Tag: wordsonthestreet

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Writers Chat 80: Colm Scully on “Neanderthal Boy” (Wordsonthestreet, 2025)

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.

Image of the front cover of Neanderthal Boy showing a sculpture of a boy against a black background.

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.

Poetry Collection, Writer Interview, Writers Chat

Writers Chat 72: Tony O’Dwyer on “Off Guard” (Wordsonthestreet: Galway, 2024)

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.”

Cover image of poetry collection Off Guard with a black and white image of the author Tony O’Dwyer looking off in the distance in contemplation in front of a bookcase of books.

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.

Colour image of Tony O’Dwyer looking to the right, with hands clasped, and in front of a bookshelf. Image by Clare Champion newspaper and provided with permission by Tony O’Dwyer.
Writer Interview, Writers Chat

Writers Chat 66: Alison Wells on “Random Acts of Optimism” (wordsonthestreet: Galway, 2023)

Cover of Random Acts of Optimism showing painting of a desert landscape with a ticking clock in the foreground and a red-leaved tree with a woman’s face peering at the clock. Image by Beatrice Mecking, courtesy of wordsonthestreet.

Alison, You are very welcome to my Writers Chat series. We’re here to discuss your short story collection Random Acts of Optimism which has been described by Billy O’Callaghan as “a genuinely marvellous collection”. Published by Galway based wordsonthestreet, it was launched in dlr Lexicon on September 20th. Many congratulations.

SG: Let’s begin with the title Random Acts of Optimism, which is a theme that runs through each story – despite the diverse forms within the collection – and, in my experience, optimism is the feeling with which are left with when we’ve read each story. Can you talk about how you came to decide on this title?

AW: When I came to write the title story I recognised that for Cynthia and Tom and for many of the other characters in my stories they were often taking action in spite of or in defiance of the constraints of their circumstances. The acts of optimism we take in our lives can run from stand out courageous acts to the everyday doggedness that so many people display as they push through difficult periods of life, as losses mount up over time or as we all faced during the pandemic years. Personally, I am also fascinated by psychology and how we convince ourselves of things, we can be courageously optimistic but sometimes optimism becomes delusion and that has been the subject of several of my novels as well as the stories in the book. For me, also, Random Acts of Optimism also relates to my own long journey as a writer, and also for every writer, trying to find the right words, reach people and hopefully get published. I’ve explored these themes in my writing blog Head above Water and hope to work with people to support them to maintain optimism in their writing lives.

SG: That’s very moving – working to help people maintain optimism in their writing lives. Something so very much needed. I really loved the opening title story – the characters, the narrative but also how you used the page to communicate some of the clinical ways our society was run during the Covid-19 Pandemic. It’s a heart warming story of connection blooming in adverse conditions. In particular the use of humour to fill communication gaps:

He doesn’t know what else to say so he tells her about a woman who returned a book two years too late. The book was called Successful Time Management for Dummies.

Can you talk about the origins and writing of this story?

AW: This story was rooted in my real experiences of the surreal and poignant experience of being one of a few library staff members sending books out to ‘cocooners’ during the Covid19 pandemic from a vast empty library. (The Lexicon library, currently the largest library in Ireland). Many conversations were stark but often a joke was shared and the topic of books always engaged and entertained us.

I also wanted to explore how a male character who is bewildered by his marriage breakup and fallen prey to the anxieties of the modern world  and not really able to make sense of it might begin to find answers through his unlikely connection with an older lady through the libraries and through books themselves. I’ve written (a yet unpublished novel) about a man who loses his way in life but in that case does not find a path back.

I still feel very moved when I think about the “cocooners” at home under often very lonely and vulnerable circumstances. What happened in the pandemic underlines the importance of real human connection (which, by the way, is one of the positives of public libraries with their events, social groups and book clubs) and the power of books and writing to help us feel that connection, understand ourselves and others and just be plain entertained and carried away, even in dire circumstances.

I think writing this story, more than any, allowed me to really depict the stoicism, humour and camaraderie that so many ordinary people have while negotiating everyday challenges. I went on to write several thousand more words of the developing relationship between the characters, so we will see where that goes.

SG: Well that sounds very intriguing, Alison, I really liked those characters and would love to read more. In “There’s a Café in This Story”, you tell the tale of connections breaking down, the importance of place and how necessary it is to keep hope in relationships. I loved the entwining of the inner character with the exterior of the cafe:

There are details that build up over time, the first, shyly uncertain pleasantries, umbrellas under the table, ankles knocking against the metal legs and then against each other. He wonders…. Will the cafes all merge, with all their combined sensations of exhilaration and regret?

Tell me about the structure of this story and how it came about? 

AW: We can use signs around us as scaffolding to reinforce the stories we are telling ourselves. This man, captivated by the idea of this illicit romance, sees the scene and objects around him as part of a rarefied and lovely story. Meanwhile, for his wife, sitting under the infant at home, the discarded coffee cup, her own tea out of reach, the immutable reality of domesticity, objects give a different flavour. Working in Dun Laoghaire, I often walked out on the pier. The sound and scent of the sea, the clanging of the anchors, the gulls were all very vivid, sensation laden images which I used to set the scene and evoke that sense uplift and freedom that the man feels his rendezvous give him.

I liked juxtaposing the man’s reality, his illusion of freedom, movement and magic with the more solid reality of the woman’s life in the alongside their joint memories/experiences of the past. These conflicting juxtapositions are reflected in the images of the servers’ arms criss-crossing,  the struts of the bridge, reaching up to put the star on the Christmas tree.  I think the to-ing and fro-ing between the man and wife’s realities allow us to see two sides to the story.

SG: I liked how seeing the two sides worked. I’m curious as to the order of the collection. I liked how “Sad about the Plumber’s Uncle” worked next to “All that Thinking”, in that the light relief and humour in the first story sets the reader up for the deep thinking in the second. How did you settle on the order?
AW: As you say, the stories in the collection are quite diverse in tone and mood and also what you might call genre, running from realistic to more speculative and fantastical. And as you say, occasionally there was a pretty stark reversal of tone. In other cases, one humorous story follows another but then a reflective element to that story might be echoed in the next. There are some stories about writing or having written (told from the point of view of a letter) and they are close together. To me, the process was similar to the rightness of feeling I felt listening to my favourite albums in the 80s, an instinctive feeling towards tone, poignancy, energy and pause. Sometimes evenness of tone is preserved and at other times the symbols or drums break the preceding silence. I like how the first story throws you right in and how the last story refers to a moment of coming home.

SG: I loved your use of sensory detail and pause in “The Spaceman Has His Tea”. The story has a straight-forward premise yet you created a narrative that is, in its underbelly, a philosophical consideration of the nature of our existence.

Unleashed from the world is not to be free of it, it is to be put in charge of the last egg in the basket, it is to be six years old have your mother put the egg into your hand and say ‘Don’t break that.’ And the earth is as blue as a bird’s egg, as precious as Fabergé, as fragile as Arctic ice. It is to be six years old and afraid of forgetting.

I love that it also concerns the lovely act of drinking tea and “meringue, light, delicious; clouds dissolving on his tongue.” How important are the senses to you when you write?

AW: Like many writers, I’m always pained by the gap between the richness and impact of reality, especially that of the natural world and how well I am getting it down on the page. I can be carried away by ideas and competing narratives, but I think what short work can do best and what I would like my writing to develop into is being more spare, precise, immediate and evocative. The senses are key to that. I grew up in the countryside, was immersed in it, reeds, wind, frogspawn, moss. The natural world evokes a strong feeling and I hope I can put some of that across through different sense impression. Recently I read the writing of Darragh McKeown for the first time and loved the clarity of it. The key to writing is specificity, we know the world through everyday things, what they evoke through senses and memory, what they mean to us. 

We will end this chat, Alison, with some short questions:

  1. Beach or mountains? Beach by a small margin but I grew up in Kerry near the sea with a mountain at my back and now live in Wicklow which also has both!
  2. Dart, train or bus? Definitely DART these days though I spent my college years on the train between Dublin and Kerry leading to many fascinating glimpses of characters.
  3. Do you usually have one book or numerous books on the go? Both writing and reading wise, the answer to this is always many, no matter how much I fight against it. I am endlessly, pathologically curious. I read for my own pleasure, for research for both writing projects and, currently for my dissertation for an MSc in Library and Information Science, I am also fascinated by neuropsychology and creative resilience.
  4. I love the idea of being pathologically curious! Quiet or noise when you’re writing? Quiet. Not easy to find. I used to get up at 5am when the children were young and we built a writing cabin in the garden but once the world gets going, quiet is never easy to find and the noise in my head hard to dodge.
  5. What’s the next three books on your reading pile? I just went to check and counted 50 books stacked up beside the bed! One of the perils of being a public librarian is constant temptations. I am about to read Books on Fire – The Tumultuous Story of the World’s Great Libraries by Lucien x. Polastron, The Creativity Code – how AI is learning to write, paint and think. These will inform future writing projects. I also have Poetry Unbound – 50 Poems to Open Your World by Pádraig ó Tuama put by – his selection of poems and what they mean to him. Just now, with work, study, family life and book launches, this selection is something to steady me, give me pause and interest and settle me down in the moment.  

Thank you, Alison, for such a generous and open attitude to and answering of my questions. I wish you every success with Random Acts of Optimism.

Order Random Acts of Optimism here and follow Alison here.

Photograph of Alison Wells, blonde hair and blue eyes, smiling directly at the camera, wearing a denim-blue cardigan. Photo courtesy of Alison Wells.

Thank you to wordsonthestreet for the Advance Copy of Random Acts of Optimism.