This part of the world is a good place for writers of all wishes

This part of the world is a good place for writers of all wishes

16 November 2016

CLIMBING the Mound of Down has helped poet Olive Broderick unravel many a tricky rhythm or find just the right word.

Originally from the historic town of Youghal in Co Cork, she finds many parallels with her adopted home town of Downpatrick, where the ancient landscape is a constant source of inspiration.

It’s a muse that has so far worked well. Amongst her accolades is a Hennessy X.O. Literary Award and she is currently one of 12 writers been showcased in the Lagan Online ‘12NOW’ initiative. Just this week she also received a coveted Arts Council of Northern Ireland ACES award.

“Walking is definitely the writer’s friend,” she explained. “That pacing movement matters an awful lot in the poetry world where it maybe doesn’t in other genres. It can really help with the rhythm.

“There is something too about ancient landscapes. They are places that definitely draw you out.”

Historical English Street and the Quoile River are also locations that have inspired Olive over the years. They may not make it into the titles of her poems, but are very much present in her work.

“The poem ‘Ice’, for example, was based during one of the periods of very bad snow a few years ago,” said Olive. “I got stuck here. I needed to get out and I couldn’t travel the day I was supposed to travel. I was out walking here at the Quoile Pondage and it was just so beautiful. The air was clear.  It was bitter. It was so bitterly cold the puddles had frozen with leaves in them. They were like fossilised leaves, the strangest most beautiful thing I had seen.

“With English Street, also, you have so many different worlds under your feet and a sense that they all intertwine a little bit. Maybe we don’t 100 per cent understand what is going on around us.”

After studying business at university, Olive went on to study creative writing at Queen’s, taking some time out from a job at the Higher Education Equality Unit in the south, before ending up with Voluntary Arts Ireland in Downpatrick.

“To be honest I didn’t really know where Downpatrick was before the interview but it didn’t take me very long to become completely besotted by the place,” she said.

Among the creative writing groups Olive subsequently became involved with locally are Words for Castle Ward and Poems on a Sunday Afternoon with Down Arts Centre.

“There is a lovely feeling about this part of the world being a good place for writers of all wishes and wants to connect and develop. I feel a very positive vibe around,” she said.

“It is a real hallmark of this area. There is a real understanding and value of the creative arts here, which draws a lot of strength from the geography and the people.”

Describing herself as a “complete one-trick pony”, Olive says her passion for poetry means there’s no novels as yet. But it’s an art form she believes can be hugely life changing to both writers and those with the most basic interest.

“I have written poetry since I was quite small and loved it,” she said. “And because I am such a passionate reader of poetry there has always been a few lines of a poem have kept me on the road in health and well being terms from time to time. 

“If people had been like me initially and said, ‘I’ll keep my poems in a drawer’, where would I have been? So I took my own courage in my two hands. I went to good writing groups in my mid twenties, started to submit things and that’s how it went for me.”

Olive’s belief that poetry can be a balm to the soul will be explored further in the 12Now initiative with the Verbal Arts Centre’s Reading Rooms.

“It will be shared reading in a range of contexts with health and wellbeing at the heart of it,” she said. “So whether you are looking at old people’s groups, or people with mental health issues, it is about selected texts that help people talk about around their own issues.

“I would love to see more investment in this area.”

She added: “What I kept in my pocket during a rough period in my late teens and early twenties was the end of Louis MacNeice’s Autumn journal. I didn’t really understand at the time the significance of the wider poem, but it says ‘there will be sunlight later. And the equation will come out at last.’ I would literally recite that to myself at night.

“Even unmoored from its wider context it was a bit of a lifesaver for me.”

Olive has extended thanks to the Arts Council for the ACES funding, which will go towards her ‘Knowing the Dance’ project — an exploration of the meeting place between poetry and dance. Her collection ‘Night Divers’ (Templar Poetry) is also due to be published in Spring 2017.

The next Poems on a Sunday Afternoon is on November 27 (2.30-4.30pm) at Down Arts Centre. All are welcome and no booking is required. More information about Words for Castle Ward is available by emailing wordsforcastleward@gmail.com