23: Niall MacMonagle

As well as being a gifted writer, Ian Maleney is a very thoughtful and articulate speaker, which comes across in this conversation. Ian talks about a lot of the topics that he has that he expressed in his collection of essays, Minor Monuments, as well as many of the challenges that face a young artist in Ireland today.

In Hugo Hamilton’s fictional memoir, Dublin Palms, he explores themes of home and displacement and describes the difficulty of growing up in a multi-lingual home. Here he discusses those themes and describes the process of writing fictional memoir, which he says is like creating a ‘blurry self-portrait’. He also reads from Dublin Palms and talks about how he writes now, after so many years of experience and success.

Anne Griffin’s debut novel, 'When All is Said' is rightly getting praise from authors, reviewers and the public for its depiction of Maurice Hannigan, a fictional character that you come to deeply know and relate to through reading the novel. Here, Anne speaks about how she got published, how she dealt with rejection and how she created such an affecting character.

‘I think what poetry needs most of all is music.’ This episode of WriteStuff features Niall MacMonagle, who is incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about poetry. He is a teacher and collector of poetry, being responsible for some much loved anthologies, including the Lifelines series and Windharp. He has also created texts which present poetry to students like Poetry Now. Here he talks about the value of poetry to everyone and quotes some of his most loved poems as he explains the beauty of poetry in all its forms.

Helen Cullen offers insights into how she wrote her first novel, The Lost Letters of William Woolf. After reading from the opening of the novel, Helen describes how she came to the premise of the novel and how she developed the characters. She also offers an honest portrayal of the anxiety felt at the different stages of the publication process.

In 'Illuminate', Kerrie O’Brien has created a collection of poems that deals with a range of themes, yet is coherent in its style and beauty. Here she talks about ‘Illuminate’ and the work that went into creating it as well as reading two of the most loved poems from that collection. She also gives her take on the current literary scene as someone who has worked in many areas of it and the relationship between her poetry and her visual art.

‘I always think of the voices that don’t get amplified in society.’  Sorcha Fox is a multitalented performer, actor, writer, director and poet who has written a poetic sequence called Remember that invites her audience to remember their national past, which can invoke pride or often shame. Her words and performances are powerful evocations of the darker elements of Ireland’s past and by highlighting these elements force her audience to reflect on current problems.

‘Poetry is about addressing the limits of our perceptions.’ Martin Dyar is a poet who manages to be both a respectful scholar of the traditions of poetry and a voice that is contemporary and mindful of the future of the form. In this interview, Martin discusses the role of the poet and offers many insights into a life dedicated to the study and creation of poetry as well as reading three of his compositions.

In the Earlie King and the Kid in Yellow, Danny Denton has written a novel that really fits into the archive of Irish fictional writing while standing out as something unique in its delivery of an imaginative context of an alternative Ireland, with a plot that is exposed through various storytelling devices and characters that are both likable and very familiar. Danny talks here about rejection, persistence, the fun and the hard work of writing and gives some great insights into the life of a really dedicated writer that get the feeling that he has just begun to make his impact.

In this episode, Dr. Martina Carroll talks about the connection between writing and positive psychology. As a teacher, psychologist and writer, Martina has a lot to say about how writing can play a role in developing positive psychology.