“Your second? Was there a first?”
I’m hearing this a lot lately, as I share with people the exciting news that my second poetry collection, Beast, has just been published by Arlen House.
I’m part of the generation that were told we could be anything we wanted; that we were special and great. When I showed an interest in writing poetry at school, I was lauded by lots of grown-ups. White-haired “proper poets” in their 60s, workshop attendees at literary festivals, proud teachers. I was put into a freshly ironed school blazer, trotted out and they all raised their eyebrows when they encountered me. “There are big things waiting for you,” one well-meaning adult said to me, “it is written in the stars.”
So, it’s no surprise that I believed them. When Honest Walls, my first collection, was published in 2016, I was 22 and ready to receive my accolades. Then, the book arrived, and silence. I had a nice afternoon in the Radisson with my supportive and loving family, and Honest Walls succumbed to the unfortunately likely fate of the majority of debuts: it died a quiet death.
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Why? I asked myself in the months afterwards. This was supposed to have been a done deal. It was written in the stars, was it not, that I would succeed? The TS Eliot Prize was coming home to Oughterard. I had written an entire book to impress the very people who told me they were impressed by me. I wanted so desperately to prove their prophecies right, I didn’t give them a chance to dislike me. And so, I didn’t even turn up in the first place.
I apologised, embarrassed, in my head to the people I thought I’d let down. I tucked my pen and paper away, thought that maybe this wasn’t for me. Talk of poetry soon frightened me, and I avoided it at all costs. I stopped going to events, and I faded away from circles. When I saw someone I recognised from those starry-eyed days, I pulled up my collar and crossed the street, pretending not to have seen them. Anything to ensure that I wouldn’t have to explain the obvious – the stars, with all their glimmering cursive, had been wrong.
A few years ago, thanks to a generous lifeline from the good folk at the Galway and Roscommon Education and Training Board and Poetry Ireland, I was invited to do some creative writing workshops in a local secondary school. I accepted this opportunity, but the truth was that I wasn’t sure where poetry’s place was in my life anymore. In my mind’s eye, when I thought about poetry, I saw polite grown-ups milling about a grand hall, holding wine glasses. I saw the kind-faced mentors who welcomed me into the fold and told my young ears that I was going to be somebody.
Teaching brought me into contact with an entirely different breed of people. People who didn’t pretend, like I was pretending to them, to like poetry. Kids who, when they heard the names Heaney and Plath, rolled their eyes and shouted expletives at me. I was standing at the top of a classroom, recycling the old “intelligent” things I’d learned to say to convince my older poetry colleagues to like me. Now, these same statements were being energetically rejected and I had no defences. Why should we bother? they demanded to know. Who actually cares about poetry?
What on earth was I supposed to tell them? So, I decided to tell them the truth.
Honesty has a way of signposting itself. I believe we inherently know when something is honest. The ironic thing is, Honest Walls was everything but its title. Sure, there are a few pretty pieces in there that I’m proud of. But I wasn’t being honest when I wrote it. These teenagers, glowering at me from the back of the classroom (or worse – apathetic on their phones) weren’t going to accept anything less from me.
Honesty is difficult. That’s why, whenever I go into a class and the kids are brave enough to tell me that they f-ing hate poetry, I’m both grateful and relieved. My job with them is easier because they are already doing what it has taken me years to do myself. Write that, I encourage them. Write about how much you f-ing hate f-ing poetry.
One day, I took my own advice. I started writing pages I wanted to burn afterwards. And then, those words I had trained for years to obey me, to dress up nice and impress the softly spoken Written-in-Stars-ers...they came back to me. Minus their dickie bows, their cute, inoffensive cow’s-lick hair. There they were, standing at my kitchen sink one day, cleaning my plates. “Nobody cares,” I tried to tell them when they nudged me. “Shhhh,” they cooed, “that doesn’t matter.”
Beast isn’t polite or goody-two shoed. It has all the ugliness of a schoolyard bully who yells at a workshop facilitator. It is missing teeth, it’s breaking out in acne, it has a botched haircut, but by God, it wants to let you know it’s here. It’s ready to shout my secrets and call me out on my own bullshit. This time, I’m ready for people not to like it. I’m ready to agree with those people and stick up for it anyway.
Honestly.
