A Girl's Writing Is Never Done (c) Shauna Gilligan 2026
I am delighted to have facilitated a series of creative writing workshops with an amazing group of writers in Kildare Town Library as part of Kildare County Council Brigid 1500 Celebrations.
We would love for you to join us for a curated selection of poetry, prose, music and movement on Thursday, 5 October from 7pm.
Book your free KRF 2023 ticket here
The Writing Our Way to Brigit/Brigid Project is supported by Kildare County Council, Brigid 1500, Arts in Kildare, Kildare Library Service.
John, You’re very welcome to my Writers Chat series. We’re going to chat about your latest publication, Absent Friend (The Harvest Press: Carlow, 2023), a memoir and reflection on your friendship with Leonard Cohen.
SG: Let’s start with the title. It both sums up the friendship now, and how it endures despite Leonard’s death, and also the friendship as it formed and evolved over geographical distance. Did the title come easy to you?
JMacK: Thanks for the invitation. I’ve long been aware of the tradition in some religious communities of setting a place at table for absent friends – in fact it’s one we’ve adopted in our house. It’s a way of remembering those who are away from home and those who have died and it never fails to bring a moment or two of reflection on some or all of the missing people in our lives. So when I began writing this book the title, more or less, suggested itself. It seemed to sit very easily with what I had in mind as the theme of the book – the friendship and the absence of that friendship after Leonard died.
SG: That’s very moving – your writing as a table with a space for absent friends. It’s quite an incredible story, your lifelong communications with Leonard. How did you work out the structure for the memoir in terms of chronology of friendship/ your own chronological life?
JMacK: That was a challenge. I had many thoughts on how to approach it but, in the end, I thought the songs are the binding force. The songs are what drew me to Leonard when I was eighteen and the songs remain after he’s gone. So I used the songs and albums as guideposts to the journey of his life and my life and our friendship. And it seemed to work.
The parallels between events in my own living and the emotions and events gathered in his songs worked in tandem in terms of the writing. There’s one moment in the book where I’m driving and listening to If It Be Your Will (a song about the holocaust) and I come upon a car accident and that produces its own small holocaust – that’s just one moment of the parallels being shocking.
But the fact that Leonard was so open and so reflective of his own life – and by extension all our lives – makes the work incredibly accessible, moving, educational and emotionally connected.
SG: There were a few moments in the book where there were uncanny parallels and perhaps these actually connect to your own openness and reflection. You also capture the philosophy behind many of Cohen’s songs that have carried you through rough and tough times. You show us the power of his words and music. Why do you think he’s been painted so often as just writing about the underbelly of emotion?
JMacK: I had one brother who was ten years older than me and he was a wonderful guide in life. Leonard was eighteen years older than me and I thought of him as a brother, too. So the guidance, the sharing of experience and direction were important to me. But Leonard’s life was radically different from mine – he came from a wealthy, Canadian, Jewish family. And, yet, much of what he wrote about in terms of emotion was blindingly familiar to me – an innate darkness; a struggle with emotional intimacy; an interest in the spiritual.
So, yes, he does write about that dark spaces and those muddy waters. What is sometimes forgotten is his wonderful humour – it was quiet but it was always there in his songs, in chatting with him, in his letters and emails. That’s something that is often missed about his personality. And sometimes his dismissal and the dismissal of his songs as razor blade music is just lazy journalism.
SG: And that’s a gift – being able to combine dark and deep spaces with humour. You write about your own relationship to form (books, songs, poetry) as well as the impact and/or influence of teaching (the system) on your creativity. The “links” that pull you in to Leonard’s work are also what work in writing:
an idea, an experience, a phrase, an image
To what extent did you learn or work on your writing craft through exploring Leonard’s songs? (For example, your novel Once We Sang Like Other Men)
JMacK: I first heard Leonard in 1971 when I was recovering from meningitis and I can still clearly remember the shock of hearing a story I was very familiar with (the Biblical story of Isaac) retold in the song Story of Isaac but hearing it told in the voice of a nine-year-old boy. The familiar became the fascinating. That was the first step on a writing road toward the realisation that old stories, familiar characters, well-worn situations can be viewed and re-told freshly. That was inspiring.
The other thing I learned from Leonard’s work was that less is more – his ability to suggest things is powerful. There’s a line in a very late song about angels scratching at the door. That one verb is extraordinary in what it suggests and how it avoids the cliched.
The subject matter of a lot of Leonard’s work is the spiritual and that’s an area that fascinates me and, as you say, I’ve examined it in Once We Sang Like Other Men and Joseph. It’s a road we were both interested in, that place where spiritual and human collide.
SG: Yes, that verb “scratching” alongside the softness (perceived) of angels is great. Absent Friend also serves as an exploration of religion. You speak about going to a monastery church in Moone, Kildare
in search of spiritual consolation and calmness
and at length about Leonard’s time in a monastery. How important was it to Leonard and how important is it to you in your writing?
JMacK: Leonard said the monastery at Mount Baldy and his times there saved his life. He went from absolute fame and an absolute dependence on alcohol to a time (six years) of reflection and removal from the demands of the world. It got him back on an even and healthy keel.
For me the quiet times spent at Bolton Abbey are important in two ways. They reconnect me with summers in my teenage years spent working in the gardens there – a wonderful time of ideas and debates and discussions and laughter with the monks. But they also connect me to a way of life that isn’t mine but one in which I recognise the importance of silence, of contemplation, of peace, of communal spirit.
And that feeds into my writing. As I get older I find myself looking more and more (in fiction and non-fiction) at the place of the human in the world of the spiritual. Belief wise, I’d describe myself as an agnostic but I love the search, I love the things that are part of the monastic life – the internal and external landscapes in Bolton Abbey. And I get a tremendous reassurance and uplift from time spent there. The monks are good men, interesting, funny, they have a depth you don’t often find in the world.
SG: How do you think you’ll carry Leonard’s legacy forward – in music and in writing – and do you see Absent Friend as part of this process?
JMacK: I was honoured to work with Leonard on Between Your Love and Mine, a requiem for theatre that we completed in the summer before his death. That requiem has had two extremely successful tours – playing theatres across the country as well as the NCH and Aras an Uachtaráin. The requiem will be restaged next year to coincide with Leonard’s ninetieth birthday so that, I feel, is important.
I hope Absent Friend contributes, in some small way, to spreading the word of Leonard’s genius as a wordsmith and musician.
SG: I am sure your book has already contributed – we see Leonard through the eyes of a friendship that endured a lifetime. I very much look forward to experiencing the requiem next year. So we’ll finish up, John, with some short questions:
Thank you to The Harvest Press and John for the copy of Absent Friend. Purchase Absent Friend here.
Kevin, You’re very welcome to my Writers Chat series. We’re going to chat about your third novel Youth (The Lilliput Press: Dublin, 2023) which is set in Balbriggan, your hometown. We’re publishing this on Bloomsday as a nod to the importance and wonder of place in the novel.
SG: Let’s start with the title. As I was reading Youth, there were a number of phrases that were repeated so often (for example, “Allow”, “If yuno, yuno”, “that’s a bar”) that I found myself giving the novel alternative titles. However, Youth encompasses not only the communal essence of your four protagonists but also the main theme. Can you talk about the process in naming this novel?
KC: Starting out the working title was ‘Wandering Rocks’ which you can probably guess came from Joyce’s Ulysses. That chapter and the way Joyce swept along the city streets and dipped in and out of people’s lives was one of the main inspirations for the novel. The title Youth was then settled on a year or two later. I seem to like one-word titles as I get embarrassed talking about my work to friends, family and colleagues, and I find a one word response to, ‘what’s your book called?’ keeps things simple and avoids any strange looks or explanations.
SG: That’s interesting, as I picked up on threads relating to Ulysses so it’s like shadows of your first thoughts are still there. On the topic of themes – and so often they only emerge through the writing rather than follow the intentions of the author – it felt to me, though much of the narrative is overtly downbeat, at times despairing, and many of these youth are trapped in circumstance, ultimately Youth is a novel of hope. Would you agree?
KC: 100%. You can’t be around the kids I’ve been around for over a decade and see how they interact with each other and face into the challenges they face and not feel hope. Balbriggan is Ireland’s most diverse and youngest town, so I like to say Balbriggan is Ireland’s future now. And from what I see, the kids aren’t interested in all the anti-immigration rhetoric. In my home town and the school I teach in, diversity and multi-culturalism is a way of life, second nature. Kids from all nations and cultures sit beside each other and become friends despite what noise you hear online. That’s what I experience every day. There’s your hope.
SG: Indeed. It’s like life itself is hopeful, and the online “life”…well, you’ve said it. I’m really interested in the role language plays in Youth. For me, this is what makes it such a stand-out book. While I struggled, at first, to get into the rhythm of not only the voices of our four narrators, but the intent and reciprocation of their language with each other, internally (for example, Tanya), and then with the responsible (or not so responsible) adults in their lives. Could you talk about your intention and the writing process here?
KC: Each character comes at language in a very different way, whether consciously or not.
Angel is trying to fit in and find his tribe through language, which in his case is London slang, his friends’ parents’ African slang, and Dublin slang.
Princess is creating herself through her language, and is mindful that how she speaks will define her.
Dean’s language has been infiltrated by the internet and porn and toxic masculinity and Tanya’s language has been lost to an unfiltered internet flow of reported speech without much thought given to what she is reporting or how she is reporting it. Her language is immediate.
The writing process for everyone – apart from Princess – was to keep the vocabulary quite tight and to work then within the rhythm and confines of a limited vocabulary. In Angel’s case (with thanks to my students) I was able to create a fairly comprehensive slang dictionary that became the foundations for all of Angel’s language, and then Dean and Tanya’s language was again always limited in expression to keep the rhythm and flow. Princess was the only language in an aesthetic sense that I really pushed.
SG: Youth is also being released as an audio book which will be really superb – it struck me that it is a novel that is lyrical in its movement – almost musical (alongside Pelumi’s input) – and yet also cinematic. Place, pace and rhythm are essential components – characters? – in this novel. It feels as if you walked the streets of Balbriggan, if not literally, then in your head, like Joyce did for Ulysses but at the same time, Youth taps into the universality of human experience. Could you comment on this?
KC: Like you said, I literally walked the streets of Balbriggan for the six years I wrote the book. Even up until the last night before submitting the final draft to the publisher, I was down Mainstreet checking out what type of button was on the traffic light – whether it was a silver circle or silver triangle – to make sure everything I put in about the town was as on point as possible.
Throughout the writing of the book I would either take pictures of things, like the pavements (to get the names of manhole covers, look at the chewing gum stains on the paths) or stand in the street (not obviously – because that would look too weird) and see where the shadows fall and how the street felt at certain times of day and night etc.
I was hoping the deeper I went on Mainstreet and into the town and the estates and the particulars of the place, the more it would become real for the reader, and by extension more universally felt by the reader. It’s the old John McGahern thing isn’t it, the local and the universal.
SG: Thank you for such an insight into your process – and that time, and care, and dedication to place really shows in the writing. Structurally, the narrative of Youth is told in four voices – two male, two female – with every character trying to get beyond their circumstances. It felt, at times, that the voices merged, in particular, the more the lives of Dean and Angel criss-crossed, the more scripted their language and narrative seemed, and as this happens, they start to find ways to be their whole selves not a choreographed online version – through unlikely connections/love and by engaging in every day life tasks – behind the deli in SuperValu; cutting hair. But despite this, they both continue to try and fit into a version of gang culture that is, at times comical, and others, frighteningly dangerous. Dean observes: “Begrudgery, yeah. But something else. Control and an ability to define you. People in this town want power over you.” Could you talk about the theme of power and masculinity through the experiences of Dean and Angel?
KC: Masculinity was central to the book from the early stages. I remember when Moonlight by Barry Jenkins came out I wanted to show the movie to one of my TY classes. 50% of the class would have been Black-Irish and I always tried to bring some sort of representation into the texts we studied. But when the kids heard about the content of the film they didn’t want to watch it. This got me thinking about Angel and Pelumi in particular and how the façade of a dominant, strong, overtly hetro-sexual lad had to be on show all of the time and how drill music in particular with its hyper violent and mysoginistic lyrics again demanded the people rapping take a certain stance. I would talk to some rappers about this (who have since become quite successful within the genre) and they would say it was a pose to gain views, listens, traction, and once they had this they could soften their stance and transition into hip-hop and not be such a caricature.
Dean, with his father being a famous boxer, and literally famous for fighting, offered an interesting insight into the world of masculinity, power and violence when seen through the prism of expectations and family reputations. In Balbriggan growing up (as with all towns I’m sure) there were always family names that carried weight – they were known to be tough and to be involved in fights. But I grew up with some of the lads, and then I taught their sons and daughters and nephews and nieces and you see behind the façade again of this tough living, hard fighting exterior and you realize the pressures they’re under to be this type of person.
SG: Oh that’s a great film and I could see how you’d have loved to use it to initiate real conversations about masculinities. However, if Dean and Angel have family history and circumstances stacked up against them, then Princess and Tanya are overtly fighting and kicking back against patriarchy and a version of toxic masculinity that they try to (subtly and not so subtly) break down. I was interested in the roles of their mothers (and Tanya’s grandmother) in their narratives. I loved how Tanya’s mother gives stark yet loving advice (“Listen to me. That sorta shit isn’t normal. And everyone doesn’t do it.”). In contrast, Princess’s mother is mainly absent, caring for her own mother in Nigeria. Can you talk a little about female relationships and grandmother/mother/daughter bonds in Youth?
KC: In the novel in general I tried to keep parents as absent as possible so as to let the teenage characters live as freely as possible. But in the case of Dean, his father’s influence became larger as the drafts continued, and Tanya’s father was central to her story. But in the case of Princess and Angel, I wanted to especially cut them off from any adult influence to give a sense of them having to live this 2nd generation life in the town on their own terms. You will notice they are the two who need to work and who basically have to navigate their futures alone.
So, I kept Princess’s mother’s influence sparse because of this need to highlight how alone Princess is in dealing with the obstacles of being the ‘first’ in her family to be born in Ireland and have to deal with this dichotomy.
Florence Adebambo read the voice of Princess in the audiobook and I felt Florence portrayed this brilliantly. Florence was able to subtly show the difference between Princess and her mother and sister. Florence gave the mother a strong Nigerian-Irish accent, and Becky a slighter less pronounced accent, whereas Princess’s accent is unmistakably Irish.
Tanya on the other hand, being Balbriggan born, has the full matriarchy behind her. Her granny was always intended as a strong support, someone we could see Tanya could be herself around and show the reader her softer side around. Tanya’s mother on the other hand was always there to highlight the generation gap, even though, as we learn in the book, there is only 17 years between Tanya and her mother.
But every woman in the book I think comes across as a strong woman, with strong opinions and strong character. It was important Tanya was not seen as a victim, and no other woman for that matter was seen as weak and ‘needing’ the males in the novel.
SG: You’re a teacher yourself, and I liked how you shone a light on both the pressures of and opportunities the education system seemingly offers. For Princess, in particular, achieving in school is what will help her out of her familial and social constraints. She has a colour-coded system of highlighting her text books and uses this same science to observe behaviour, at times with great humour. Observations on trying to obtain work experience in a pharmacy:
“This is my future, my life after all. I’m like, why worry about how you look to this girlo with the blonde hair and Fanta skin? I’ve been raised to stick up for myself. Fight for everything”
“No one should be doing what I’m doing for free…Luminous yellow highlighter, general observation: Cynicism doesn’t come without a cost. Pink highlighter, specific life-advancement threats: Other people will let you down.”
Can you talk a little about the role of education in Youth.
KC: My grandfather grew up in the tenements and through scholarships, made his way to UCD. I was his first grandson to go to UCD and he gave me half the fees for a Masters in Literature in UCD (the other half was funded by the money I got for my 21st party from friends and family!!) I was the only student from my school to go to UCD in my year and even though it was a lonely experience, it was character defining one.
Obviously as a teacher, education is incredibly important to me. I tell my Leaving Cert students every year that the Leaving Cert is the one opportunity they will have in their life to sit and compete with their peers from richer houses, towns and schools – fee paying schools who charge thousands of euros a year – and they can challenge them on an even footing. I know a lot of people give out about the current Leaving Cert exam, but from an English teaching perspective, the exam really gives the students from my DEIS school an opportunity to even up the disadvantages in society they might have faced earlier in their lives, and they will probably face later in their lives. So, yeah, education and libraries as sanctuaries for learning, are central to the core message in Youth.
SG: But not only sanctuaries for learning but for transformation. So much of living in Youth happens on and is dictated by social media – not only for the youth, but also for characters like Barry. From the outset, was this your intention or did this aspect of the narrative evolve with the characters and story? Did you engage in research about social media and the youth?
KC: When you’re around teenagers like I am for the number of years I have been, you can’t help but observe how social media is beginning to alter how teenagers behave and interact. I wrote the story ‘Saving Tanya’ in 2014 for the ‘Young Irelanders’ anthology. In that story I was quite specific with the social media platforms being used, but I learned from that story to kind of pull back from the actual specifics of the platforms but to still deal with social media.
In the case of Tanya I wanted to show that even though she thinks her phone and social media is her comfort blanket, it’s actually smothering her slowly.
The actual form for Tanya’s chapters came quite late in the drafts. I had her firstly as a ‘Living with the Kardashians’ documentary type thing, and then I changed her to a script, but then, finally, I landed on the current form, which I think works brilliantly to display the all-pervasive nature of social media in a teenager’s life, but also to show the real, lived experience behind the posts.
As for Barry, his social media output seems to be representative of a lot of angry, keyboard warriors from his generation.
Research wasn’t too heavy. I was able to chat to my classes – from sixteen year olds to eighteen year olds, and we would discuss what they felt about social media, and what they experienced on-line. The feedback from the girls was eye-opening. Just the hassle almost every girl gets on-line from weirdos (mostly adult men) sending them DMs shocked me.
I also went onto Tik-Tok for a while to get a sense of the dynamic of it. Jesus, that was rough. I deleted the app as soon as I didn’t need to research any more. That place is insane!
SG: All that for your art! Hats off, I’ve not even watched a Tik-Tok! So, we’ll end this Writers Chat, Kevin, with some short questions:
Some great reading there – I recently returned again to Mystery and Manners. I always get something new each time I read those essays. Thanks for such brilliant engagement with my questions and I wish you much success with Youth which can be purchased here.
Follow Kevin Curran on Twitter: @kevlcurran
Thank you to The Lilliput Press and Peter O’Connell Media for an advance copy of Youth.
Shauna Gilligan Writer 