Time is an organising principle in your book. How did you come to use it and why?
There are three strands in this memoir: the story of my life (1973-present); the history of Ireland; and the prehistoric and mythological elements that have filtered through. I used the Celtic and Gregorian calendars to organise the book because I was trying to tell the story of an inner life that would not adhere to a linear narrative.
In Ordinary Time deals with traumatic events, both personal and societal. How did you decide which episodes to include?
I took Audre Lorde’s suggestion to reach down and touch the thing that is boiling inside you. I felt the physical charge of certain traumas like the deaths of my siblings, my alcoholism, family mental illness, the Famine, British colonialism, the abuses of the Catholic Church and the Irish State, so I wrote about these.
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How long did it take to write this book?
About 10 years. I had no idea what it was about, but I felt it pressing out of me, so I kept going, groping about in the dark.
You emigrated to New York at age 20 and lived there for 28 years. How would you say that experience has influenced your writing?
I’d say it’s what guided me to life-writing. The film director Jorge Camorotti says the experience of being an immigrant interrupts the continuity between the past and present selves, the stuff that, for most, is the cornerstone of identity. Identity, this search for a self, is a primary concern of memoir.
What other projects are you working on?
Another hybrid memoir, this one is a collaboration with a visual artist. I have also just completed a proposal for an anthology that I would like to edit.
Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage?
Yes, most recently I went to the Hôtel Suisse in Nice where James Joyce spent some time in 1922. There was something of his spirit about the place.
What is the best writing advice you have heard? Or: what advice would you give to your younger writing self?
The best writing advice is from Anne Enright: “Remember, if you sit at your desk for 15 or 20 years, every day, not counting weekends, it changes you. It just does. It may not improve your temper, but it fixes something else. It makes you more free.”
Who do you admire the most?
My partner, because he is relentlessly loving and kind.
You are supreme ruler for a day. Which law do you pass or abolish?
Whatever is prohibiting the fast and effective refurbishment of derelict properties all over the country, with a view to ending the housing crisis and revitalising struggling villages and towns.
Which current book, film, TV show and podcast would you recommend?
Book: Fierce Appetites (Sandycove) by Elizabeth Boyle. It was one of a few brilliant Irish memoirs that came out last year. She weaves the story of her life with Medieval Irish history. The personal offers a point of entry into the historic and the academic. Boyle teaches at Maynooth University and by the end of the book, I wanted to go there to study Medieval Irish poetry. Film: Tomorrow is Saturday on Netflix is a moving portrait of the Irish artist, Seán Hillen. Podcast: Writers and Company with Eleanor Wachtel.
Which public event affected you most?
I suppose the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001. I say this because my personal life was in such chaos at the time, that there seemed to be a correlation between the internal and external states. I was in NY and in the process of becoming a US citizen, which I was deeply conflicted about. Had I been sober, there may have been more clarity, nevertheless, that’s when I became conscious of the relationship between the personal and the political.
The most remarkable place you have visited?
Kilcummin graveyard, Co Mayo. We go there when we need our spirits lifted. It is a small graveyard in a green field that faces the grand sweep of Killala Bay. There are three standing stones and the ruin of an 8th century church. The building’s stones are so linear and precise; they look like they were cut by a machine. Next to the graveyard is a holy well. People have been going there for millenniums but we have never seen anyone, other than a few surfers out in the bay.
Your most treasured possession?
My great-grandfather’s gold cross engraved with his name and the date 1920. It marked the occasion of his 10 years of temperance. I wear it as reminder of the long legacy of alcoholism in our family.
What is the most beautiful book that you own?
Nox by Anne Carson. It is a beautiful object. It comes in a box and folds out like an accordion. It is a copy of a handmade notebook she made in the decade after her brother’s death. Through her translation of Catullus’s elegy, Carson tries to come to terms with her grief. She encounters the limits of her endeavour, so there is something frail and human in it, and something transformative too.
Which writers, living or dead, would you invite to your dream dinner party?
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Mary Costello, Jamaica Kincaid, Max Sebald, Hilton Als. It would be friendly and quiet. We would have plenty to talk about and think about after.
The best and worst things about where you live?
We live just outside Ballycastle in Co Mayo where the Atlantic coast is vast and wild. There is a big sky and every time you look at it it’s different. We are surrounded by historic sites, from the Neolithic to the 19th century. I cannot believe we get to live here. I just wish there was a place, off season, where you could get a cup of coffee.
What is your favourite quotation?
“When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate” – Carl Jung.
Who is your favourite fictional character?
The Sebald character in The Rings of Saturn. He feels like an old friend.
A book to make me laugh?
The Odd Woman and the City by Vivian Gornick.
A book that might move me to tears?
My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid.
In Ordinary Time: Fragments of a Family History is published by Duckworth
