Therese Kieran is a Belfast based writer and visual artist. Her work has been widely anthologised online and in print, in magazines and anthologies including: 26 Wild: the story’s not over, The Honest Ulsterman, Her Other Language, Poetry Jukebox, The Valley Press Anthology, The Paperclip, Iceberg Tales, Poetry NI’s Four X Four, featured poet in The Blue Nib, Washing Windows? Irish Women Write Poetry 1,2 & 3, Tales of the Forest, Coast to Coast to Coast and many others. She was runner-up in the 2015 Trocaire/Poetry Ireland annual poetry competition. Her poems have been twice long-listed for the Seamus Heaney New Writing Award and in 2016 she co-conceived and curated, Death Box, an exhibition of poetry and prose about death that featured the work of 25 writers. Her work was recently published by Paekakariki press in Dark Angels: Three Contemporary Poets Book One which was launched in Bloomsbury in March 2023. She’s received two Arts Council NI awards, and is a member of the 26 writing collective, a professional member of the Irish Writers Centre and is vice-chair of Irish PEN. (IG - @tkni; Twitter - @ThereseKieran)

Moyra Donaldson: Hi Therese – thank you for agreeing to have a chat about your poetry and writing practice. Some of your work has recently been published in a beautifully produced book from Paekakariki Press, alongside two other poets, Tim Rich and John Simmons. You are all members of the international writers’ group, Dark Angels. Could you tell us a little about how you connected with Dark Angels and how it has impacted on your creative life?

Therese Kieran: Hi Moyra — thank you for the invitation to chat which is a useful opportunity to conduct a bit of a creative audit. I’m thrilled to have been published in the first volume of Dark Angels’ poetry, alongside respected writers and poets, John Simmons and Tim Rich. I was introduced to Dark Angels by writer, friend and ex-colleague, Gillian Colhoun, now a Dark Angels director. I’d been attending Ruth Carr’s creative writing classes at the Crescent Arts centre for over a year when Gillian suggested I sign up for a Dark Angels’ Foundation course at Moniack Mhor in the Scottish Highlands. At first I felt something of an interloper; I wasn’t a business writer, which is Dark Angels’ ideal client but I quickly discovered that writers of all abilities and aspirations were welcome. The following year I progressed to the Advanced course in a delightful finca in Spain and two years later experienced the Masterclass in the magical surroundings of Merton College, Oxford. (Good locations are an essential ingredient of any Dark Angels’ experience.) And there was more to follow: an online Art and Writing course during the pandemic and two courses at Hawkwood College in Stroud, where during the first one we were asked for a definition of Dark Angels in no more than six words. I wrote,  “A kinship: community of word worshippers” which I believe it still is. The writing, good writing is always central to Dark Angels’ activity. Its directors and founding members (John Simmons is one) are well-read and course materials are infused with a wide variety of classic and contemporary poetry and prose including celebrated works by: Simon Armitage, Mary Oliver, Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare, W.B. Yeats, John Donne, Anthony Burgess, Raymond Carver and Gwendolyn MacEwan to name but a few. Not all but some Dark Angels’ courses require a degree of preparation - read a couple of books, respond to a prompt, prepare a presentation which means arriving ready and rearing to go. I think my engagement with Dark Angels has had a major impact on my creative life for a number of reasons. Firstly, the residential courses were terrifying to begin with and an utter delight once I got stuck in. I visited new places, made new friends, and pushed out of my comfort zone I undoubtedly gained confidence. Over time I’ve subscribed to John’s mantra “only connect, only persist” while feeling connected to and supported by lots of really talented writers.

MD: In one of the poems in the collection, you write ‘I’m beginning to understand why words must endure’ (Inheritance) and quite a few of the poems seem to intimately and lovingly commemorate and celebrate family and memory. How did you select the poems for this particular suite? Did you have a theme in mind?

TK: That’s a great question because I considered a number of options before deciding the criteria for choosing my selection. The book might have been a perfect vehicle to publish new poems on a specific theme or on a variety of themes but the more I thought about it the more I also thought about the reader. I decided to choose primarily from a range of previously published poems, ones that had already been put through the rigour of an objective selection process. I whittled it down to about twenty-five, added a couple of new ones and asked a friend and my daughters for feedback. I have to say getting to the final selection took rather longer than anticipated. I also learned from the publisher’s first proofs that they were in the wrong order and that I needed to think about each poem as part of a two-page spread. It’s no surprise that a dominant theme of family and relationships emerged as these are important to me, but I wanted my selection to also reflect other, more external interests including: nature, history, humanitarian and environmental issues.

MD: One of the things that I love about your work is its connection with the world and with contemporary issues, the way you interweave your poetry with other strands of art and life. In conjunction with writer Lucy Beevor you set up the Death Box project, which opened a virtual box of curated work relating to death, culminating in a series of creative writing workshops and an exhibition of works at the Crescent Arts Centre. Through the Letters with Wings project, founded by poets Viviana Fiorentio, Maria McManus, Csilla Toldy and Nandi Jola, you became involved in writing to artists kept in prisons all over the world for speaking out and fighting for human rights. I know that you continue to write to imprisoned Turkish artist, Dilan Cudi. You curated an exhibition of written work for Jo Egan’s theatre project, Body Politic. Would you like to comment on any of these projects and how do you see poetry’s role in this wider social context?

TK: I believe that ‘Death Box’ marked a significant artistic milestone for myself and Lucy. What began as a tentative conversation about our common interest in how death is portrayed in the arts and confronted within society quickly mushroomed into a huge project. We scoped it out with the distinct desire to involve other people which I feel lessened some of the intensity for us. Hugely successful elements included: hosting Belfast’s first Death Café; organising workshops that were facilitated by poet, Ruth Carr, playwright, the much-missed Jo Egan (R.I.P.) and visual artist, Sharon Kelly; radio interviews and press coverage; installing American artist, Candy Chang’s ‘Before I Die wall’ as part of the final exhibition at the Crescent Arts Centre; a project newspaper, a blog, a repository of inspirational quotations, literature, art, music and film and public readings that represented a year- long exploration into a difficult subject but hopefully demonstrated that by facing up to one’s mortality it might actually help us embrace life and duly serve our “one wild and precious life”. (From Mary Oliver’s The Summer Day).

The ‘Letters with Wings’ project began as a compassionate response to the project founders’ request to stand in solidarity with imprisoned artists and writers from a list they’d compiled. Participants researched and selected someone to write to which could have been via email or to a postal address. Dilan Cudi, a young artist stood out for me; I liked what I could see of her work online, it was bright and colourful. She’s currently five years into a nine year sentence in Bakirköy women’s prison in Istanbul for no justifiable reason other than the fact, perhaps, that she’s Kurdish. The prison only allowed letters of one A4 page and the text had to be in Turkish. Because Dilan’s a sculptor, I decided to weave the A4 page from strips of different coloured paper and to write a simple message that was easily converted into Turkish via Google Translate. My hope was that Dilan might deconstruct the letter and reuse the coloured strips to make something new - it was reported that she was often denied art materials. About a year ago, Dilan’s lawyer responded to an old tweet about the project saying, “Dilan still talks about your letter.” I was so moved that I decided to continue writing to Dilan and chose her as my inspiration for last year’s 26* Inspirations exhibition which was part of the Bloomsbury Festival in London. For the exhibition I created ‘Dear Dilan: A Triptych’ which consisted of three papier maché bowls painted in primary colours, blue, red and yellow to accompany three poems that were derived from my letters to Dilan. I am continuing to write to Dilan ‘in colour’ and make a new bowl for each new letter. Remarkably, Dilan has been able to send a letter to me, smuggled out by her solicitor in which she said “I hug the blue and red colours! You’ve made me feel very happy… they stay on my table… blinking eyes to me, oh my god, how happy I am to get such beautiful letters written by heart!”

Our dear friend, Jo Egan commissioned me to curate an exhibition of poems and prose for her theatre project, ‘Body Politic.’ The work was created by women (many writing for the first time) who had participated in Jo’s creative workshops. In some groups, the women didn’t want to write but engaged in discussions about encountering discrimination, abuse, gender stereotypes and the fears and behaviours that arose as a result. The recordings of these discussions were fascinating and I proposed to Jo that we get permission to use the womens’ words to create a collage to accompany the poems and prose pieces. I added a Matryoshka doll style painting to represent women of different ages and cultural heritage but incorporated words and phrases of empowerment that had also been recorded in the discussions. Budgetary constraints meant fairly low production values but that didn’t seem to matter to many of the writers who were delighted to have their work published in public at the Brian Friel Theatre before seeing two of Jo’s plays: ‘Sweeties' and ‘No Motive’ which also dealt with many hard-hitting ‘Body Politic’ issues.

All three projects: ‘Death Box’, ‘Letters With Wings’ (and by extension ’26* Inspirations’) and ‘Body Politics’ used poetry as a means of creative expression to great effect, and in some instances as a powerful form of activism. Somehow, poetry has the ability to stop people in their tracks; to grab attention; to make you feel changed in an instant, and is, as Mary Oliver once said “ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.” Echoing these sentiments, and promoting poetry’s role in a wider social context is Paula Meehan’s belief that,

“There are poems that tell stories but there are also poems that just give you a moment of vision or transcendence or colour even, or just an image that you can carry around with you. Two lines. Two lines can save a life, I believe it.”

MD: I have the impression that the dialogue between the visual and the written is important to you and I know you have worked as a textile designer. Have you found that this background has had an effect on your poetry and your creative practice – and if so, how?

TK: The simple answer is yes, although I think it’s only in recent years that I’ve begun to see that there’s an overlap between the two disciplines. As a textile designer, I considered form and the placement of motifs on the blank page; I thought about the use of negative space, as well as where and when to add ornamentation; I aimed for balance, harmony and flow. These are things I could apply to writing. However, I think the real value in any cross-fertilisation is the use of my hands - almost any kind of handiwork allows the subconscious to come to the fore and is often when ideas arrive freely and unencumbered. I also think that my design background makes me examine things closely and to be specific when it comes to description. When working on the 26* Trees project in partnership with The Woodland Trust I was assigned the hornbeam - a species I’d never seen before. I found one, an oriental hornbeam in Belfast’s Botanic Gardens and my first instinct was to sketch and paint it from different angles, getting down the details of its sharp-tooth shaped leaves, its generous droopy canopy and its contortion of intertwined branches. I really enjoyed the process of drawing, then seeing what words arrived as a result. If possible I’d like to continue to combine art and words in my creative practice.

MD: What are you working on now?

TK: Currently I’m getting ready to revisit a project I began two years ago with the support of a SIAP award from the Arts Council NI. The subject is a group of Belgian refugees who were based in Monaghan during WW1 and helped set up a lingerie factory. My aim is to complete a pamphlet of poems that includes some of my artwork and then look for a publisher.

I’m also going to be writing new poems on the theme of ‘Grow’ for a Dark Angels’ event at this year’s Bloomsbury festival in October and hope to collaborate again with British artist, Jason Hicklin by responding to his new etchings of The Thames for a limited edition boxed set.

‘Dear Dilan’ is an ongoing project but it’s not as simple as sitting down and writing letters. Each letter requires research into the chosen colour and sometimes a link to a well-known artist, for example, my green letter referred to Picasso and my last letter, an orange one had a connection with Mark Rothko. I then have to work on getting the best translation I can via Google translate which is a lengthy process.

I also have a project involving a large collection of pottery fragments found on the beach at Holywood waiting in the wings - somehow I don’t think I’ll ever be lost for something to do.

*26 - a writers’ collective of which I’m a member https://www.26.org.uk/