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The poems are my way of saying, you know what, yo
u’re grand, you’re not perfect. Some days you’ll feel shit and some days you’ll feel great. PHOTO Jenny Callanan like the multitasking one where the opening line is “I clean my teeth on the loo to save time.”, and I’ll know that’s my rhythm and pace. Sometimes they feel like little kitchen pop songs. As far as rhyming, I think that comes from Smash Hits back in the day. And while I loved all the posters and had those up all over the walls, my favorite bit of that magazine was when they used to print out the lyrics of the songs. I’d keep those. I loved pop music, and I still do now. Maybe that’s where the rhythmic side comes from. Probably my exposure to that. I’m less inclined to write the kind that doesn’t rhyme. There’s almost something more mischievous about when it rhymes. So even when I’m talking about the upsetting stuff, there’s a lightness to it because it rhymes. It doesn’t make it any less honest or serious, but like pop music, it makes those feelings a little more accessible. What was the impetus that made you vent those first frustrations as a poem? Were you reading a lot at the time or was it just happenstance? Well, I’d have had a notebook beside the bed that I’d be inclined to write things in it for the next day. “Must remember to pay the ESB bill, get the GAA kit ready for whoever.” I don’t know, to be honest with you. Or even that I was reading anything in particular. It’s more like they’re lovely little gifts. I walk everywhere, or cycle, so I have a lot of internal dialogue. I think it was probably that. I do love John Cooper Clarke and Chickentown, and I do like the intensity and annoyance in that. So I was sitting with my daughter and she was reading, and I was just 26 really pissed off so I picked up the pad and started writing. Well, I guess over the pandemic some people found baking… I certainly didn’t. I was sick of people showing me the bread that they made, and telling me I needed to get outside, and breathe, and I was just thinking, well you can all go and feck off. I was so done with it. Even in the new book, there’s that New Year, Now You piece. This idea, it’s like “no, it’s not a new me, it’s the same me and I’m grand”. I dont think it’s exclusively a female thing either. The guys seem as receptive as anybody else. It’s the constant bombardment of instruction. If you do this you’ll be better, if you do that you’ll be thinner, if you do the other you’ll be nicer. I hate all of that. When I was young it was the weirdo down the road who had all the self improvement books, and now it seems to be the kids. It troubles me. That there’s people who might feel vulnerable in a moment, and take all that kind of stuff on board when something says “You need to…” or “you should be…”. So the poems are my way of saying, you know what, you’re grand, you’re not perfect. Some days you’ll feel shit and some days you’ll feel great. What I’ve come to realize is that I’m a bit of both at all times. I’m probably hormonal, and definitely menopausal, and life is busy. I’d love for people to be able to see that it’s okay for life to not be so perfect all the time, because my life is not so perfect all the time. “And the Wee Stores used to open on a Sunday. Because they were Prods. They’d open and sell the newspapers, while all the Catholic stores were closed.” It seems people nowadays are looking for something more relatable, something that isn’t the constant self improvement ads, get rich quick schemes, or the carefully curated moments that populate almost every Instagram page with any kind of audience. The presentation of these incredible lives. So that raw authenticity and honesty is what people are looking for. Well if people want to put the shiny side out all the time, I have zero judgments. Knock yourselves out, but that kind of thing doesn’t benefit me. I’m not only going to talk about the most fabulous things. When I wrote some of this I wasn’t in the best headspace, but I had to hold onto the fact that I knew I felt crap, and I knew I’d feel better. And that’s what the poem Hope In The Dark is about. Even if you are still in your pajamas at two, the fact that you’re looking at yourself and you can see you’re in a state. There’s hope there. Everybody Is a Poem: Midlife in Rhymes is in bookshops now.