Interview by Zoë Brigley
“When I’m writing, I tend to hold closely to the rhythm of the poem as it’s unfolding, line by line and breath by breath.”
Blackthorn
Impossible, your death – a dream I only part-remember, and cannot comprehend. You must be living somewhere still. On your wedding morn, you stunned the heart, as the integrally invisible photographer can testify, whose art of day-time, joyous distillation captured, too, your father, soon bereft, in smiling gentleness and pride: at his side you stand, brightening the light – a screen-lit beauty from a golden age, easily adored – holding shyly as the moment lifts (the camera catches breath), and at your back, in white and black, the sun streams up the blazing street. Years from now, your groom and lover is lowering his head, a mountain bowing back to ground, your shining daughters tremble at the edge, as the silent rhapsody of spring comes round. In time, a man you don't yet know, a boy re-born, will grieve in disbelief as the world-without-you flourishes its gifts of snowdrop, speedwell, flowering blackthorn.
This poem really floored me – the phrasing, the way it unfolds. I read many, many poems in my job as editor, and this one – the way that it unfolds across line breaks and stanzas – is so gripping. Are there particular poets whose phrasing you admire? Who has inspired you?
Thanks, Zoë. When I’m writing, I tend to hold closely to the rhythm of the poem as it’s unfolding, line by line and breath by breath. Even if the final form is somewhat loose (Blackthorn, for example, could have been a villanelle or a sonnet, but decided to go its own way), the underlying rhythm helps to hone the poem’s attention and oxygenate the emotions involved. It can be difficult to pin-point one’s literary influences, but I suppose I learned something from Wordsworth’s weathery, rolling blank-verse in The Prelude; from William Carlos Williams’s clear-headed snapshots of daily life on the New Jersey streets; from Robert Lowell’s vivid self-dramatizations, at once elegant and noisy; and from Moya Cannon and Seamus Heaney, finding hidden light in almost every landscape they pass through – the light of revelation, or memory. All of these poets have been important to me, at one point or another.
I think that this poem hit home for me because I have been wondering about grief and losing people. We often try to shuffle by the fact of mortality without registering it too much, and I wonder if that is a mistake, as when you are finally faced with it, it can be overwhelming. I wonder if this poem is doing the work of coming to terms with loss and death?
Yes, absolutely. I wrote Blackthorn after my gran Imelda died in 2020. National lockdowns were the norm in Ireland at the time, due to the pandemic, and as a result the traditional rituals of mourning (and celebrating) deceased loved ones had been suspended. This seemed to sharpen the sadness and shock we all felt, and no doubt also affected the final struggle that gran herself went through, making them more painful and more surreal. My gran was a beautiful, vivacious person: I think everyone who met her fell in love with her, in a way, she was so filled with sunshine. The poem is a montage, contrasting a photograph of this radiant young woman on her wedding day, her whole life ahead of her, with images from the time after her death, many years later; it also tries to register some of the strangeness of spring returning, in all its lushness and colour, to a world she had vanished from. The title of course refers to a hedgerow shrub, but to me the word “blackthorn” also sounds like it could be a synonym for grief, rooted in love and coming into flower.
You were longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize this year. I was too for my first collection The Secret and I felt as though it gave me a real boost in confidence. What do you think the benefits are for writers to be on lists like this? Is it simply a confirmation that people are reading and liking your work? Writing can be a bit lonely sometimes.
It was such a delight to be longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. In general I try to keep my focus on the
work itself, putting my energy into reading, writing, and living my life, rather than jockeying for publicity or prestige. Having said this, when my publisher rang to say that Phantom Gang had made the cut, I felt a surge of gratitude. I agree that poetry can be a lonely craft, so when the work receives this kind of endorsement, the task of ‘keeping going’ suddenly seems a good deal less daunting. I should say that there was something particularly special about being longlisted for an award named in honour of Dylan Thomas, whose green-fuse-flowering visions still dazzle me whenever I visit them.
