as my teacher. That was a massive privilege
In my second year, I had Sinéad Morrissey as a teacher and she was incredibly supportive. I found out later (quite recently, actually) that her grandfather was a Communist, and that her grandfather and my grandfather were in the Communist Party together.
She was the person who talked to me about the point when you finish your degree you have to choose an avenue to turn down next and in my case that was poetry.
What about the development of your craft?
I think people can get their backs up when they hear the mention of the Seamus Heaney Centre because they think it’s an elitist institution and a lot of people seem to think you shouldn’t have creative writing taught through universities because they think you end up with carbon-copy style writing. I don’t think that’s necessarily true.
What I would say is that regardless of what people think about these institutions, you can’t teach people how to write poetry that will last, because no-one knows what is going to last. No-one knows what people’s tastes are going to be in the future. So these institutions aim to give people skills which will allow them to write effectively.
=When I was going to university, I was encouraged to think about form early on and the reading lists were good, and of course you have people to talk to about what you’re reading. You have access to people who can direct you to read this poet or that poet. There’ll be lecturers who’ll say that you should have a look at Elizabeth Bishop or Wallace Stevens for example and in a way that is effectively an academic apprenticeship. People are showing you what you need to do, or what approach you need to take.
Now, you develop or you don’t develop. You can be taught certain things but you still have to work at your writing, finding your own approach, style or voice. Every time I teach a community workshop I say to people that I can teach them five things that if they followed them might allow them to enter poetry competitions, maybe even win them, but you still have to work and develop your writing.
Were there any particular things which stood out?
Probably the key thing for me was Ciaran Carson’s afternoon workshops There were a lot of good writers in the workshops and there was a sense that it was slightly competitive. You had Steven Sexton, Dane Holt, Padraig Regan, Dawn Watson, Charles Lang, Stephen Connolly, Manuela Moser, and someone will bring a poem in and there was this sense that you had to reply, that you had to be on the top of your game.
You could see Carson’s impact on many of the poets who attended and that probably fits in with the criticism but I think partly it’s unavoidable and partly that rubbing off isn’t a bad thing.
But don’t you still have to find your own voice, regardless of who teaches you?
I was in Ciaran Carson’s class as I said when I first got there and he absolutely slaughtered me in one of the classes when he gave me feedback. When I sent in my submission, he said that my work was ‘obtuse’.
It was when I went into Morrissey’s class that I was being taught the basic things I needed to do. If it had’ve been an arts class, she would have been saying, “here is how you draw a face and here is how you work with light and shade.” So, I felt I was being taught how to write poetry in that class in the same way I was taught to wire, as a spark
At some level then you were taught the craft of poetry?
I was, but the way I would put it, or maybe the ways I would put it, would be, there is a big tome of poetry by Don Paterson, and in it he says that, “even if you know nothing about poetry, nothing about rhythm, rhyme or meter, you can still get it right some of the time, and I know that’s quite patronising, but I think it would be great if more poets talked about and engaged with those aspects of writing poetry.
On the other hand, let’s say you were a musician, and you joined a punk band, would it help you to be classically trained? Probably not, but in a way it’s good to have that education under your belt, and beyond all that, does anyone care that Shane McGowan wasn’t classically trained?
If you would like to see more of Scott McKendry’s work – x.com/al_mac_e
