Originally published in December 2023 in print.

 

1. The theme of our issue is ‘Against Irony.’ What was it about poetry that compelled you to pursue it professionally, and are there any works that inspired this decision?

I have been writing since I was quite young, poetry first and, as a teenager, I wrote a manuscript for a novel. I hadn’t really intended to become a poet, but during my MA in Creative Writing I found my feet in poetry in a way that suited my work more than fiction did, and I just stuck with it. In terms of works that inspired my decision initially, for a long time I’ve been captivated by the artistic relationship between American poet C.D. Wright and photographer Deborah Luster—I also wanted to make work with collaborative, documentary, and mixed-genre impulses. That has always been exciting to me.

2. Your most recent project Certain Individual Women brings together your backgrounds in various fields such as law, activism and poetry. Do you ever feel tension between the ‘seriousness’ of law versus the creativity that comes with being a poet?

I suppose I think that law can be creative, and poetry can be serious. There are actually a lot of similarities between the two fields. Both are concerned with interpretation, precision, and expression, and both have a very particular economy of language. Of course, the motivations may be different, and I would say that poetry has ability to get into gaps in the law and maybe pose questions about absences or particular uses of language.

3. Your work often involves a mixed media approach with Certain Individual Women involving a poetry-play performance alongside an upcoming exhibition in the Museum of Literature. What motivates you to experiment with different forms; and are you perhaps drawn to the impermanence of say a performance and exhibition in comparison to the permanence of a traditional novel?

I love impermanence! As you say, it is a totally different dynamic and experience to book publishing. In academia, we place a lot of weight on permanent forms of dissemination, text in particular. There are other ways of knowing that are just as important. I am interested in bringing the work to life in various forms—playwriting, gallery exhibition, film, live performance. And making books is really exciting too. I try to be led by the work itself. I try to follow where it is taking me.

4. From 2021-2022 you were thePoet-in-Residence at the National Library of Ireland. Tell us about your time here, and how did you find working with the past for Radical! Women and the Irish Revolution project differed from writing about the present?

A lot of the work I make explores experiences over generations. For example, part of “Certain Individual Women” is about my grandmother, who was born in 1921 in the same week that the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed. I am fascinated by the first 100 years of the Irish State and particularly women’s involvement in the revolutionary period, and the subsequent implications of the founding of the Irish State for those who identify as women. Women played a crucial role in the revolution alongside men and their contributions were subsequently marginalised and erased. In thinking about the present, Bunreacht na hÉireann is highly exclusionary and currently still has sexist provisions—and the gender equality referendum that should have happened this year has been notably delayed.

5. ‘I am lonely for those days of change/lonely for all we achieved/and all we haven’t/ yet.’ These are lines from your poem ‘An Appreciation’ in Radical! Women and the Irish Revolution. To what extent would you identify with your poetry being an act of activism as an attempt to achieve ‘all we haven’t yet?’ And I suppose how impactful do you think poetry is as an act of activism?

Something I found troubling as a Poet-in-Residence at the National Library were the huge gaps in my own knowledge about women’s contributions during the revolution. I was questioning all the time how it happened that I did not know those stories…I did a lot of activist work for Repeal with X-ile Project and I would say that work is different to poetry. I see the two things as somewhat separate, or maybe coming from the same impulse but with different aims and outcomes. I think or hope that my poetry sometimes asks meaningful questions about law and society. Poetry can spark conversations, certainly, but my activist work was more direct, more connected to structures of political power, more “active”!

6. What advice would you give to any aspirational poets?

My advice is to read as widely and as much as you can. It is the best way to learn. And also: find your community—go to literary events, talk to people if you can, and be kind, respectful and generous to your peers. You will need each other.