Can Do Poetry

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American poet Julie O’Callaghan who has been living in Ireland since 1974. Photos: Kim Haughton When rain whispers it is snow “White Sound” from No Can Do (2000) Part One (After Sei Shonogan) Julie O’Callaghan is an American poet who has been living in Ireland since 1974. Her poetry mirrors this split between the where and the what of life and identity. In it, form and content, the masculine and feminine, give rise to a dynamic counterpoint of creative tension. O’Callaghan often focuses on domesticity and the nitty-gritty of daily life, but her tone is definitely not domesticated. Behind the feminine themes, one senses important male presences that have been interiorized in the wry laconic voice offering a quirky take on experience. The overall effect is poetry of humane intelligence that opens us up to the mystery of life. The demotic register is particularly effective when it is used in conjunction with difficult themes like illness, death and bereavement, in the moving section on her father in No Can Do (2000) that opens with Alla Luna. “In the poems about my father getting sick and dying, I didn’t want to sound like I was moaning and saying, ‘Poor me, my father has cancer’, because I hate that whole victim tone that surfaces in lots of contemporary poetry. So the most important aspect of those father poems was to find a way to write that wasn’t sentimental.” Julie O’Callaghan is married to acclaimed Irish poet Dennis O’Driscoll, whose latest collection of poems is Reality Check (2007). Two gifted poets, married for decades, is striking. “Dennis and I work and live together so well because we are polar opposites. That suits us perfectly. But I don’t think it is striking that two poets live together, even if it seems odd to other people. Would it be odd if two painters or two gardeners or two scientists lived together? I assume the interest about poets living together has something to do with creative egos clashing in some way. But that isn’t us. We’re sincerely happy when the other one does well.” “Dennis and I work and live together so well because we are polar opposites. That suits us perfectly. But I don’t think it is striking that two poets live together, even if it seems odd to other people.” Julie has been living in Ireland now for over 30 years. That’s more years than the age she was when she left her home in Chicago. And yet, her poetry is animated by this recognisably American voice. “The words in my mouth are American words – they are all I have to work with. So I may have made a decision to keep my accent, it’s very important to the way I try to write poems. I can’t imagine losing my American identity.” But have you ever been told in America that you seemed a little less American? “Yes, it was a shock the first time I was told that I had an Irish accent over there, because it was a shock to realise that I am no longer a 100 percent genuine American. What I was worried about was the watering-down of my American way of speaking, which to me is my identity." "Living in a country you aren’t originally from, you become very conscious of the way you speak. Which is a huge help when you are trying to write poetry, because you need to be hyper-aware of what and how you are saying something. So I began to hear myself from a new perspective. However, if I ever started speaking with a foreign accent it would be impossible for me to write. My poems would all sound fake to me.” From 1974, when you first arrived in Ireland, the country has undergone momentous changes. “My first few years in Ireland were extremely odd – I felt like I had landed on Mars, I wasn’t allowed to work – jobs were much scarcer in the ‘70s and thousands of Irish people were actually becoming financial refugees themselves, leaving here to look for work in other countries. So the prosperity of Ireland has helped Irish people to actually live in their own country if they wish to – a great luxury. That has caused other problems, as we all know. But the changes in Ireland (and the changes of just growing up) have made my life much better and happier than when I arrived here first.” What a refreshing take on Celtic Tiger Ireland. This attitude calls to mind your poem, The Great Blasket Island, which is on the list of prescribed poetry for the Leaving Certificate this year. The last two lines are a sharp jolt compared to the plangent tone of the preceding 19 lines. “I watched that man in the documentary about The Blaskets with tears in his eyes looking at his old homestead and it just instantly reminded me of driving past the house I grew up in and remembering all the days of growing up inside those walls. And then thinking how our family had dispersed: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Colorado, Michigan and Ireland. So the ending of that poem was telling the man and me to buck up and not get so sad that things aren’t the way they used to be.” “Sei Shonogan is a genius at describing the humorous yet melancholy everyday saga of being a person. She was wise – the best praise a writer can get.” What would you say to a young person who cannot see the reason for reading – still less writing – poetry nowadays? “Oh well – I don’t believe that young people actually care what I think. The mysterious way poetry becomes important to people can’t really be forced or preached about. It is worrying that computer games have taken over so many hours of a child’s life. But I can’t come up with a solution to that problem. I suspect that writing verse when you’re a teenager is something that will never stop. It goes with the hormones. It’s extremely important that schools don’t lose their nerve and drop poetry. At least in that one place, children can be exposed to this mind-blowing, life-changing wisdom of the greatest poetry. I do believe that people will always find poetry – it’s essential. So teachers and schools need to keep poems being read and talked about, and after that you just have to cross your fingers.” Tell Me This Is Normal, your collection of new and selected poems, has just been published. It contains 25 years of verse. It must give a sense of achievement to be able to look back on such a long period of creativity. Is there anything that still unites you, or differentiates you, with the beginning of your career as a poet? “I spent my first five years in Dublin in a flat reading poetry and anything else I could get my hands on. I loved to read Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova, Pasternak, Neruda, Frost, Kavanagh, Lowell, Berryman, Herrick, Schuyler, WS Graham, George Mackay Brown, and many others. I still love to read those poets – James Schuyler, especially, has been a favourite over the years. I also read the early Japanese writer Sei Shonogan a few times every year – she is endlessly hilarious and sad.” Part One of No Can Do was inspired by her. “Yes. Sei Shonogan wrote The Pillow Book a thousand years ago. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter that she wrote it a thousand years ago, or that she was Japanese. Sei Shonogan is a genius at describing the humorous yet melancholy everyday saga of being a person. She was wise – the best praise a writer can get.” The same can be said of Julie O’Callaghan, and Tell Me This Is Normal stands as a testament to this. … the last page about that summer must be on the topic of beaches and how you loved them and the machines which cleaned them the police patrolling them little old Russian ladies on their benches the whackos dancing around on them in the middle of the night the boats floating on them barges on the horizon and the pier we walked down to scatter your ashes from “Sketches for an Elegy”, No Can Do, Part Three (2000)

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