Mark A. Murphy was born in Holme Valley Memorial Hospital (Holmfirth, W. Yorks.) in 1969. He was a student at Honley High School before studying Philosophy, Sociology, History and Politics at Huddersfield Technical College, then Philosophy (BA) at North Staffordshire Polytechnic and Poetry (MA) at Huddersfield University.
Murphy’s interest in poetry goes back to when he was a child of 5 reading the Puffin Book of Children’s Verse under his bed sheets by torch light for fear of being found out by his parents. He first attended poetry workshops in 1986 with the famous ‘Poetry Business’ workshops run by Peter Sansom and also attended by the now internationally acclaimed poet, Simon Armitage.
He went on to join in and read with the ‘Albert Poets’ in and around Huddersfield in the early 90’s. His first chap book, Tin Cat Alley was produced by Spout Publications in 1996 from the Byrum Arcade, Huddersfield. The next period of ten years or so saw the poet plagued by alcoholism, anxiety and depression. He started writing again in 2005 with a view to publication. Up to date he has completed four full length poetry collections, the first of which, Night-Watch Man & Muse now sees the light of day for the first time with Salmon Poetry. In the past few years his poems have been published widely on the internet and in over 100 poetry journals and ezines in 17 different countries world wide.
Critical reaction to Night-Watch Man and Muse
“Night-Watch Man & Muse is a remarkable and considered book of poems. It contains some of the liveliest modern love poems I have read, yet also some of the harshest self-examinations. Yet this is a book on the side of life and delights in the experience of being alive. Murphy writes spectacular epiphanies that ring true in their humour, honesty and invention. For me, the starting point for the book is ‘Britain’, an elegy and a eulogy that travels from his father's love of Auden to brass bands via The Miners’ Strike and Dresden. It acts as a sharp, swerving summary of Murphy’s poetics in which the political is personal. As with Auden, Mark Murphy’s poems possess a tantalising logic, a clear-sighted view of their subject and linguistic wit. But what’s right and reaching about the tone of these poems is Mark Murphy's highly developed sense for humanity alongside a vigorous verbal alertness.” David Morley
“Murphy’s serious sense of rapture with the world pervades this excellent debut collection, filled with emotional and sexual drive as well as a spiritual restlessness — something that strikes an alternative note as it abandons more familiar territories for its edgy philosophical road trip. But the book is dominated by its poignant engagements — the lusty, admonishing, bittersweet, tender confrontations that the poet brings to bear on his subjects. It is a book which constantly draws on Lacan’s Other — and finds itself absorbed in deceit, disintegration and abandonment, yet in ways that keep you on board and travelling smoothly into Murphy’s global hinterlands.” Chris Emery
“There are so many fine images and fluent lines running through his poetry that mark him out as a unique and clear voice – it is something poetry editors of magazines as far afield as New Zealand, America and Scotland have long recognised. It’s a surprise that it has taken so long for Mark's first collection to surface.” Brian Patten
“Mark A. Murphy is a true poet, as you will find as you take this text in your hand, and play with the themes of our very living. It is provocative, lonely, happy, and a signifier of our living truthfully.” Bernard Kennedy
“Here is a poet willing to take on demanding themes, and his language is discerning and subtle throughout. A questioning and thoughtful collection.” Penelope Shuttle
More information about Murphy's work as well as samples of his great poems, can be found on the web page of Salmon Poetry
Two poems by Mark A. Murphy
"Killing the Summer"
It is no use turning it over – except we can do little else –
caught in the grief
of our own remembering, reasoning, remorse.
This is what it is to be alive –
knowing each time we close our eyes
could be the last.
Still, it is almost unbelievable, allowing as we do:
‘nothing human is alien’
that death –
untimely and uncalled for death
should come late in the afternoon
and root destruction in the brain.
Sure. It is not quite right how the kettle on the hob
outlasts the man who wrought it
or the man who supped at its spout.
(It is) Not quite right how the world hums
as tragedy smacks the child in the face
declaiming those favourite words, ‘you’ve lost again,’
and consciousness
slips from the young man’s mind,
and the sick men in the abattoir skin the cattle alive.
"For Him, For Her"
I will name a star in the remote reaches of the Lost Galaxy
for my father who sits alone in his study playing chess
and celestial dice, whilst perfecting his old mystic’s hunch.
But this will be as nothing, when compared to my planet-sized
generosity towards my children who are not yet born.
For them, I will buy ten acres of lunar dust on the light side of the moon.
And for my children’s children, I will buy the rocky plains of Venus,
and when I am done with buying planets, I will buy race horses
and golden hollow heart necklaces for the ladies of solitude.
And for the memory of dead lovers, I will buy ice-bergs and deserts,
unfathomable gifts for the unravelling of time, where the phantasms
in the brain wreak havoc over the hearts and minds of the living man.
And for my only godchild, I will buy a dolly and for his mother,
I will buy a long lost title of a long dead royal, and for the brave man
and the fool, there will be golden tokens placed on their eyes
when they sleep.
For the newly weds down the lane, I will buy vintage champagne,
and for the maids in the grand hotel, they shall have roses in their bowers
and bathe in the milk of does before the hotel manager and the Pope.
And last of all - and just for you - I will ignore the shrieks in the Sultan’s
harems, and the horn that would sound the end of time and I will buy
the Rubaiyate of Omar Khayyam, and we will learn to live ungodly lives.
My great thanks to Mark for allowing me to publish these two wonderful poems. They are protected under international copyright law and cannot be published in any format without the permission of the author.
A. Can you tell us a bit about your writing routine. Do you typically set aside a certain period to write, always write in same place, do you listen to music while you write, do you need solitude to write?
I don't do timetables, except I'm a night bird and I prefer to write at night/early morning when the rest of the world is sleeping. I don't listen to music whilst I write, preferring solitude to help me find the muse!
B. if you could give your eighteen year old self one suggestion, what would it be?
Be more disciplined.
C. " in the name of a humanism hypocritically turned champion of the reader’s rights. Classic criticism has never paid any attention to the reader; for it, the writer is the only person in literature. We are now beginning to let ourselves be fooled no longer by the arrogant antiphrastical recriminations of good society in favour of the very thing it sets aside, ignores, smothers, or destroys; we know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author."
What is your reaction to these very famous lines from "The Death of the Author" by Roland Barthes?
The reader is all important. The writer hardly matters a jot. Let's not grieve the passing of the author. He/she is just a conduit to the truth, any truth.
D. It is the habit of approaching works of art in order to interpret them that sustains the fancy that there really is such a thing as the content of a work of art" - from "Against Interpretation" by Susan Sontag
As a writer, how do you feel when people Interpret your work, attribute meaning to it?, see things in it you never thought about?
Who is your ideal reader?
My ideal reader is open minded, anyone that is prepared to sit up and pay attention. I don't have a problem with people interpreting my work. There are as many meanings as there are people doing the reading. I'm a very pluralistic kind of person. If he/she sees things I never thought about, then great. So much the richer the is work for them.
E. As a student of philosophy, do 21th century philosophical writings by professional philosophers offer anything of value to the educated general reader or are they just basically exercises in linguistic analyses academics write for each other and for career advancement ?
That would be a very cynical position to take, although I believe it does have some merit. As far as I'm concerned any proposed advancement in human knowledge is a good thing so long as it is largely progressive, tries to get at the truth in some way.
F. Does modern poetry begin with "The Waste Land"
I suppose so. After the experiences of WWI, a new poetry was needed to broach the issues surrounding the floundering of Western civilisation. I guess a new methodology of writing was needed to span the gap between Hardy's generation and the war poets with a society grieving the deaths of so many millions in the trenches and the subsequent death of a belief in civilisation's progress. Eliot bridges that 'gap' left in the culture of the West with “The Waste Land”.
how and when did you begin to write?
I wrote my first poem when I was 8 or 9. My mother typed it up in red ink on her Olivetti typewriter and pinned it to the wall where I could see it. I was very proud of my poem about a leopard waiting to pounce in the night for its prey. The printed word on the page gave me a sense that I could write verse too. I wrote poems throughout my school career, but didn't start to write seriously until I was 18 when I wrote hundreds of love poems (now destroyed) for my first love. After 3 years off for university, I got involved with local writing workshops again when I was 22 with a view to publishing in small poetry magazines. I wrote intermittently through out my twenties even publishing a small volume, “Tin Cat Alley” when I was 26, whilst all the time struggling with acute alcoholism and mental illness. And so on and so forth until the present day.
Who are some of your favourite contemporary short story writers and/or poets? What classic writers do you find your self drawn to reread. If a neophyte writer were to ask you who to read, what might you suggest?
I don't read contemporary short stories, but I do read lots of contemporary poetry. In good times, I try to read at least one collection per day, sometimes more. I like everyone from Simon Armitage and Carol Anne Duffy to Martin Espada and Nicholas Christopher. Carol Satyamurti, Anna Moschovakis, Brendan Behan, Eavan Boland, Ciaran Carson, Paula Meehan, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Paul Durcan, Paul Muldoon, Sujatta Bhatt, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Thomas Transtromer, Ernesto Cardenal, Milner Place, Ilhan Berk, Leonard Cohen, Brian Patten, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Don Coles, (the list is endless). I'm always on the look out for new stuff.
I would suggest all of the above and more to a neophyte poet including (importantly, classic C20 authors)... WB Yeats, Robert Frost, Robert Graves, WH Auden, Czeslaw Milosz, Miroslav Holub, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, UA Fanthorpe, Seamus Heaney, Dereck Mahon, Pablo Neruda, Federico Garcia Lorca, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Ceasar Pavese, Aimee Cesare, Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bukowski, Anne Sexton, Denise Levertov, Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetseyeva, Osip Mandlestam (all major influences on my own writing to name but a few).
I'm drawn to the classic Irish writers and the Russians more than any other writers, perhaps because of their great sense of common suffering.
Do you think the very large amount of remains from neolithic periods (the highest in the world) in Ireland has shaped in the literature and psyche of the country?
I think the Irish are more concerned with the past than their Celtic cousins in other parts of the world. This has a lot to do with the influence of Catholicism and British Imperialism. Most Irish people know to what you refer when you refer to “the children of the Gael”, “Black 47” or more recently, “Bloody Sunday”. The history of Irish oppression has been kept alive by writers, songsters and poets for generations. These references to the past are part of the common stock of knowledge, part of the popular culture, the communal memory. I think the same can be said of all oppressed communities or peoples. However, Ireland and its culture has a special relationship with the rest of the world. N. Ireland is still one of the last outposts of the British Empire. When Britannia ruled the waves, the Irish were always looking for a way out of their chains. Ireland is on Great Britain's doorstep, so to speak. Perhaps because of this, Irish writers have found more of an international echo than they would otherwise have done if they hadn't been so closely related to the 'greatest' empire builders the world has ever seen. Great Britain's closest neighbour, Ireland, has had to fight 100 times harder for recognition than practically any other country on the globe. I believe this is why Irish culture is lauded the world over. Cromwell was not necessarily a 'great' man, one might conclude that 'greatness' was forced upon him by special historical conditions. Similar historical conditions have forced 'greatness' on Ireland and its culture for hundreds, if not, thousands of years.
When you write, do you picture and audience or do you just write?
I have no audience in mind when I write, only a vague sense that I want to write something memorable. The English octogenarian poet, Milner Place once advised me in my twenties, “do what you wish with poetry, but make it memorable.”
Assuming this applies to you, how do you get past creative "dry spells", periods when you have a hard time coming up with ideas or when things seem futile?
Life is always futile. But I dream a lot and I generally read a lot (when I'm not drinking!) Otherwise, I just drink until some inspiration or other takes me over.
If someone says to you, "I prefer to live life, not just read about it " what is your reaction inside?
I firmly believe, part of 'living life' is reading about it. How could one know what experiences people in the past went through without reading about it somewhere? I love reading and learning about history. The past informs the future. Without learning the lessons of the past we are doomed to repeat them. Think of the numberless genocides, wars, world wars, the holocaust for example. It is fundamental to the human psyche to remember. Reading even yesterday's news enables this process of remembering, internalising events, history and philosophy.
What are the last three novels you read? Last three movies? do you have any favourite TV shows? Are there literary works you find reverberate in your mind in happy or in dark times?
Novels: “Tender is the Night.” “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” “Father and Sons.”
Films: “The Golem.” (1920 original) “The Lives of Others.” “August: Osage County.”
I find it difficult to distinguish between happy and dark times. I guess the following works are always with me whatever mood I'm in (to name a few)... “The Miser,” (mainly happy times) “Crime and Punishment,” “Anna Karenin,” “The Inspector General,” (mainly happy times) “ Heart of Darkness,” “Dubliners,” “Waiting for Godot,” “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” “The Birthday Party”. Plays have a big impact on my emotional life.
If you could live any where in the past for six months, or forever, and be rich and safe, where would you pick and why?
I would probably like to have lived in Paris in the 1920's and 30's and have been involved with the writing scene. As for the latter clause of your question, I would probably chose Paris or Dublin in the summer for their cosmopolitan character. Both cities are filled with romance for me. I was married in Dublin and it felt as if I was finally at home there.
when out of Ireland, besides family and friends, what do you miss most? What are you glad to be away from for a while?
Although my father's family re from Ireland, I have never lived there, but as I've already said, I do feel a close affinity with the place and the people. I have lots of relatives in Ireland, none of whom I know (unfortunately). I may well move back to the 'homeland' one day with my wife.
What one bit of advise would you give your eighteen year old self?
“Doubt everything.” Marx's motto, I believe.
A while ago I read and posted on a long biography of Hart Crane, author of the Bridge-few read it but many known of his life style as one of the first Gay poets living out a life of rough trade and wealthy older benefactors-he lived a very chaotic life and died young from suicide by jumping off a cruise ship. His father invented Life Saver Candy and wanted Hart to go in the Candy business with him-so if Hart had done this and died at 75 rich living in Ohio fat bald and married would he still be even much thought about let alone read? One of the most referenced poets by Irish writers last year was Arthur Rimbaud who likewise had a short and chaotic life. Does a poet need or naturally tend to a chaotic life? why so much seeming admiration for writers like Jack Kerouac and others who died way to young from alcohol abuse. If Ezra Pound had not gone mad, would he still be a role model for the contemporary poet? (I know this is long, please just respond to it as you will.). Some of this may just be a story about a poet with a stable marriage, a job and no substance issues may seem dull compared to wilder lives.
The creative force is necessarily chaotic within me. I wish I was more disciplined, inclined to write every day, but I feel myself drawn to the Bacchanalian side of the psyche. I'm not a pleasure seeker by any means, but I am self-destructive in my pleasures. Alcohol and substance abuse aside, I think I would still be 'unstable'. I'm not naturally drawn to 'stability'. The materialistic dream, so prevalent in the west, holds absolutely no attraction for me. When I was a young man, I didn't think I would make it past 27. Now I would like to see what middle and old age have to offer. Perhaps some form of wisdom! More than anything, I just want to be left alone by governments to write, like Diogenes in his barrel.
Have you attended creative writing workshops and if you have share your experiences a bit please.
I first attended poetry workshops back in 1986 with Peter Sansom. I have attended workshops run by Simon Armitage, David Morley and Ian Duhig among others, which were very useful to begin with n helping me find my early voice. I have also led poetry workshops over the years, most recently facilitating workshops for 'recovering' Heroin addicts. The workshops I attended helped me formally, although I also found them constraining.
Make up a question and answer it please.
What is your favourite poem? “The Sinking of the Titanic” by Hans Magnus Enzensberger is my favourite long poem sequence. The Nobel Prize is long over due for Enzensberger!
Not long ago I was sent several very hostile messages from Irish writers demanding to know why I had posted on the works of other writers and not them. Some suggested I had been influenced by some sort of shadowy group to ignore their work. I was informed there is a small elite group who decides who gets reviewed, published or receives grants and it was also suggested they had sent me negative feedback on writers I should ignore. What in the Irish literary scene is behind this? Is there anything like an "Irish or English Literary Mafia"? Any thing like a Salmon poetry cliche?
Cliques grow up everywhere, at work, in family life, among friends, certainly in politics and decision making groups. Poets and poetry funding bodies are not immune. Critics and canon-makers are not immune. Small elite groups rule the world. Indeed, world economic policy is decided by a handful of huge corporations. They decide who lives, who dies. Poetry cliques can also decide the fate of other poets not in the clique. I have fallen victim to this myself having been excluded from this or that clique for being too rebellious. The only answer is to establish one's own clique, which I tried to do last year with the establishment of my own ezine, POETiCA, which was designed to fight the very cliques to which we refer, and to encourage the marginalised, the dispossessed to engage with creative writing.
I'm not aware of any clique at Salmon and I would not be able to name names regarding the 'English Literary Mafia'. I don't think the clique is as homogenised as one might imagine. It is made up of a divergent group of rich patrons, politicians, literature officers, critics, editors, agents, publishers, professors and so on. They decide upon access to grants, etc, and ultimately who gains access to the literary canon.
When you write, do you picture and audience or do you just write?
I have no audience in mind when I write, only a vague sense that I want to write something memorable. The English octogenarian poet, Milner Place once advised me in my twenties, “do what you wish with poetry, but make it memorable.”
Assuming this applies to you, how do you get past creative "dry spells", periods when you have a hard time coming up with ideas or when things seem futile?
Life is always futile. But I dream a lot and I generally read a lot (when I'm not drinking!) Otherwise, I just drink until some inspiration or other takes me over.
If someone says to you, "I prefer to live life, not just read about it " what is your reaction inside?
I firmly believe, part of 'living life' is reading about it. How could one know what experiences people in the past went through without reading about it somewhere? I love reading and learning about history. The past informs the future. Without learning the lessons of the past we are doomed to repeat them. Think of the numberless genocides, wars, world wars, the holocaust for example. It is fundamental to the human psyche to remember. Reading even yesterday's news enables this process of remembering, internalising events, history and philosophy.
What are the last three novels you read? Last three movies? do you have any favourite TV shows? Are there literary works you find reverberate in your mind in happy or in dark times?
Novels: “Tender is the Night.” “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” “Father and Sons.”
Films: “The Golem.” (1920 original) “The Lives of Others.” “August: Osage County.”
I find it difficult to distinguish between happy and dark times. I guess the following works are always with me whatever mood I'm in (to name a few)... “The Miser,” (mainly happy times) “Crime and Punishment,” “Anna Karenin,” “The Inspector General,” (mainly happy times) “ Heart of Darkness,” “Dubliners,” “Waiting for Godot,” “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” “The Birthday Party”. Plays have a big impact on my emotional life.
If you could live any where in the past for six months, or forever, and be rich and safe, where would you pick and why?
I would probably like to have lived in Paris in the 1920's and 30's and have been involved with the writing scene. As for the latter clause of your question, I would probably chose Paris or Dublin in the summer for their cosmopolitan character. Both cities are filled with romance for me. I was married in Dublin and it felt as if I was finally at home there.
when out of Ireland, besides family and friends, what do you miss most? What are you glad to be away from for a while?
Although my father's family are from Ireland, I have never lived there, but as I've already said, I do feel a close affinity with the place and the people. I have lots of relatives in Ireland, none of whom I know (unfortunately). I may well move back to the 'homeland' one day with my wife.
What one bit of advise would you give your eighteen year old self?
“Doubt everything.” Marx's motto, I believe.
A while ago I read and posted on a long biography of Hart Crane, author of the Bridge-few read it but many known of his life style as one of the first Gay poets living out a life of rough trade and wealthy older benefactors-he lived a very chaotic life and died young from suicide by jumping off a cruise ship. His father invented Life Saver Candy and wanted Hart to go in the Candy business with him-so if Hart had done this and died at 75 rich living in Ohio fat bald and married would he still be even much thought about let alone read? One of the most referenced poets by Irish writers last year was Arthur Rimbaud who likewise had a short and chaotic life. Does a poet need or naturally tend to a chaotic life? why so much seeming admiration for writers like Jack Kerouac and others who died way to young from alcohol abuse. If Ezra Pound had not gone mad, would he still be a role model for the contemporary poet? (I know this is long, please just respond to it as you will.). Some of this may just be a story about a poet with a stable marriage, a job and no substance issues may seem dull compared to wilder lives.
The creative force is necessarily chaotic within me. I wish I was more disciplined, inclined to write every day, but I feel myself drawn to the Bacchanalian side of the psyche. I'm not a pleasure seeker by any means, but I am self-destructive in my pleasures. Alcohol and substance abuse aside, I think I would still be 'unstable'. I'm not naturally drawn to 'stability'. The materialistic dream, so prevalent in the west, holds absolutely no attraction for me. When I was a young man, I didn't think I would make it past 27. Now I would like to see what middle and old age have to offer. Perhaps some form of wisdom! More than anything, I just want to be left alone by governments to write, like Diogenes in his barrel.
Have you attended creative writing workshops and if you have share your experiences a bit please.
I first attended poetry workshops back in 1986 with Peter Sansom. I have attended workshops run by Simon Armitage, David Morley and Ian Duhig among others, which were very useful to begin with n helping me find my early voice. I have also led poetry workshops over the years, most recently facilitating workshops for 'recovering' Heroin addicts. The workshops I attended helped me formally, although I also found them constraining.
Would you rather witness opening night for Waiting for Godot, King Lear, Playboy of the Western World or Ubo Roi?
King Lear. “Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile. Filths savour but themselves.”
Do you think Irish Travellers should be granted the status of a distinct ethnic group and be given special rights to make up for past mistreatment? Are the Travellers to the Irish what the Irish were once to the English? I became interested in this question partially through reading the short stories of Desmond Hogan.
Yes. I believe in the right to self-determination of all distinct ethnic groups. Wandering peoples have always been despised by settled societies. I think this is a kind of Xenophobia. Irish civil society is not immune.
How important is social media in the development of the career of writers? Do you have your own web page and if so why? Do you think it is good business savvy to post free samples of your work online? Can you estimate how many hours a week you are online?
Social media can be good and bad. With good luck and perseverance social media can pay off. Again, literary cliques play the major role here. I sometimes share my work online as I believe it is the democratic thing to do. I spend a few hours every day online, sometimes more.
I recently read Strumpet City by James Plunkett (the 2013 Dublin One City One Book Selection). It presents a culture whose very life blood seems to be whiskey. Drinking seems much more a factor in Irish literature than Indian, Japanese or even American. What do you think are some of the causes of this or is it just a myth?.
Sinead O'Connor among others have addressed this problem. Has an oppressed people, the Irish have taken to alcohol and substance abuse in a way less oppressed groups haven't done. I don't believe the Irish are alcoholics by birth. The drinking culture that pervades Ireland and Irish people everywhere has more to do with oppression by the British Imperialists over the centuries and is also due in no small amount to wide spread social deprivation. The Irish have never been allowed to raise themselves into gilded palaces of the rich. The poor Irish have always turned to drink. Look at the plight of the Native Americans or the Australian Aborigines. All oppressed and dispossessed peoples can and do fall into this trap. When there is no provision for a people to better themselves, to what do they turn? This is the same the world over, not just in Ireland.
related to question above, recently Guinness sponsored a creative writing program and set up a grant system for writers and artist. A number of my Irish Face book friends said they would repudiate a grant from Guinness and art festivals and programs should refuse their sponsorship. This was in part because of the perceived terrible social cost of alcoholism on Irish families. It was also stated that Guinness was trying to get people to see drinking as associated with creativity. Would you refuse a grant from Guinness? Are their sponsorship efforts insidious? When I facetiously suggested I would take on the burden of these malicious grants, I was taken to task as an outsider who needs to mind his own business.
I don't think creativity comes from drinking. However, the Guinness corporation are no more interested in creativity than BP or any other multi-national corporation for that matter. Their sole interest is profit. If it is profitable to offer grants for creative writing here and there, then I'm sure Guinness would not hesitate to pursue this. If it is profitable to turn an entire population into alcoholics, or drug addicts the same would apply. There are no aesthetic or ethical considerations on the part of big business. Look at what the British authorities did during the 'Great Famine'. The potato blight needn't have killed and dispossessed millions of Irish people if the British government hadn't consciously starved them by shipping all the other available food stuffs out of Ireland under armed guard. Look at the role of British Imperialism during the Opium Wars with China in the C19.
30. Reading Paul's response to one of my questions, I thought of a new question I wanted to ask. I know this is kind of a rambling question, it is designed to draw a similar styled response.
I was reading your answers again. I think there is one sort of big difference between the reader and the writer. As you know, true reading is not passive but involves a creative process.
Looking at this quote from question 1 " That observation makes me pause. If I'm honest, I didn't know it was a dominant theme. I operate in such a bubble when I write and analyse the content very rarely. My writing bears no conscious relation to the world of writing, no matter how obvious the connections are to others. In this pause you've brought I have to say the theme impacts on my work greatly".
Readers do read within a tradition, seeing works as part of a great conversation, part of a hopefully ever deeper culture, writers see themselves as starting from ground zero, without a conscious relation to a tradition. Also readers or especially reviewers, I am not a reviewer- I just post stuff- put a limit on a writers work when they talk about it or find meaning in it, thus breaking the writes sense of pure creation. A writer might well truthfully say, "I just write", but you cannot really just read.
Is there a built in divide between writers and readers? Is this is what the resistance to interpretation is at least in part about?
The dichotomy is clear, a writer writes, a reader reads. However, the two aren't and shouldn't be mutually exclusive. I am a reader first and a writer second. Readers and writers don't exist in a bubble, in isolation. We are all part of the great interpretive dream, the common consciousness. An element of free will allows us to interpret metaphors as they pertain to our own lives and struggles. I do not favour any 'built in divide' between writers and readers.
In his book The Commitments, Roddy Doyle has a main character say, as if it were something commonly seen as true, “The Irish are the niggers of Europe and Dubliners are the niggers of Ireland”. There is a lot of self loathing expressed in Irish literary works from Joyce on down to Doyle. Is this just a family fight where one might say something terrible about a father, mother or brother or wife and then attack an outsider who says the same thing or is it really how people feel? I do not see this level of self hate in other literatures. There is nothing like it, for example, in the literature of the Philippines. Talk a bit about how you feel or think about this.
As I've already mentioned, the Irish have been an oppressed people for many centuries. If there is any loathing in the Irish national psyche, then it is largely down to the historical/social conditions of their oppression at the hands of the British Imperialists. Even as late as the 1960's in England, the signs on the boarding house doors would read, “ No Irish. No blacks. No dogs.” The Irish have always been regarded as uncivilised and ignorant by the British elite. The same is true for our ex-colonial brothers and sisters across the Commonwealth nations. I was bullied through out my school career for 'being Irish', therefore 'poor', 'stupid', and ''uncouth'. When the larger, more powerful neighbour, in this case, England bullied the smaller, weaker nation, Ireland into self-loathing through the political means of denying basic human freedoms, torture, murder and mass starvation, it's hardly surprising that much of Irish literature demonstrates such a high level of self hatred.
Is the notion that someone is a writer of "Women's" literature just one step above calling their work chic lit? Statistics show that women read much more fiction then men, why is this so? Is it patronizing to refer to a work as a great work of literature by a woman, a gay, a person of colour as no one ever seems to say War and Peace is a great white men's work?
Again, women, blacks, gays, disabled and poor people of every description have been subjugated by rich white able bodied men in the West for centuries, even millennia. The history of this oppression has necessarily excluded those groups from doing literature or art of any kind until more recent times. The canon-makers have excluded these groups from canonicity on the basis of their gender, ethnicity, social background and so on, as being less than human (as was the case with the Irish for many years). Nowadays, due to an increase in freedoms for these marginalised groups, the tables are turning. It is no longer fashionable to say women can't write or blacks can't paint, etc. For the first time in the history of western civilisation, these so-called 'minorities' are able to do art. It's no surprise to me that these 'minority' groups can produce great art just as rich white men have done for centuries.
It was recently revealed in the press that the philosopher Martin Heidigger was viciously anti-Semitic. If you found out that a favourite writer was grossly prejudiced would you lose interest in them? Mark, you have studied philosophy, if Anti-Semitism is not just a "quirk" of Heidigger's, but at it's very core as some are contending, does this destroy much of the value of his work? He was a supporter of Hitler.
Anti-Semiticism has no place in society or art, as it is ultimately anti-human. I used to read Ezra Pound until I learned of his Nazi 'sympathies'. Since then, I've been unable to take him seriously as a writer. If art is essentially reactionary in its content, then it has no place in a humane society. The same goes for Martin Heidegger's prejudices.
Is the large number of pedagogical professionals involved in literary reviewing a limiting thing, with the reviewers stuck at the intellectual, cultural and emotional level of their pupils? Does the need to "teach" literature force interpretations and paraphrasing as the standard modes to view literature?
I'm all for plurality when it comes to literary reviewing. This shouldn't be limited to the 'pedagogical professionals' (largely, rich white able bodied males) to whom I've already referred. Literature can't be taught, it must first be felt, emotionally, intellectually, viscerally. Readers, pupils, students must make their own judgements and not rely on the so-called canon-makers to inform them of their opinions. The Russian revolutionary leader, Lenin, said it best, “Art belongs to the people.”
Do you think poets and short story writers have a social role to play in contemporary Ireland or are they pure artists writing for themselves and a few peers? One of the characters in Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano, set in Mexico city and centring on poets, says that the main reason poets, nearly all male in Bolano's book, read at work shops is to meet the way disproportional number of women who come to them in search of a tortured soul to nourish. What do you feel is the reality behind these thoughts?
Artists always have a social role to play, whether they acknowledge it or not. I think it was the Nobel Laureate, Czeslaw Milosz, who said, “what good is poetry that does not save peoples or nations.” Art is essentially public. If one wishes to write purely for ones self, so be it, but under no circumstances should one then proffer it into the public arena. Language is essentially 'public' as opposed to 'private', has Wittgenstein would have it; this is how we make sense of ourselves and our place in the universe. Social writing is generally born out of struggle, the more oppressed a people are, the more socially aware their writers and artists tend to be. Where there is a general consensus politically, social writing loses out and is denigrated by the 'powers that be' as “too polemical” or “proselytising”. Sadly, this seems to be the case in the UK poetry scene at present.
. Quick Pick Questions
A. tablets or laptops? Pen and paper.
B. E readers or traditional books? Books any day.
C. Synge or Beckett? Beckett.
D. Cats or dogs? Dogs make great loyal friends.
E. best city to inspire a writer- Paris, London, Dublin, or? All three.
F. T. S. Eliot or Ezra Pound? Eliot. Pound supported the Nazis.
G. RTE or BBC? BBC.
Would you rather witness opening night for Waiting for Godot, King Lear, Playboy of the Western World or Ubo Roi?
King Lear. “Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile. Filths savour but themselves.”
Do you think Irish Travellers should be granted the status of a distinct ethnic group and be given special rights to make up for past mistreatment? Are the Travellers to the Irish what the Irish were once to the English? I became interested in this question partially through reading the short stories of Desmond Hogan.
Yes. I believe in the right to self-determination of all distinct ethnic groups. Wandering peoples have always been despised by settled societies. I think this is a kind of Xenophobia. Irish civil society is not immune.
How important is social media in the development of the career of writers? Do you have your own web page and if so why? Do you think it is good business savvy to post free samples of your work online? Can you estimate how many hours a week you are online?
Social media can be good and bad. With good luck and perseverance social media can pay off. Again, literary cliques play the major role here. I sometimes share my work online as I believe it is the democratic thing to do. I spend a few hours every day online, sometimes more.
End.
My great thanks to Mark for taking the time to give such thoughtful answers to my questions.
I have read his collection twice and hope to post on it soon. It is a very intense, deeply felt collection.
Mel u
No comments:
Post a Comment