Longford writer, Rose Moran interviews Jean O'Brien

 

 

Jean O'Brien has published two Chapbooks and two full length poetry collections.  Her latest, Dangerous Dresses was published by Bradshaw books in 2005, in the same year she was writer -in-residence for Co. Laois.  She was recently commissioned to write a poem for the 2008 Oxfam Calendar. She has extensive experience of facilitating writing workshops and runs ongoing courses in the Irish Writers Centre. She was a founding member of the acclaimed Dublin Writers Workshop and holds an MPhil. in creative writing from Trinity College, Dublin.

 

 

At the 2008 INK National Writers Group Festival, Longford writer Rose Moran caught up with  Jean, who facilitated one of the poetry workshops.  In this interview, Jean talks about her own experience of writing poetry, and offers advice to aspiring poets.

 

When did you begin writing poetry?

I wrote from an early age, stories, poems, pieces and kept a diary, a lot of writers will have written a lot as children, nothing fixed or formal just enjoying putting words down on a page. I started writing seriously quite late, in my late 20s when I joined a workshop that came out of what was the Grapevine Arts, that Dermot Bolger (of New Island Books) and John Grundy, another Finglas poet started.

Who or what most encouraged you in the beginning years?

The people who encouraged me in the early years were firstly John Grundy and then the poets Paula Meehan and Eavan Boland, Also Theo Dorgan, who gave me my first Poetry Ireland Introductions Reading.  Paula Meehan at various workshops she facilitated gave me permission to write about the subjects I was most interested in, such as familial relationships, country side and exploring thresholds, the before and after of events, the tipping point.

The famine is another of the subjects I return to and the world and our place in it.  Eavan Boland ran a series of workshops for TCD which I was lucky enough to be picked to participate in and it was she who let me give myself permission to call myself a writer, and not to be apologetic or embarrassed by the notion.

How long before you began to sense with confidence your own voice?

Confidence was quite a long time coming. The first workshop I went to I ran out of in terror, feeling that everyone there knew some secret that I didn’t.  It took me almost a year to screw up the courage to go back.

Looking back can you trace certain developments in your writing?

Our workshop closed and a group of us decided we would like to keep it going and so for about two years we held it in different peoples houses.  It later became The Dublin Writers Workshop, whose members in their time took every major award in Ireland, from a number of Kavanagh Awards, a number of Hennessy/Tribune awards, Hot Press award, The National Poetry competition, etc., etc.,

How did you first come to be published?

I started sending my work out quite early, probably too early.  I was not really ready. Rejections make you go back and look again and revise which is no bad thing.  I was publishing reasonably regularly in small magazines, and when I was first published in Poetry Ireland Review I thought I had arrived, but then the awful truth dawned on me, that you are only as good as your last poem.

Did you belong to a writers’ group?

For many, many years I was in the Dublin Writers Workshop, (see above) it was a great learning ground, some writers hate workshops, I love them and am a bit of a workshop junkie. When the DWW folded, some of us moved onto The Stephen’s Green Workshop where you had to be invited to join and have at least one book published. The idea behind this is that you will be able for the cut and thrust of criticism, which is often harsh and very beneficial. Editors have no mercy, so a group of writers sitting around being polite about one another’s works will not cut it. Many members of the defunct DWW went on to join The Stephen’s Green workshop and again win a lot of prizes, such as last year’s Dimplex Award, where we had an overall winner and a runner up. We have also had a Strokestown winner, many Listowels and the Dun Laoghaire poetry prize among others.  Unfortunately I have not snared any of these but like to bask in the reflected glory.

After my first chap book and first collection were published I first started to realise how little I actually knew about the study of poetry.  So as well as studying a lot of poetry and literary criticism, I went to Trinity College and did a Masters Degree in Creative Writing. I do believe that you can most certainly write without ever going to a workshop or college, but for me it was a year I could dedicate to reading and writing, almost without interruption, I did have a pre school child and husband to wash, cook and clean for.  It allowed me to take my own time seriously.  I do feel women writers who have a partner and children find hard to focus on their writing, when emergencies happen, as they so often do in life, the first thing that goes is the writing time.

Have you a certain pattern or disciplined way of writing?

I only write in the mornings, rarely in the evening although I might jot down notes on the back of envelopes and receipts.  The poet Brendan Kennelly says that writers should always carry a notebook, and in fact, presented me with one, but I have never used it.  The first draft of a poem is always handwritten in a certain sized notebook, it is like a charm or superstition, I really hate having to write on anything else.  The start of the revising happens as I am typing it up on the computer and it may be tweaked many times after that.

Does your inspiration come best as an emotional response or through consistent work on the blank page?

I mainly write as an emotional response, strangely enough often to things I hear on the radio.  My original impulse for writing was the working out of my relationship with my mother who killed herself, (and also wrote poetry) when I was fourteen.  It certainly saved me a lot of therapy bills.  But I do try and submit to the dictum of “All great art contains great emotion, great emotion alone does not make great art”.

Any other remarks to on-going writers of poetry?

One thing I would advise would be or early writers to do is to read more. I am always amazed about how many people hope to write and publish poetry without actually having read much. It is like wanting to play in the orchestra without first having heard the orchestra play. So my advice would be study your craft and read, read, read.