Colm, Welcome to Writers Chat. We’re talking about your second collection of poetry, Neanderthal Boy (Wordsonthestreet, 2025). It’s a collection that deserves to be read with care and with time and one that rewards the reader with each re-read. You’ve said that it was eleven years in the making which I can imagine as the collection has a heft and breadth to it, which intertwines past and present, as Matthew Geden puts it, “with a masterful touch”.
SG: Let’s begin with the sculpture on the cover and the title. I was intrigued as to why you used “boy” rather than “man” as so many of the themes and experiences that you explore in the collection have an “everyman” feel. Were you inspired by the sculpture or was it inspired by your words?
CS: Neither really, Shauna. The title poem was one of a series I wrote a few years ago about modern man’s antecedents, Cro Magnon Man, Neanderthal Man, Homo Sapiens. I think I was exploring our nature, as humans, through a deep search into our past. I have always been fascinated by evolution and how we as humans have an innate superiority complex over the rest of life forms. This may have helped us get to this point, but it could be hindering us now, as we deal with complex environmental and political problems. At least six or seven poems in the collection fall into this theme. I was actually going to call the collection, Stolen Memories, as I often take on a persona from history, but Matthew Geden, who was reading the collection for me, felt this was a clichéd title and suggested I run with Neanderthal Boy. I think the boy in the title refers more to the individual poem and evolution and change than hinting at boyhood as being a theme. This particular character just happens to be young, as are several other characters in the book. As for the sculpture on the front, it was created by my daughter, Isabel, for a transition year project about four years ago. I loved it and probably connected it to my poem immediately, storing in the back of my mind the thought that I would use it as the front cover for my book. My first book also had a male figure in the frontispiece, a shot from a Roman floor mosaic. It seemed like a good idea to create continuity with my book covers. Also, I often see people using art by family members on their books, and I think it’s a good way of personalising the work. Or maybe it’s just that I consider myself a boy, even though I am 58 years old.
SG: I like the idea of considering yourself a boy at 58, but I do believe that our creative selves are very closely connected to our child-selves. The importance of memory, the telling of childhood stories and identity formation comes through in many of the poems. In “The Electrician” the narrator follows in his father’s footsteps in his own way and in “Rote Learning,” you paint a moving picture of the power of memory, poetry and words and how different generations listen and remember. I loved how the “tools” of each trade – Electrician, poet/teacher – provide the link to your father and mother, and then on through the generations. Do you think writing poetry and making film-poems is your addition to this lineage?
CS: That’s a lovely thought. I suppose we always think about ourselves in isolation; what we want to do, what we are achieving, what we want to be. But your question makes a lot of sense, and I don’t think I thought of it like that before. Yes, I am a bit obsessed with family, history and what is kept or passed on, what we can learn from the past. It would be nice to think that, in my own way, I am doing what I am supposed to be doing to pass on ideas, beliefs, traditions from previous generations, playing my part in that intergenerational human chain. As Heaney says in Digging, Between my Finger and my thumb, the squat pen rests, I’ll dig with it.
Maybe I am doing a little electrical wiring, of a sort, with my poetryfilm, or passing on the love of poetry my mother gave to me. Hopefully.
SG: Up against this personal exploration are wider narratives – some political, for example, “A History of the Pharmaceutical Industry in Ireland 1990 – 2020”, “An Alternative History of Ireland” – can you speak about your interest in varying historical narratives coupled with the stories we tell ourselves and the official stories we are told about our country – and, more importantly, as you explore here, the voices that are silenced?
CS: Thanks for pointing out these poems, Shauna. Though they are not ones that I found easy to get published in magazines, I am quite fond of them. Political poetry is difficult, although some say that all poetry is political. I personally try to shy away from politics in poetry, at least away from the polemical. One has to be outrageously funny, like Kevin O’Higgins, to get away with that kind of work. I planned, once, to write a chapbook entitled, Alternative Histories, sparked by the aforementioned poem about the Travelling Community. It’s always a risk to take on the voice of a group of people that you are not a member of. Cultural appropriation is a real thing. I do feel that Travellers have been treated unfairly, and we seem to have a blind spot, as a society, to their cause, while simultaneously portraying ourselves as liberal and inclusive in an international arena. I think we set up Traveller society to fail, through our policies over many decades. We should not be surprised, then, that the travelling community still has a lot of issues. It’s our fault. In the case of A History of the Pharma Industry, it’s not really a political statement against the multinationals or the pharma industry. It refers to my career as a chemical engineer for 30 years. It’s about capitalism and the realisation that dawns on us, after the fact, that we are mere adders of value to capital, in our working lives, creators of wealth for others. Perhaps the stories in my poems can elaborate on a side to these topics that can be hard to illuminate in everyday discussion.
SG: It is a great poem, Colm. I also very much liked the re-imagining of and placing yourself in another voice or person at well-known historical moments or events. In “Stolen Memory” you bring us to Terence McSwiney’s funeral through the eyes of a child, and in “Easter Monday” an unnamed narrator remains at (her?) desk trying to complete her work “as per Mr Keane’s instructions,” unnerved by “the crashing and banging in the foyer below” by the men who have “taken over the post office.” In the “Lord Protector” you assume the voice of a Cromwell tired of Ireland who yearns to be in Essex and in “Sparrow Hawk” and “Sparrow Hawk II” you remind us of the violence of humans against animals. Assuming the voice and being of anther is part of being a writer. Did you enjoy delving into these alternative beings, and placing yourself (or your imagined narrator) at the heart of history?
CS: I loved it really. I always regret not doing history in my Leaving Cert, though I went on to study it in UCC as an evening arts course in my late twenties. History of all sorts really inspires me. When I combine this with my love of poetry and story telling it seems almost unavoidable that I should want to go to those places and tell a story through the eyes of someone who lived at the time. Almost always, with me, it’s an attempt to tell from another perspective, something that’s not the generally accepted narrative, We don’t tend to hear Oliver Cromwell’s side of things, or the point of view of a female office clerk in the GPO in 1916, or a child delighted with his day out, oblivious to the significance of a republican funeral. I take on these people’s personas to try to empathise and learn a little more about the times, maybe garner an insight or deeper understanding of what it was to be alive then and how it might illuminate our understanding of the complex world of today.
SG: And on understanding complexities in our world, there is a philosophical thread running through the collection. I found myself re-reading many poems and particularly enjoyed “Evolution,” “Cro-Magnon Woman,” and the chilling – and unnervingly fit for our times – “Saracens at the Gate.” There’s a great rhythm and chilling atmosphere in your exploration of the advancement of time and ideas, and how new discoveries and research change our perception of ourselves and our human histories. We all yearn to know the thread that links us to those who went before and yet what we think of as our firm knowledge can be questioned, and changed, with the contrary notion being true too – as in the opening line of “Evolution”: “These days I remember things that never happened.” Do you think this could be the overarching theme of the collection?
CS: Yes, I think it could be. I am not Heaney’s biggest fan, yet I find myself mentioning him for a second time in this interview. I think of his collection title, The Human Chain, as perhaps being a fitting catch-all for many of my poems. I do find it hard to pin down an overriding theme in the book, as all the poems, apart from the Progress of Man sequence, are quite independent of each other. I am aware that an overarching theme or subject is the de rigueur way to create a collection today, but I find it a difficult thing to do. I’d find it impossible to sit down and write twelve sonnets about the months of the year, for example. I said in another interview, recently, that my first collection was about finding my place in the world, whereas this one is about exploring our interactions as humans with the natural and built world. However, I feel that you may have summarised it better in your question.
SG: The everyday and individual memories or experiences that can also be interpreted as universal are very much present in the collection: for example, “The First Time The Pope Came,” “Purpose,” “Tea Ceremony” and “Interior Group Portrait of Penrose Family” with its perfect final line “We left as we entered, only our portraits remain.” This poem is also a mesmerising film poem. How did the themes examined in these poems influence their placement in the collection?
CS: Personal and familial poems have always had a place in my work. We are all aware that these are the poems that people connect and empathise with quickest. But, as they also tend to be the most frequent poems written, one must be selective about when and on what specific theme one writes, as sentimentality and nostalgia can easily overtake us. I know a successful poet who says he never writes a poem involving any of his family. This I mistrust, as family are so important in nearly all our lives. The First Time the Pope Came is very much a memory poem, narrating the weekend of the Pope’s visit to Ireland in 1979, as closely as I can remember it. This, along with several other poems, got automatic inclusion in the collection because they were published in good journals (Cyphers in this case). I have to trust the eye of experienced editors as well. Tea Ceremony is quite a light Ars Poetica, Purpose I would consider a philosophical poem, whereas Interior Group Portrait is very much in the general theme of the book, connectedness and the anthropocene. In terms of why they got in, I would say that my approach to this collection was very different from that taken for my first collection. In the first, I sent out about 100 possible poems to four different people: Poets, a short story writer, and my wife. I got them to vote for their favourites. Being a scientist, I used this to come up with my top forty. In retrospect, I think this was a mistake. Poetry is so subjective, and individual opinions vary so widely that a small sample of four cannot adequately seperate what is good from what is bad. This time, I decided to pick out my own personal favourites from several hundred that had been written over the intervening years. This included many poems that I felt were good, but that I never got published or received positive feedback on. I think I have learned that I am an ideas man, and sometimes the quality of the poetry suffers at the expense of the idea. This time, I tried to pick poems that I felt were technically well constructed as well as having interesting content.
SG: Thank you for your generous answers, Colm. We will end with a few light questions:
- Quiet or music when writing? When editing? Quiet. Silence if possible.
- Coffee or Tea? De caff tea. Indigestion has forced me off coffee.
- Bog, Sea or Mountains? All three. I love the open air.
- Do you have a go-to book that you frequently re-read? Dubliners. I first read it when I was seventeen, and I can’t get over its beauty and genius. He was twenty-three when he wrote it, but seems to be able to understand what it feels like to be any age, from young to old.
- What are you working on now? Right now, I am reworking short stories that I wrote over several years, hoping to get some of them published. Also, I have written a novel that needs a lot of work. Then, of course, there are the poetry films. I currently have too many things that I need to work on.
Thank you to WordsontheStreetPublications for the advance copy of Neanderthal Boy. It is available to purchase here.
Shauna Gilligan Writer 