Michael Harding: ‘There’s a part of our collective soul embodied and hidden in the Irish language’

Tell me about your latest work, All the Things Left Unsaid: Confessions of Love and Regret.

It’s a book of intimate letters written to loved ones or people who played a significant part in my life. Mostly words of gratitude, for their love or help.

You started out as a novelist and a playwright but seem to have gravitated towards nonfiction as a writer and columnist. Why is that?

I might yet write another play or novel. But I got absorbed in memoir as a kind of new fiction. I had an idea of writing a chronicle of ordinary life that spanned decades in real time; a narrative that moved from column to book to stage.

I’ve gone through some big life changes and don’t know if my husband and I fit anymore

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You have been a priest, a teacher and a social worker. You once described your creative work as a form of prayer. To what extent do you see writing as a vocation?

I see everything as a vocation. We’re called to be in this moment and in this situation. Here and now is either a bleak and meaningless masquerade or there is actually something other than me, calling to me.

When I interviewed you back in the 1990s about your play Una Pooka, directed by Mark Lambert at London’s Tricycle Theatre, you described literature as “telling stories of love amid the shit”. Do you still think that?

Yes. The love story is like a lamp in the darkness.

As a writer and performer, you have transcended more than most the distance between artist and audience, staging a play, Misogynist, in your local pub, for example, and have spoken of “an aesthetic sensibility in ordinary people”. Can you tell me more?

I see storytelling as a craft, like music. I hear people tell stories all the time, far more wonderful than what I can invent. I see people living out stories. It’s like meaning becomes the spine of an ordinary life, but it’s actually lived as a story.

That’s why I consciously tried to bring my craft into a daily newspaper. That’s why I go on stage without a script. Storytelling is a dynamic between people.

Does writing a regular newspaper column feed into or distract from longer-form work? What is its appeal or rewards?

The column is the heart of it all because it’s immediate, instant, and gets a great audience. When I write a column it’s like I’m meeting someone at an intimate level and telling them what happened me recently. That’s all. But that’s the everything.

What is your current project?

I’m spending time in the Gaeltacht and trying to become more fluent in Irish because I feel I want to write or perform or somehow express myself in Irish. There’s a part of our collective soul embodied and hidden in the language and it’s not accessible in any other place.

Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage?

Yes. I went to Crete one time, to the village of Myrtia where [Nikos] Kazantzakis’ soul still haunts every street of the little village.

What is the best writing advice you have heard? Or: what advice would you give to your younger writing self?

Elizabeth Bishop once said that the only thing you can give a writer is a typewriter. You can’t give a young writer advice. Just give them the typewriter, or maybe a laptop nowadays, and tell them to get at it.

Who do you admire the most?

My children.

You are supreme ruler for a day. Which law do you pass or abolish?

I’d change the laws on direct provision so that people can live in the community and work while they are waiting for their cases to be processed. That’s not too much to ask.

Which current book, film, TV show and podcast would you recommend?

Manchán Magan’s Listen to the Land Speak must be read. And An Cailín Ciúin is a lovely film. Hector: Balkans go Baltics is superb. After Blindboy I’d recommend my own podcast, if you want something not polished, rough and intimate about my own confused sense of faith and reality.

[ Michael Harding: ‘I’m like a bad car. I’m like an aul Cortina’ ]

Which public event affected you most?

In a perverse way the elevation of John Paul II to the papacy. He created a conservative and regimental church where people like me didn’t belong.

The most remarkable place you have visited?

Mongolia, for a month with my esteemed teacher, the Panchen Otrul Rinpoche.

Your most treasured possession?

Orthodox prayer beads I bought in Bucharest for €2.

What is the most beautiful book that you own?

A miniature copy of the Koran in a tiny carved box which I got as a gift.

Which writers, living or dead, would you invite to your dream dinner party?

Eyal Megged [a living Israeli writer], John Moriarty [Kerry philosopher], Germaine Greer and Camille Paglia [American feminist and social critic].

The best and worst things about where you live?

The best thing about the hills above Lough Allen is the solitude. The worst thing is the solitude.

What is your favourite quotation?

“The ultimate teaching is that there is no teaching.”

Who is your favourite fictional character?

Anna Karenina.

A book to make me laugh?

Pat McCabe’s most recent wonder, Poguemahone.

A book that might move me to tears?

If This is a Man by Primo Levi.

All The Things Left Unsaid by Michael Harding is published in trade paperback by Hachette Ireland