MEET THE POET WITH THE RED CAR - NUALA NI CHONCHUIR

Nuala ni Chonchir's website is HERE. And, she blogs HERE.

VANESSA: Nuala - We're both short storyists - you are also an acclaimed and award-winning poet. Aagh. Hang on while I try to say summat reasonable.
I loved Portrait of the Artist with a Red Car. Why? I love that it is not coy, this stuff you do, these scenes you paint with your words, these thoughts you make come real and alive in my head. Without knowing the ‘how’. While being wrong-footed and delighted by the turns in the path along the way.
I love the way your words are beautiful but solid as well. How they stand there, like a toddler on braced legs, looking back at me unflinching and saying ‘You take me as I am or not at all.’
I love the sense I get when I read these poems, that I am intruding into the poet’s space, half-invited. It makes my senses prickle, as though I was creeping through your house at night trying not to be heard.

NUALA:Thanks, Vanessa. I think that’s a very vivid and insightful description of what poetry can do to a reader. My poetry comes from a hugely personal place, especially in the last few years when I have been on somewhat of a personal rollercoaster. I have found writing about it all (marriage breakdown, new love, fertility issues) has helped me cope in some way. Writing is woven into my life as much as my children are. It is just ever-present.

VANESSA:‘Body Gifts’ for example, each couplet beginning ‘I give you’. Less than 50 words, it is a small and perfect hymn to lovemaking and I love it! It is playful, as well, talking of

lip-flesh
made plump as twin seals.

And another hymn (you’ll have to excuse me, N – it’s just how I feel the words?) – ‘Aubade to an Extraordinary Life’ – a poem that begins

In the afterglow, I watch your bear-like doze

and weaves round to,

…the ordinary sharing and partings of life:
a dinner made together, lunches packed in schoolbags,

bedtime stories read, the call of Monday morning
that sees you bound for the train, me to my desk.

NUALA:I enjoy writing love poems – I like when they occur to me. The aubade form is usually about lovers parting at dawn and it struck me that my partner and I always separate in the wee small hours as he works nearly a hundred miles away. So I thought I’d try an aubade and make it positive. I don’t use forms much but sometimes they are fun to try.

VANESSA: Patrick Cotter, whose own work is fiercely honest and raw sometimes, I think, endorses this collection by saying ‘there is not only music in Ní Chonchúir’s words, there is dancing too. (…) But beneath the surface there is also substance as (she) explores the closest relationships with an honesty so raw it scratches.’
Maybe it is because I come at the words as a woman, I don’t find your words ‘scratch’. They burn, sometimes, but not scratch.

NUALA:He actually said ‘scorches’, so that matches what you felt. (Memo to self: buy new reading specs…V)
Patrick is a great poet and it is pleasing to have such positive words from him. I admire his sensual, sparky poetry very much. While I don’t think he’d call himself a feminist, he is one of those male poets who actually likes women and celebrates them. We are lucky in Ireland that we have a few of them!

VANESSA: As the mother of sons, the final stanza of ‘Other People’s Children’ comes back at me again and again for example, because you are saying this for me, and it brings tears even typing this:

And, I know, I will fail my sons somehow,
maybe all-how, but still I try
- try my flawed best –
or somewhere near to it at least.

NUALA: I re-read that poem today in preparation for a reading this Friday and it resonated with me too. I sometimes feel like a disaster as a mother (much too focussed on my need to write) but I guess I am better than some, not as good as others. Being a writer and a mother (especially when they are young and you live outside your home area) throws up a particular set of difficulties. You are always torn between scrabbling round on the floor/giving them time, or sneaking off to write and dream and read when you can. It’s an extremely hard balancing act and I’m struggling with it a lot just now.

VANESSA: And I love, and am happily jealous of, your ability to take the ‘ordinary’ that is never that – and paint it so it turns ordinariness on its head,

…still my baby labours in me,
adding lanugo and vernix
to her cornucopia of miracles,

I’m bowing down here to a poet who can make those words echo. Lanugo? Vernix? Come on! But you do, and I look again, and see it for what it is. Anything but ordinary – see? And extraordinarily beautiful.

NUALA: Thank you, Vanessa. I know what you mean. I love to read a poem with the words ‘Motorway’ or ‘tractor’ in them – seemingly unpoetic words – and find that they work well. Feck poetic words – poetry is in and about everything.

VANESSA: ‘Dancing with Paul Durcan’ made me laugh out loud at the beginning – it is like a game of Consequences. Having been at one of his readings, been totally seduced, and bought three books no less – yes, his poetry is ‘filthy with longing’. And you continue the conceit of this into ‘Dream after a Reading’ – underscoring both the metaphor as well as the very real sexual power of some writing.

NUALA: I’m a big Durcan fan – I admire and fear him, in a way; I’m always cowed by immense talent and he has a particular presence in person. The poem is a bit of imagined whimsy – I’ve never actually danced through a bookshop with Paul. Maybe one day!

VANESSA: I hope some records the moment for posterity... the bits that can be recorded, I mean...!
It’s hard to say which poem is my favourite. But after a lot of thinking, it has to actually be one that leaves these themes behind. That seems to me to be a loner here, or maybe it is just that it speaks to me in a different voice? The marvellous poem that begins with an image, an artist - Max Ernst - seeing things including the ‘menacing nightingale’ in a knot of wood. And finishes with the parent holding back truth from a frightened child, because

…I don’t dare to tell him that airplanes do fall,
that people condemn, and that there is menace in more
than paintings of children threatened by a nightingale.

NUALA: I’m glad you like that one, Vanessa. It’s one of those poems that started out in one place and ended up someplace else. It maybe follows Robert Frost’s idea that “like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.”

VANESSA: What a brilliant quote to finish up on. Thank you for writing these poems, Nuala. My life is richer for them.

NUALA: And thank you, Vanessa for being such an involved reader of them. It was lovely to hear your thoughts.


Nuala's collection is special. It won the Templar Poetry prize in 2009, and can be bought, among others, from the publisher HERE.

Templar Poetry is running their competition for short collections again in 2010. Details are HERE on their website.

MORE SHORT CIRCUIT BLOG STOPS!!

While I was away, there were two memorable stopovers for Short Circuit, on the text book’s blog tour which is drawing to a close this month. It has been a brilliant time with generous hosts, some very good searching questions.
In fact, so searching were some of the questions on one stop at Tom Conoboy's fascinating blog, that the discussion went on for three days… and turned into a tour de force interview/ discussion on short story craft, interspersed with eulogies for our old tutor who has not yet paid us(!).
The topics went something like this:
Time in the short story, resolution, the importance of reader-engagement with short fiction/reading for subtext, leaving room for the reader, plotting versus not plotting - Tom Conoboy Day 1
Appropriate language, the importance of character, opening a story, intuitve versus plotted writing, the issue of theme and the constraint of knowing what we are writing about - Tom Conoboy Day 2
Reconciling teaching craft with opening up creativity in students, the importance of a writer reading, reading, reading, my reading William Golding - Tom Conoboy Day 3


The importance of character’s names, using the senses in your writing, and the problem of procrastination – these were the focus at the stop with Nuala ni Choncuir, at her lovely blog Women Rule Writer.

Thank you both!

USING THE SENSES IN YOUR FICTION

You know, when you are reading, that moment when the writer comes crashing through into the room, sits beside you on the settee and takes over? That moment when the writing suddenly becomes 'about the writer' and not about the story/novel?

Those moments, those self-indulgent moments, come most frequently I've noticed, in descriptive passages. Where the writer loses the plot, almost literally, and disappears up their own pen (!) in flights of fancy, almost listing the senses in an attempt to create something 'real'. And the effect is the opposite. To kill reality.

We are told on courses, 'Use the senses' - but that does not mean list them as if you are ticking them off on your fingers as you write!!
While I was away, there were two super stops on the Short Circuit tour - both of which I will flag later - but one, at Women Rule Writer, with the great Nuala ni Chonchuir, picked up on this - on using the senses. See here.
But this is great. Here is an article written by Bernadine Evaristo. Published in Mslexia, it is a marvellous look at using the senses in fiction. Complete with this great saying,

""Writing fiction is not an academic exercise but an imaginative one. Knowing all the literary terms and jargon is sometimes useful and might impress others, but it won’t make you a great writer. Understanding craft, however, whether it’s instinctive or learned, is another matter altogether."

And, from Nuala's blog, her question and my reply...

One of my favourite essays in the book is by Paul Magrs; I love the amount of solid advice he packs into his piece while maintaining a very down-to-earth approach. I think his advice might work best for experienced writers – novices may be scared by statements such as: ‘How come it’s only paragraph one and you are already up your own arse?’ (!)
A salient point he makes is, ‘Don’t forget to appeal to all our senses.’ (Using colour, food, sex etc. in stories.) What are your own feelings on the importance of including all things sensual in the short story?

Guardedly, V replies, it is important, obviously, to allow our reader to experience the world you create for them. But. How many pieces have I read where the senses have been a bit shoehorned in, almost as though the writer was ticking them off on their fingers as they wrote.

'The smell of the sea rose through the open window together with the raucous cries of seagulls tussling over some scraps on the pavement outside the café. The coffee this morning tasted so bitter. But it always smelled so good first – it was unfair. But then life was unfair. Hugo picked at a loose thread on his jacket sleeve – the rough tweed, browns and golds if you got close enough to it, felt rough under his fingers, like that old jacket of his father’s that used to small of tobacco and mint – his father always had Polos hidden in the pockets for the ponies…'


Blah blah blah…

blah blah blah...


see what I mean??!


Here's the link to the MSLEXIA article again - in case...
and HERE is Bernadine Evaristo's website.

NUDE NOT NAKED

I wonder - if I just put 'Nude' up there, will the number of hits rocket? Funny little men in villages across the country playing havoc with the National Grid? But no! This is Nuala Ni Chonchuir's collection, Nude Salt Modern Fiction), and I am delighted to welcome her for the latest leg on her round-the-world tour. I'm meant to have three questions. Erm. I sneaked in a few more!
MOI: Hi Nuala. I am struck again and again by your use of language. Unsurprising perhaps, for a poet, and for someone who is avowedly 'in love with words'. A few examples that pleased me hugely:
"I've sat at my window all morning, staring at the untrustworthy spring sunshine hovering over the boulevard..."
"Monsieur Boucher wears a green banyan; his toes scallop from the bottom of the robe, and they are long, like a monkey's." (both from 'Mademoiselle O'Murphy')
and:
"She pushed her head back into the pillow and I looked up at the steeple of her nose, the wide church of her mouth and chin..." (from 'In Seed Time, Learn')
There are words that are perfectly poised - ('untrustworthy' sunshine, 'hovering' over the boulevard - his toes 'scallop', and references to the face of a lover drawn from religious architecture - 'steeple', 'church'... lending this particular scene a hallowed feel)
All these examples are unusually placed and yet perfectly right, in context. I get the feeling that in the hands of a lesser writer, these small miracles would fall flat. Tell me:
1) Are you conscious of this skill as you write? How do these words arrive on the page? Can you describe the process?
2) Is it something that might be learned - so that a keen-eyed writer can achieve a similar effect by astute editing?

NUALA: Gosh, that’s so hard to answer. I honestly can’t analyse where the words and sentences and images spring from. To paraphrase poet Michael Longley, if I did, I’d go there.
I think maybe a feel for putting words together in fresh ways springs from reading. I’ve been a hungry reader all my life and I’ve loved literary fiction since I was very young, so admiration of good writing has formed my own work, I think. I admire vibrant language in other people’s work and it always pleases me when it falls from my own pen. And that’s what happens – I don’t force this stuff out, it’s definitely an unconscious thing.
Incidentally, I was told in a master-class to ditch that sentence “I looked up at the steeple of her nose, the wide church of her mouth and chin..." One participant said it was over the top. She didn’t seem to like me much in general, so that was my cue to keep it. Anyway, I liked it so it stayed. An example maybe of knowing which of one’s darlings not to kill.
To answer the second part of your question, I don’t think it can be learned in any formal sense but writers can freshen their imagery and word choices in stuff they have written if it feels tired on a re-read.
I do think if you want to be a good writer you have to love reading, almost to the point of obsession. And you have to be able to read critically and learn from what good writers do.

MOI: So what reading do you really love to do? Who are your favourite poets? No - I will rephrase that. IF you could keep a single book of poetry in your possession, in the knowledge that you could not look at another for five years... which would you keep? And fiction book? (It does not have to be short stories!)

NUALA: Well, I came to Sharon Olds late (just last year, in fact) but she re-affirms for me the fact that women's sexuality needs to be aired in poetry and fiction. She makes me feel brave in my own writing.
And Baricco's prose is so elegant, spare and yet adorned that I strive to write as beautifully as him. I'd love to write a fairytaley story, like Silk, that people would remember for a long time. That book has a cult-like status among its fans but it's a real love it or hate it read, I find.

MOI: ‘The Blonde Odalisque’ by Francois Boucher was presumably the inspiration for Lousia in Mademoiselle O'Murphy. (I Googled!) Which came first, the idea for the story or you seeing the painting? And which painting, if any, inspired 'Juno Out Of Yellow'?

NUALA: It's basically the same painting, but the orignal one is called Mademoiselle O'Murphy. So yes, that's right. She was a real Irish girl who was Louis XV's concubine - the story is basically true. I've just given her a personality.
It was hearing about Louisa that inspired me first off - I searched for the painting then.
'Juno Out of Yellow' is a fictitious painting. I read about a girl having her portrait done by Nick Miller - she wondered in her article if it was vain to love a portrait of herself. That was my jumping off point.

MOI: Tell me what is feel like to have a growing shelf of books out there? Does each one feel as special as the first? Do you keep a special shelf for your own books and antholgies you appear in?

NUALA: It feels great to have five books under my belt and more on the way. The first one felt surreal and lovely but I'm most proud of the latest one, Nude - it just seems to me a maturer work and the stories fit together well.
I store my books on a shelf in my study - it makes them easy to find when I have to get them out for readings.
The anthologies and journals are all over the house. I keep most of them but some I give away.

MOI: Describe the room you write in. And if you eat when you write, what do you eat?!

NUALA: I have a study with yellow walls, a noticeboard, a filing cabinet and shelves of books. It's a ghost room at the moment because there is nowhere to put the baby in there while I write. So I've moved my desk to the sitting-room now and she sits in her little chair and I can talk to her while I work. Try to work.
I eat cereal bars and spelt muffins and drink decaf tea. That makes me sound saintly but I have been on a health kick for the last few years. I do love dark choc and the odd gallon of red wine. But I don't drink-n-write.

MOI: oooh that’s interesting... the 'no drink n write' thing. Have you never ever ever written summat after a party... something you don’t remember writing at all, but which was brilliant?!

NUALA: I wrote a story while under the influence years ago - it won the first story comp I ever won! After being edited, naturally. It's not brilliant though...If I make drunken notes they usually make no sense whatsoever the next day.

MOI: Nude is a very special book -I much enjoyed your stories! I can understand your pride in it. Not only a beautiful book inside, but such a gorgeous cover design. How did that come about? Was it the first design?

NUALA: Salt were very busy when my cover needed doing so they said if I had an image in mind they'd be open to seeing if it would work, to save them sourcing one. So I trawled the internet and, eventually, the handcrafted yummy-stuff site Etsy for a suitable nude. There I found Rachel Manconi's beautiful images for sale so I made her an offer on one pic and she said yes. Chris was happy with it so he used it. I love it!

MOI: And finally, what are you working on now? I know your novel comes out later... amazing lady that you are. After that???

NUALA: I am working on my next full collection of poetry which will be out November 2010 from Templar Poetry. I have a pamphlet coming out with them this November: Portrait of the Artist with a Red Car. Busy busy.
Thanks a million, Vanessa, for having me on this the penultimate stop of my tour & for supersonic questions. For my last stop I am back in the Antipodes, in Australia (see, a REAL round the world tour!) with Sylvia Petter AKA Merc at http://mercsworld.blogspot.com/

MOI: It is a great pleasure, N. One day, I will explain to the readers just how helpful you were over this stop on your tour. I look forward to reading the next, at Merc's place. And good luck with all your projects!
Nuala's website is HERE and Nude can be bought from all the usual suspects, including Salt Publishing, from their website HERE

BABIES!!! Welcome to Juno!

Congratulations, Nuala ni Chonchuir and Mr Nuala!
One proud Mum.
One gorgeous, scrummy new Juno.



The middle two pics nicked from Nuala's blog and website.
Foot piccie from here