Mary Mulholland : part eight

How does a poem begin?

So many ways. A line might wake me at night. I might be walking. or driving. I might overhear a half-sentence on a bus. It might start from a prompt or creative workshop. Or when looking at art. Or in the supermarket. Most often it's a thought that arises while I'm reading something else, usually poetry. I used to write 'morning pages' (freewriting without stopping for 20minutes) and a line there would set me off. Often I have no idea where the poem is going at first, and I rarely know what it's fundamentally about until quite some time into the editing process. For me, it's very much about freeing up the unconscious. The poem generally knows more than I do, so I try to let it be what it wants to be. A bit like bringing up children. Give it a loose enough rein, yet check it's not gone wild.

Mary Mulholland : part seven

Why is poetry important? 

It feels like coming home.

Mary Mulholland : part six

How important is music to your poetry? 

Pretty important. I listen to a specific piece on a loop, or something like Ludovico Eindaudi, or Philip Glass, I find this helps my mind stay at a particular frequency. But some days I prefer silence. 

Mary Mulholland : part five

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

Stephanie Sy Quia, Emily Berry.

Mary Mulholland : part four

What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t?

Like all art forms poetry can convey emotion, commemorate history, expose injustice, overcome problems, connect with spirituality, facilitate understanding, but poetry, the oldest, and the most flexible and artistic of written forms, with origins in spoken and sung verse, does it better and more succinctly. It helps us understand and make sense of the world and our lives, can cause us to question, in a non-didactic way, 

Poetry reveals the beauty and potential of language by challenging syntax and making full use of the flowers of rhetoric. It is language at its most creative. It is for this reason poetry is often used on state occasions, at funerals, weddings, in war etc. It keeps people going when other mediums fail, not least because it also facilitates being memorised, having origins as a mnemonic device. It also shapes us. It is a wisdom language, multi-layered and lending itself to explore injustices and questions of a spiritual nature, or politics, environment, love and personal lives. Finally,  poetry is highly musical, and sometimes it is just the enjoyment of the word and image. 

Scientists have proved that reading or listening to poetry causes parts of the brain linked to our resting states, the posterior cingulate cortex and medial temporal lobes, to light up. Poetry more than any other art form shows and gives us ways to understand and make sense of ourselves and the universe. 

Mary Mulholland : part three

How does your work first enter the world? Do you have a social group or writers group that you work ideas and poems with?

I belong to several poetry groups: Red Door Poets, the Crocodile Collective, the Covent Garden Stanza group, a Faber group and the Canada Water group. I believe community is vital to poetry. I also have a couple of people I 'swap' poems with monthly. I find these platforms the perfect testing ground for my poems. Sometimes the hardest part can be working out what to do with feedback. Time is usually the best solution, and reading the poem aloud. Getting a good mentor can also be a brilliant way forward, especially if you want to challenge your writing.

To enter my poems into the world more generally I submit to magazines and competitions. The qualities required for this are quite different, competitive rather than creative, requiring a highly organised, disciplined approach and a robust attitude to rejections. Often I have to force myself, but it is very satisfying once done. 

Mary Mulholland : part two

How do you know when a poem is finished? 

It's that feeling thing: that point when musicality and spareness of language can meet; when the poem says all it wants to say; when you don't tire of reading it, when you don't want to fiddle with it anymore. Perhaps the best way to check your thoughts on a poem is to put it away for a bit, then look at it with fresh eyes. The most fool-proof way of finding out if a poem is finished is to read it to an audience: if I do this, intuitively I can feel if anything is still not quite right - or if it is. 

Mary Mulholland : part one

Mary Mulholland’s poems are widely published, for example in AMBIT, Perverse, Arc, London Grip, Marble, Finished Creatures, MIROnline, Aesthetica, Under the Rader and elsewhere. Among many other mentions she was recently highly commended in AMBIT’s 2021 Competition, shortlisted in Live Canon, 2021, a winner in the Poetry Society Members’ Competitions, 2021 and 2020. Former journalist and psychotherapist, she co-co-edits The Alchemy Spoon, founded Red Door Poets and is a member of the Crocodile Collective.

In January her pamphlet collaborative with Simon Maddrell and Vasiliki Albedo (All About Our Mothers) was published by Nine Pens, and her debut pamphlet, What the Sheep Taught Me, will shortly be published by Live Canon.

What are you working on?

I was recently part of a collaboration with Simon Maddrell and Vasiliki Albedo, All About Our Mothers (Nine Pens). Collaborating is a really fun exercise. Right now, I am finishing off my debut pamphlet, What the sheep taught me (with Live Canon), loosely about time I spent farm-sitting (Barbados blackbelly sheep) but also about relationship. I'm also writing and submitting, plus working on three other pamphlets/ collections, one about my maternal side in Guyana, one challenging the prejudices about ageing, and a collection about our connectivity: to the world, to 'other' and to ourselves. I've recently finished a Faber Course which was great, and am also co-editor of a magazine, The Alchemy Spoon (www.alchemyspoon.org), and do interviews and book reviews for that, too. We're currently putting issue 6 to bed. Finally, I am busy with a collective I founded, Red Door Poets: we host regular readings on Zoom.