General Questions
 

1) Where did you grow up? Was poetry and writing part of that mix? 

 

I was born in Dublin and lived there for the first 20 years of my life.  My father loved books.  There were eight children in the family so books were necessary spaces.  On Saturdays my father brought second-hand books home to us.  On birthdays and at Christmas, there were always new books.   He also bought Irish poetry books as they were published and read poetry from his poetry book-case on Sundays.  My father gave me a connection to poetry; the only other connection was poems learned off by heart in Irish and English all the way through school.  He didn’t know any poets personally but he almost did, knowing their work and the places they came from.  The first poems I wrote were prayers.  I was 15 and suffused with embarrassment.  That weird shame about poetry continued until I was in my 30s and met Alan Dugan who blew it away effortlessly.  As far as growing up is concerned, that is a work in progress and always will be. 

 

To My Children

 

 

2) Who are your poetic influences, favorite poets, writers, artwork, other things that inform your work?

 

Traditional Irish Poem

 

This poem answers that question, on one particular day at least.  Although I don’t usually think of a poem as a box, I think of this poem as a box, or a box-accordion—I can move names in and out according to the day, or the audience.  So this version is not definitive.  Where’s Anne Bradstreet?  Where’s Gertrude Stein?  Where’s Bertolt Brecht? These are also poets who have modeled a way of life for me, much more so that some of the poets to whom I feel an almost erotic attachment, like Hopkins or Hart Crane.  I feel that every freedom I enjoy, every move I make, was made possible, step-by-step, by the energy of someone else.  Also, a large part of what made poetry possible for me, and shaped the sort of poetry I write, were the writings of visual artists—looking at images—often just on postcards—and spending most of my twenties in galleries and studios.  Music is also hugely important: you can live inside music, it is a climate just like poetry.  I get into my car, then I get into the music in my car.  It teaches me about range and the sounds and catches of the human voice, and breath.  In music many, often disparate, threads, can occupy time simultaneously.  I love the texture of music; also the way it can just make you want to shout and jump out of your skin.

 

 

3) When did you 'become' a poet, when did poet become part of your everyday life? 

 

Poetry has been there for a long, long time, often as a source of unease.  I tried other writing possibilities first.  I was a journalist for almost 10 years.  I wrote plays.  I wrote about art.  In the last few years it has become part of my daily life.  Every day I can hardly wait to turn right onto Smith Street to catch my first glimpse of the Rhode Island State House about which I write a line every day:

 

ve Dedicated My Life toI Ha Writing Poetry

 

 

4) Where were you educated? Was this important?

 

Primary (elementary) school in Ireland was important to me because it was the scene of keen perceptions: the yellowness of a hank of wool, the taste of pencils, the smell of bulbs and clay, the behavior of steam. Secondary school was miserable because I spent most of it mourning a death.  I graduated from University College Dublin when I was just 20, too young to flourish in a misogynist environment.  In 1994, I got a teaching diploma from Trinity College, Dublin: that was important because teaching is a great love; also it was the only thing I ever got first place in. 

I traveled 4,000 miles with a 7-year old child in order to pursue a Master’s in Poetry at Purdue; it definitely was important to me.  Doing a PhD was important: I loved doing it, it synthesized many of my ongoing concerns, it was good for my morale, and it got me two jobs, one at the University of Mississippi, and one at Rhode Island School of Design where I now teach.

 

Degrees

 

5) You are Irish by birth, how important is place for you as a poet?

 

I love home.  I consider it a vastly superior place to any other.  At the same time, I have moved, on average, once every 9 months over the past 34 years.  I am also an immigrant, and before I was an immigrant I was migratory.  I am quick to accept a place as home.  A motel room, after five minutes, is home.  Home means relief and privacy to me.   I often think about the places I have lived, and the places people I know have lived; I never quite understand why we don’t all still live there.  But I’ve been happy everywhere.  Each state I have lived in has engaged and stimulated me.  Emigration is like dying and being born again: everything is a bonus though sometimes not quite real.

 

5.1) Does being a European in the US give you a different Poetic perspective?

 

I came to America in order to survive as a poet.  There are multiple traditions here, a very rich array.  I adore teaching 20^th century poetry.  I’m always astounded when poets here narrow the range voluntarily.  I came here excited by African-American poetry, by Slam, by L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, by Whitman, by Bishop, by Hart Crane—knowing there was lots, lots more to know and enjoy, and feeling that there would be a place for me here.  In Ireland there was very little room for anything but the short lyric and subject matter was equivalently circumscribed. 

On the plane over (in 1994), I read about the Internet for the first time.  In some ways the place for me has been the Internet, which has happily also connected me to Ireland again through Randolph Healy’s Wild Honey Press, publisher of my first collection of poetry.  

The other great thing about America when I came here first was that there was a place for poetry in the universities.  I could write poetry and study for advanced degrees at the same time.  Irish poetry culture tended to be based around the pub.  I was damned poor when I lived in Ireland, and I had a child.  I had no interest in investing endless hours in pubs.  Whether for that reason or for reasons relating to my poetics, after a certain point I couldn’t publish in Ireland.  People here tend to be critical of workshop culture but I found it to be hospitable and functional.  I still find the American poetry scene exciting.  But Ireland has been through a whirlwind of change.  The least of these changes is that there are now Creative Writing programs in several universities.  I gave 4 readings in Ireland this year and enjoyed myself so much I began to day-dream about living there again, though it is prohibitively expensive.

 At this time in America, I feel out of the loop because I am not a citizen.  I may change that.

 

6) What is your favorite food?

 

Guinness.
 

7) Sports Team? or Activity?

 

Driving in Providence. 

 

 

8) Vacation spot?

 

Galway.

 

 

9) Curse word?
 

Would you ever / Shut the fuck up.  It’s not really a question.

 

Craft Questions

 

1) How do you form a poem? Is poetry an organic or synthetic process for you?

 

I like Tomaž Šalamun’s line: “I breathe and a poem jumps up.”  Sometimes it’s like that. Sometimes it’s more like brick-laying.   I have a number of poems to which I add a line a day, e.g., THE WEATHER

 

http://www.maireadbyrne.blogspot.com/2004_07_01_maireadbyrne_archive.html

 

I like both approaches.  Sometimes I get a little hypergraphiac, if that’s a word, so the brick-laying approach is steadying.

 

 

2) Where do you write? Is Ambiance important? Do you have rituals or habits when you write?

 

Yes Ambiance is important.  But sometimes the blue lights and sirens annoy me.  My favorite place to write on the Providence-Boston MBTA.  Then I play my laptop like a grand piano.   I write in time; I think I think of time as a matrix, a collaborator and a leavener.  That said, my little hard-back notebook and my blog are fundamental tools for me.  Explanation for My Poetry

 

 

3) In the balance between found language and created language where does your work fall?

 

Sometimes I make up words but I’m more excited by found materials. I recently bought a house and came into a great store of words:  Recently Purchased Words.  I use found forms and borrow from other art forms.  I consider myself a formal poet but the forms I use are generally not canonical.  I used to think that words work in a completely different way to paint.  I have changed my mind on that.  Productive accidents happen with words just as they do with paint.  Now if I don’t know how to approach a subject or material I have long wanted to work with, e.g., obituary columns, I just start doing it.  But I write lyric poetry too:  When You Kiss the World