about
writing
a dance with the dead
and the living
Writing is a craft, no matter if poetry or prose. Learning how to do it, according to Irish Poet Paula Meehan, is “dancing with dead poets and your own contemporary poets”. Paula considers a poem the emblematic linguistic expression of the mark made by one’s own breath on a window, or, even better, on a mirror. Writing is about leaving a mark somewhere, and what this mark looks like could not differ more from individual to individual. The four writers we talked to in the course of October 2020 are all wonderful human beings, yet their approaches to writing could not differ more.
The Authors
Paula Meehan
Irish poet and playwright
For Paula Meehan, writing poetry is not an intellectual practice, but a bodily one. For her, every word a writer decides to use comes with a ghost, and one should better know what’s haunting it. Yet, while the etymological origin of the word might be important, it is with breath and meaning that she is breaking the lines.
Paula Meehan
Irish poet and playwright
For Paula Meehan, writing poetry is not an intellectual practice, but a bodily one. For her, every word a writer decides to use comes with a ghost, and one should better know what’s haunting it. Yet, while the etymological origin of the word might be important, it is with breath and meaning that she is breaking the lines.
Paula Meehan
Tim MacGabhann
Irish journalist and author
Tim MacGabhann writes violence and politics into fiction to give people in the newspaper more than only a headline. Through the mechanics of short sentences and chapters he pulls the reader into the place of the words: somewhere between abject horror and sublime control of the terrible.
Tim MacGabhann
Irish journalist and author
Tim MacGabhann writes violence and politics into fiction to give people in the newspaper more than only a headline. Through the mechanics of short sentences and chapters he pulls the reader into the place of the words: somewhere between abject horror and sublime control of the terrible.
Wendy Erskine
Irish author
Wendy Erskine is the kind of writer we are fascinated by since she does not wake up and waits for the muse to kiss her. She gets up, goes to work at a local school in Northern Ireland and writes on weekends and in quiet minutes, where neither family nor work need her full attention. Still, her short stories offer a very sensitive insight into people’s (a)political lives.
Wendy Erskine
Irish author
Wendy Erskine is the kind of writer we are fascinated by since she does not wake up and waits for the muse to kiss her. She gets up, goes to work at a local school in Northern Ireland and writes on weekends and in quiet minutes, where neither family nor work need her full attention. Still, her short stories offer a very sensitive insight into people’s (a)political lives.
Claire-Louise Bennett
Irish author
Claire-Louise Bennett follows Inger Christensen in saying that while writing, she pretends that words are directly connected to the thing they are describing. She wants her reader to feel language, just like the emotions that drive the story: her novels don’t follow any pre-given plot structure, they are an emotional journey towards an open end.