Tony, You’re very welcome to Writers Chat. We’re talking about Off Guard first published by Bradshaw Books (2003) and now re-issued by Wordsonthestreet (2024). It’s a beautifully produced collection, a real advocate for anyone tempted by ebooks to resist. I would echo Patricia Burke Brogan’s description that the “writing is sensitive, perceptive, sensuous and emotional…opens our eyes to a new way of seeing, a new imaginative experience.”
SG: Let’s begin with the title Off Guard which is taken from a Seamus Heaney poem. Do you think the aim of poetry is to catch those moments of the ordinary that then become extraordinary through memory and interpretation through the act of writing?
TOD: Yes I do. I remember my philosophy professor in college once saying that creativity occurs when two ideas spark off each other and create a third. So I think it is when our minds and hearts are open to suggestion that a spark of creativity occurs. This suggestion is usually something quite small and ordinary, a leaf, a look, a touch. This can then start a flame which may burn into a poem. The title Off Guard is from the last line of Postscript by Seamus Heaney. An earlier line in that poem goes “When the wind and the light are working off each other”. This spark of wind and light “working off each other” creates the scene which he wants to capture but knows he can’t because he’s only passing through. But the heart is caught off guard and blown open. I think that is the moment of creativity, the moment when a poem is conceived and something ordinary begins to grow into something extraordinary. I think all my poems, maybe all poems indeed, begin as tiny seeds, or even prior to that as desires, and grow from there.
SG: I love that idea of poems as desires first, then tiny seeds, and then moving words. I was also curious about and taken with your explanation of the role of form when writing “A House of Make Believe.” The form of the villanelle helped tame the original “overly emotional poem”. It speaks to the wonderful restraint that serves to heighten the reader experience that comes through in this collection. Would you recommend this process and practice of using form to shape the emotions?
TOD: The paradox of form is that it constrains and it frees. I think if the emotion is strongly felt putting it in the constraints of form can result in a better poem. Form can sometimes guide as well, almost like a road map for the poem. If I’m getting lost in writing a poem or I can’t seem to find a way in to the poem I’ll use form, rigidly or loosely, and usually I get where I want to go. I say rigidly or loosely because it can be a strict form like a sonnet or villanelle or merely a self-imposed rhyming scheme. I also like the challenge of writing to form. It can have the thrill of solving a puzzle so that for the reader the poem becomes a solution to a puzzle which the poem created for them. But some poems need to be free of the constraints of form. I don’t think I know whether a poem needs that freedom until I begin to write it. Maybe the poem decides for itself. Some poems can be trusted to wander while others need boundaries.
SG: Again, such jewells! Wandering poems versus bound poems. Thank you, Tony for such insight. Much of this collection contains wonderful examples of the importance of precise language and naming, and musicality in your poetry. I’m thinking here of “Skating” with it’s very specific landscape vocabulary that evokes almost physical sensations:
“steady rivulets”/” hoof-printed clay”/ “stilled burdock.”
The poems “Cascades” and “Someday” move with a great flow when read aloud and in the mind. Can you give us an idea of your process in terms of editing – do you read aloud? Count the syllables? Use a thesaurus?
TOD: I read aloud. I tap out the rhythm. Sometimes I count syllables when I’m not sure if I’m getting the rhythm right. But English is an accentual language so sticking to a number of syllables doesn’t always sound the best and it is better to be guided by sound. Reading aloud and tapping out the beats ensures the poem flows more easily and gives it musicality. It doesn’t always have to be about beats either. I sometimes like to write in longer lines that rise and fall in cadences that carry the reader along as if surfing waves. This is especially pleasing in longer narrative type poems. As for a thesaurus I find it rarely useful. Its suggestions tend to be too prosaic and too precise. A poet’s thesaurus needs to brainstorm or be a type of mind-mapper. The best place to find a suitable word for a poem is not in a thesaurus but in other poems. This is why I like to read poems while I’m writing my own. Some people say the opposite, that it interferes with their creativity. I find that it boosts mine.
SG: That’s similar to my process with prose – I love to dip into and out of writing that I admire, reading slowly, seeing how the sentences work alone and together. In your poetry Mothers and Fathers feature – both yourself as a father, and your own father – and I was particularly drawn to the great exploration of the every day of life in “My Mother Prepares Strawberries” and “Stella Maris.” You take non-dramatic events, on the surface, and find in them tenderness, loss, and love. It feels like your razor-sharp eye, and microscopic observation brings us deeper into emotion. Could you comment on this?
TOD: That’s a difficult one to answer or comment on. It probably goes back to being off guard. The mind and heart must be completely open, in a state of total relaxation, almost hypnotic, where the sub-conscious reacts to the ordinary. It is not really something you can control (in fact that’s probably the point). It usually works though. But you must be in that relaxed almost dreamlike state. Then the words and images will come and somehow align themselves with the emotion.
We are much more observant as children and the poem about my mother, which is mainly about the action of the can-opener is a result of my observation of her from childhood. I have a long and vivid memory and can remember not just sights and sounds but touch as well. When you couple that childhood or childlike observation with long memory you can get deep into the subconscious. The action of the can-opener became an extended metaphor for the vicissitudes of life, although I’m sure I didn’t consciously set out to make it that way.
SG: I think you’ve answered the question exceptionally well, Tony – it is that sharp eye, the slowing down of action (that of the can-opener) and the observations, through emotions. Much of the poetry is visual, like paintings and again, this comes from your precise use of language and stunning descriptions. In “Seven Figures” we see family members caught on camera in “a shorn field of pale stubble,” pictured with “a blanket of amnesiac sky” behind them, captured in “innocent sepia” and the of photographer, your father, only a shadow “stretching across a golden childhood meadow.” Directly after this moving poem we have the excellent pairing of “Son” and “Roots,” whereby time and perspective have moved on, you are the father now, memories and moments captured poems. Is this, somehow, the role of the poet – similar to that of the photographer – to preserve relationships in their environment before they’re gone?
TOD: I have always believed the role of any artist is foremost to strive to create a thing of beauty. After that whatever happens in the poem happens. Writing, especially writing poetry, is not about “self expression” as some people think; it is about creating a beautiful object. If you set out with too specific an aim there is a danger the content will eclipse the object and that can ruin the poem. The three poems you mention are all different to me. Seven Figures is really an ekphrastic. It is a description of a photograph taken by my father when we were visiting our cousins in the country. As he has his back to the sun his shadow cuts into the photograph. The word “absent” in this poem plays with the concept of the “absent father”. In most childhood photographs my father is present as the photographer but absent from the photograph. In this particular photograph he is both present in his shadow and absent. A type of shadowy presence. Which actually is quite apt in one way.
Son is about the senses, especially touch. As I said I have a good memory for textures. I can still feel the touch of my children’s clothes on my fingertips as I dressed them. I can feel the weight they were when I carried them. I wanted to capture this sensual memory in the poem.
Roots is about planting a stick of willow with my son. Willows grow very quickly and so it became a metaphor for how quickly children grow up but also how their roots are well established. It’s interesting that you pair the poems Son and Roots. I would pair Roots with the poem on the next page, Wings. There’s a saying that we give our children roots and we give them wings. The Wings poem is about the first fleeing of the nest as I leave my son to the airport and the connection that this departure paradoxically creates between us. So I guess those poems are about the desire to preserve relationships.
SG: And perhaps in preserving relationships, you are, as you say, fulfilling the role of the artist by creating and preserving this thing of beauty. You also hold myths and stories up against the everyday. In “Translated from the fabulous” and “Furniture City: Saturday Afternoon” (what a great title – and one of my favourite poems in the collection), we’re shown life and the waywardness of emotions through the lenses of familiar children’s fairytales. Furthermore, in “Night watchers,” “Testament” and “Vertices” we’re brought into the realm of the unseen through (possible) memories, places, and the senses. Time and the desire to pause it, or capture moments, links these particular poems. Did you place them in the collection with this in mind?
TOD: I hadn’t thought of them being connected in that way but capturing moments is a good way to put it. The end of love of course is not a momentary thing but something that happens over time. Yet the realisation of that loss can be sudden and indeed frightening. Back again to being off guard and what sparks a poem. The initial spark can happen in an instant. The spark of desire to write Testament was seeing the signatures of my great-grand parents on an old legal document. I traced the signatures with my finger in order to make a connection with them across the generations, to touch what they had touched. A signature is such a personal thing I got a particular frisson doing that. So probably then the desire is to capture that instant emotion in a complete poem. And that’s not an easy thing to do. At least I don’t find it easy. There’s the whole question of craft involved as well. It’s not just about the content of the poem. I think of it as a smithy forging a piece of iron into the shape of a beautiful object. It takes a lot of fire and a lot of hammering and twisting and bending to make an object appear as if it always looked like that!
SG: And of course, behind the writing that appears as if it always looked like that is, as us writers know, the craft and toil. We will end this Writers Chat with a few light questions:
- Silence or noise when writing and/or editing? Absolute silence.
- Coffee or Tea? Sparkling water!
- Oh sparkling water. Haven’t had that one yet! Sea or Mountains? The sea. But a mountain with a view of the sea would be good too.
- What are you working on now? I’m writing a memoir mainly about the presence that poetry has been over the course of my life.
- Oh that sounds intriguing. Any literary events coming up for you? There’s the launch of issue 60 of Crannóg in early April and the awarding of the inaugural Crannóg bursary which we are excited about.
Great to hear about the Crannóg launch and bursary in April. I wish you much continued success with Off Guard which can be purchased here.
Shauna Gilligan Writer 