What about influences beyond The Beatles, Oasis and Drum and Bass lyrics?
Well, it’s very difficult to escape Heaney’s influence, especially if you’re writing in the North of Ireland. I mean he’s in your head and in your heart. It’s very difficult to escape his influence in any shape or form, but there are so many poets that I like.
I very much enjoy Steven Sexton’s work, and I’m just after rereading his collection which I think I’ve read about five or six times, “If All the World and Love Were Young”, which is his collection that he wrote about the sad death of his mother, but which uses Super Mario as the framing..
I think that there’s a great lesson to be learned from that work in that you can have fun with poems. I think he wrote 20 or 30 of the poems in no time at all. And he was just being mischievous with it, because he was having fun.
Are there other poets you admire?
I’m reading Gustav Parker Hibbett at the moment and his collection, “High Jump as Icarus Story”, is just outstanding. I heard him read at John Hewitt Summer School this year. He’s an incredible reader, a very gifted poet, very tender, very weighted.
I’m also reading Kelly Michael’s, “American Anthem”, which deals with the Opioid epidemic in America. She’s an American writer and she plays with sounds beautifully, and metaphor. She’s just outstanding.
Otherwise, Heaney and Larkin are my poetry gods. I know that Larkin’s a bit out of fashion at the moment. Of course he was writing in an era where he isn’t sometimes right about women or other situations, in the way that we think now, but in terms of his poetry, his gift, he is just outstanding. His commentary on the mundane, and the beauty of working class life, is wonderful.
Where to now?
I mean, you keep writing, and you keep sending work out, and you keep working hard. That’s what I do. On the back of the Seamus Heaney Award, I heard that Fortnight Magazine wants to carry the poem on their back cover. And that was a huge achievement for me. It’s the first time anyone’s requested a poem, rather than just sending them out, hoping that someone will find what I sent them.
I have just finished the Freedom to Write Awards and I have a showcase that I’m going to attend in Dublin, I’m reading at the Assembly Rooms in Dublin Central, so that’s going be really fun.
And, I’m just going to keep working hard and take any opportunities that come my way. I’m very much a home bird, not really into networking and getting my face known around the poetry community, so I’m hoping that the work will, carry itself and opportunities will sort of present themselves to me as we go along.
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