January 21, 2021
You are the author of eight poetry collections, a short story collection, and a collection of non-fiction stories, and your first novel, Seeing-Eye Boy, was published in October of 2020. What inspired your transition from poet to novelist and the creation of this first book-length work?
I got interested in YA fiction when my son Michael was approaching adolescence; it was at that point that I started getting him YA books, sometimes even reading them to him. That's when I realized that there was a lot of good writing and storytelling going on in that arena. The next step was to try my own hand at it.
How has Irish music influenced you and your development as an artist?
Irish music goes back further and deeper in my life than any other form of expression. I have a storehouse of songs and tunes in my head that I think help shape, most often in ways I’m not really conscious of, much of my writing.
Where do poetry and music intersect? And where do they diverge?
There’s a close relationship between poetry and song, which in humanity’s past often meant the same thing. Good poems have a deep musicality coded into them, just as great song lyrics often show an attention to the metaphoric concision of the best kind of poetic language. Obviously, not every poem makes a good song, and not every set of lyrics can stand alone as a poem. But Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and that made perfect sense to me.
What themes and inquiries most fascinate and inspire you?
I never think in terms of themes and inquiries. But sex and death, those twin pillars of poetic obsession, have not escaped my attention.
Do the best books win the poetry prizes? Why do great works so often fall through the cracks of our literary foundation, into obscurity?
When you have found the answers to those questions, please let me know.
Do you have any wisdom or guidance you’d like to share with young poets?
When I was a student, a long time ago, I loved the work, and the workings of the mind, of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I still think, along with many others, that “Kubla Khan” is the best poem ever written in English. I also read and loved his prose, including his great classic, Biographia Literaria: Or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions. In the Biographia he writes, "With no other privilege than that of sympathy and sincere good wishes, I would address an affectionate exhortation to the youthful literati, grounded on my own experience. It will be but short; for the beginning, middle, and end converge to one charge: NEVER PURSUE LITERATURE AS A TRADE" [caps his]. I think that’s still good advice.
What are you working on now? What creative pursuits most excite you?
I'm finishing up work on a new manuscript of poems. I like writing poems. Writing something you’re happy with produces a very pleasant high that you can’t get any other way. It's a benign addiction. Songs and instrumental compositions come less frequently, but are also a kick.
Thank you for recommending Coleridge. I just ordered The Portable Coleridge which I believe has large chunks of his Biographia Literaria according to a friend of mine majoring in english lit. Is there anyone else as trippy? I mean not only in the sense of Kubla Khan.
Posted by: Tony Paris | January 28, 2021 at 07:23 PM
brilliantly witty, or vice versa, as always
Posted by: lally | January 28, 2021 at 08:40 PM