The Monthly talks to Belfast based poet, Scott McKendry – Part 5 – Searching for a new way to write my poetry

So, where to now?

I am meant to be writing a lit crit book on Irish Poetry and Aesthetics. I have a chapter on The Ballad in an Oxford Handbook. I write about Belfast ballads and have no idea how I ended up going down that road.
I want to write a book on the area around the Shankill estate, around Carlisle Circus, because there’s so much history there and it’s never been explored thoroughly. Henry Joy McCracken is buried there, the original Belfast Synagogue was there, Johnny Adair and C Company. Thomas Carnduff lived there, Brian Moore, William Connor, Dermot Seymour, John Hewitt, all lived or were from there. There is a lot going on in that area.

There used to be a road, the Old Lodge Road, that ran parallel to the Crumlin Road, till redevelopment levelled it, but it was an area which was like the Ormeau Road is now. Mixed, in terms of Catholic and Protestant, but mixed in terms of class, and there was a Jewish population which lived there that you hear very little about.

I’d like to write something a little less bitsy. That might mean writing a book-length poem, or trying to find a new way to write poetry. I’m looking at writing using a phonetic approach, colloquial spelling and grammar, colloquial dialogue and pronunciation.

So there’s plenty in there to look at working on.