Are there any early memories of being attracted to poetry?
I won a poetry competition in the Town Hall in Limavady, my poem was up in the Town Hall, when I was 8 years old and I won a drawing book which sort of, in my mind, connects the two areas together, poetry and the arts.
Was there support at home or at school?
I always did well at school with my writing, I received good grades for my essays, and I had an amazing English teacher, Miss Murray, who is sadly no longer with us. Anyone who has been to Loreto Convent Grammar School might recognise that name. She was an extraordinary woman.
I went to a boarding school in Coleraine and I won quite a few poetry competitions while I was there. You were given little tiny cups as the awards. When I finished school I had A levels in Art and English. I talked to my mum at the time and she said that I should do English at Queen’s and keep Art as a hobby. I was very unhappy about that. I applied to the Arts College and to Queen’s University and I got accepted to do English at Queens and to do the Foundation Course at the Arts College. Being the contrarian that I am, I decided to go to Arts College.
Belfast Arts College
I remember speaking to my mum soon after making that decision and she said she was happy that I had chosen to go to the Arts College. I always thought that she had tricked me because she actually wanted me to go to Art College. Apparently my grandfather had got into Art College but he couldn’t afford to study there.
What happens after that?
I went to New York University (NYU) and studied animation and when I finished, I ended up back in Ireland and I found that I couldn’t afford to keep up with the changing demands for equipment to work on animation. I just couldn’t afford the costs of the technology.
I moved into ceramics and at the same time I enrolled to study a Masters in Creative Writing at Queen’s. While I was studying ceramics I was doing classes with Ciaran Carson, Glenn Patterson and Darragh Carville. I think you can say that I had a good grounding in creative writing and poetry.
Is that where you develop your craft?
I had been very inspired by going to the John Hewitt Summer School prior to doing the Masters of Creative Writing. I was excited by the poetry I heard there and I wanted to do that too. I thought I had things to say.
There wasn’t much poetry in the Masters of Creative Writing, mostly it was prose, but once I was finished that course, I met someone, fell in love and started writing poetry, mainly poetry about love.
I ended up in a poetry group at Queens with Ciaran Carson and I found that I had a natural style for narratives. Ciaran Carson would say to me that I also had a gift for internal rhymes. I would say that that is my natural style of writing.
How do you develop from there?
I think I can say that I really started to develop my poetic writing when I started using a phone to capture my thoughts, my initial ideas. I could stop the car and get my thoughts down into the phone. I would do that every day.
I found that if it was left to writing on paper I just wouldn’t warm to that, but I could get my thoughts down on the phone and then the real work begins when you start the editing process.
So you would be a whittler?
Definitely. My work is the result of a lot of drafting and editing. That is very similar to the way I work when I am using ceramics. I create the rough thing, the first piece, and then I add to it, I shape it.
