Our Poet of the Month for August is Shauna Gilligan. Here she discusses the creative process behind the three poems we have published throughout the month.

Processes – in my experience there are always multiple for every piece of work – often reveal themselves when the work has been completed. The “how” connects with the “when;” we don’t write without the shadow touch of culture, society, and politics around us, no matter how personal our writing is.In  ‘Self-Butchery In Two Parts’, I examine changing bodies, surgery, personal and medical approaches. You can listen to me reading the poem on the same page. This poem is one of a suite of poems exploring my experience of multiple surgeries relating to female health. Undergoing what seemed like invasive surgery but is a common procedure felt like I had opted to both butcher and heal self and body. The poem opens with a woman (myself from a distance) who initiates her own butchery ‘when she whispers ‘It’s just too much’’. It has taken her a long time to say these words, and the imagined doctor spells out in three instructive sentences what she must do to move forward: realise, admit, resign. And this she does, believing she is in the capable hands of a masked surgeon who holds the ‘certainty of knowledge behind him’ when she undergoes his ‘cure of fire.’ Nothing is no longer too much, but there is a further loss that reveals itself: identity. The woman still weeps ‘every night’ onto a pillow that is ‘white’ rather than blood red or ‘mud-mess.’ Having this poem published with The Lonely Crowd and therefore in the public domain is thrilling for my literary self but personally vulnerable. I’ve had some wonderful reactions from other women which reminds me that often we write about a personal experience that transpires to be a universal one. I’m probably not finished writing about these themes; I still feel the pull between trusting my body even when it is causing pain, ‘putting up with’ what this (patriarchal) society deems change that must be controlled, and the privilege of being able to choose surgery. I continue to question what we call care and, parallel to this, the scientifically proven dangers (and death in some cases) of no care. What is available to me in a country that is not besieged by war and where women have, in the main, and finally, bodily autonomy is to the forefront of my mind. Everything written is about and from perspective.

I started writing ‘Daughter, Frizzante (In Padova)’ in a tiny notebook while sitting squashed on a plane with teenage my son to London. I wrote in a fugue, showing him several rounds of writing until I felt I had a good enough first draft to share with some fellow writers. As the plane descended into London and I told him it was the fastest I’d ever written a poem ready to share. Maybe there was something about the entrapment of space and time? The poem itself began with the title. ‘Frizzante’ means sparkling in Italian and used to indicate, for example, sparkling water. This came to signify, for me, an enlightenment, an energy of self. It is both an exploration of my changing relationship with my adult daughter and a celebration of her (sparkling) independence – academic and social – living away from Ireland. This first physical separation is experienced as bitter-sweet; both a flowering and an ending. Memories of physical dependence and connection continue to the fore of the narrator’s mind: fingers are still entwined; a baby hand is still curled around hair. When I wrote this poem, I kept remembering my daughter as a toddler walking in that beautiful way toddlers do – a rush of joy, a stumble, a totter, and then, finally, a run. I had a physical sensation of letting her hand go, of letting her go. In an acceptance of change and growth I move into exaggerated realism in the last stanza where I imagine my daughter literally moving further way, on her own terms. She has settled in her new home, and the experience is lighting up her mind allowing her to ‘go with such gorgeous lightness’ on a bike (that bit is real!) – but, in place of the mother / mother-figure, two saints – one Irish and one Italian will take her ‘far.’ It is what we hope for, as parents, that our children will grow and be able to go ‘far’ within themselves and in the world.

The ‘Rule of Thirds’ touches again on mother-daughter relationships. Here I imagine a mother trying to survive a prison sentence. I began by attempting to step into ‘incarceration time’ where the day is set out in thirds between lock-ups. Despite an abundance of noise, a throng of people, and a forbidden kiss in a visiting room beneath ‘a grey watchtower still / against the winter steel sky’, the narrator-mother is isolated. I worked on this poem on and off for a number of years and returned to it having finished the starkly contrasting ‘Daughter, Frizzante (In Padova)’ with a reignited belief that perhaps one of the roles of a writer is to step into the shoes of an imagined other to try to express empathy. I started the poem again, moving from physical objects to exploring numbers. When we are young and again when we’re old, age signals our place in society. In the mind of the narrator-mother, her almost-teenage daughter is not defined by numbers as she is in prison: she’s ‘not a teen minus / one or an adult minus six.’ Freedom ensures the girl ‘owns time’ and furthermore, she ‘possesses pause’ that her mother didn’t have, which – it is implied – led her to where she is. I often think that the life of a poem is never finished, and this imagined mother and daughter still swim in my imagination. For now, I hope that the ending realisation about her daughter (and prayer for her) reveals to her – and the reader – a resilience and strength that will keep this relationship alive, despite the circumstances.

It strikes me that although these poems grew from and in different circumstances and periods of my life, they are linked by a need for hope and an exploration of emotional connections between strangers, within families, formed by interactions as we move through life. All three poems were shared with writing groups I am lucky to attend. Deep discussions about and close examination of my intentions ensured I came back to the needs of each poem, the characters within, and the shape with fresh eyes. A poem might come from within, but is honed and surely the better for it, by writerly eyes that are not emotionally attached. Thank you to my fellow writers (WEB and PEERS) for insights and to Dr John Lavin and The Lonely Crowd for publishing these poems.

Author photo by Ger Holland.