Julie Morrissy : part five

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

Hannah Sullivan’s Three Poems, Ailbhe Darcy’s Insistence, and Scott Thurston’s Talking Poetics: Dialogues in Innovative Poetics.

Julie Morrissy : part four

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

I studied Eavan Boland in high school. I was consumed by her poetry and her life, because she lived in my neighbourhood. Her work brought an enormous sense of possibility for me—as young woman who was writing. She changed what I thought about living, not just writing.

Julie Morrissy : 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?

Mostly I keep my work in progress to myself, but I work with my editor when I’m putting a collection together and I have a couple of close friends and mentors who review work for me. I also do a lot of readings so that is often how the poems first enter the world.

Julie Morrissy : part two

How do you know when a poem is finished? 

I love how Rachel Blau DuPlessis thinks about states of completion. In Drafts 77-95, she writes, “Perhaps there should be no more poems, only acts of writing. There would be no more books, but transfer points; no finished pages, simply work sites.”

Julie Morrissy : part one

Julie Morrissy is an Irish poet, critic, and activist. She has spent time living in Canada and the U.S. Her debut poetry pamphlet I Am Where (Eyewear, 2015) was shortlisted for Best Poetry Pamphlet in the 2016 Saboteur Awards. Also in 2016, she was selected as a “Rising Generation” poet by Vona Groarke, editor of Poetry Ireland Review. In 2015, she was shortlisted for the Melita Hume Poetry Prize 2015, and selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series. Her creative and critical work has been published widely in Ireland, the U.K., Canada and the U.S., including in gorse, Cyphers, The Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland Review, ASAP/ Journal, and White Wall Review. Where, the Mile End is her first book. Morrissy currently lives in her hometown of Dublin, Ireland.

Photo credit: Siobhán Butler.

How did you first engage with poetry?

We read and wrote poetry in school, both in Irish and English. And my family are interested in poetry—my grandmother kept clippings of poems from the newspaper. I remember writing a lot of poems as a kid.