Page Turner: Always effortless

What is your latest book about?
“New and Selected poems” (Anvil Press, London) offers a selection from my earlier published books, together with a wad of new poems. It encompasses some unlikely topics for poetry, such as the world of business and bureaucracy.

What is your writing routine? Are there ideal conditions?
Having all of my life, worked as a civil servant, I have had to organize my writing life around my day job, which has meant a lot of red-eyed writing in the early hours — a well as more leisurely weekend writing, (poetry substituting for golf!). Ideal conditions consist of a long journey by train, with beautiful views, and passengers overheard saying things that stimulate the imagination. The train is particularly good for poetry because the rhythm the wheels becomes the rhythm of the words.

What advice to you have for aspiring writers?
Sit around and wait to be told by the Muse or the subconscious what to write. Good writing is always effortless. The effort should be saved for revision. You take dictation from the Muse, you don’t dictate to her.

Name three books that are memorable in terms of your reading pleasure?
“Tarry Flynn” by Patrick Kavanagh, “The plays of William Congreve”, “Collective Poems” by William Butler Yeats

What book are you currently reading?
A proof copy of Thomas Lynch’s “Booking passage” has made a passage to my desk. It tells his family stories and the story of Irish America. I’m sure word of this eloquent and touching book will spread like gorse fire throughout Ireland and America

Is there a book you wish you had written?
“Castle Rackrent” by Maria Edgeworth – it shows wit, a perfect ear for speech rhythm, conveys an entire world with its full cast of characters through a short, apparently casual, yarn. Besides, she too was born on the New Year’s Day, I clearly wish that I could lay claim to some of her gifts.

Name a book that you were pleasantly surprised by?
“The Strings are Full” by Louis MacNeice. An autobiography which he himself dismissed and discarded, abandoning in a drawer. His literary executors dusted it off after his death and the vivid account of his childhood, education and travels was revealed to be a youthful masterpiece, full of wit and memorable turns of phrase.

If you could meet one author, living or dead, who would it be?
Blind Raftery. Blind writers sometimes see more than the rest of us, because they rely so much on the imagination. They are literally seers. Think of Milton. Think of Homer. Raftery’s talent was not on the Homeric scale — he was more a ballad man than a epic man — but he left his mark in the Irish landscape and the Irish language, as a great poet of empty pockets and a very full heart

What book changed your life?
“Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett. I read this when I was 15, knowing nothing about what I assumed was a neglected writer. I wrote him a letter of encouragement, to which I received a reply, including a signed book. Four months later, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

What is your favorite spot in Ireland?
Staring into the River Suir at any point of its intersection with County Tipperary.

You’re Irish if . . .
You can’t master the “th” in Thurles.