I grew up in Tallaght, in Kilnamanagh with my mam, dad and brother Alan. We had a dog called Shalako and I have the fondest memories of that dog. I don’t even think Shalako had a lead. She’d come everywhere with us, and she looked a bit like the dog from Little House on the Prairie, so I’d imagine myself to be Laura Ingalls.
I always had an active imagination. I’d practise dance routines in the garage, and I’d have talent competitions in the back garden. If Miss World was on we’d do a beauty pageant with a few of the kids from down the road.
Childhood in pre-Luas Tallaght was great craic. Where the Luas stop is now, that was what we called the fields. We used to go calling for people, where you would actually get off your bum and go calling in to people’s houses and they would come down to the fields and get frogspawn and all those things you’d read about in story books. It’s a lost art.
I have a memory from secondary school about the first time one of my peers told me to be quiet. I’ll never forget that feeling of: “Hang on a second, you’re supposed to be my pal! I can be loud and I can shout but it’s only adults that usually tell me to be quiet.”
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In the 1990s I did a PLC in media studies in Liberties College. My first job was in Dunnes Stores in The Square, but then the Dublin clubbing scene came calling.
I did two years of media studies and then I did four years of clubbing and working in clothes shops. That’s where the whole fashion thing then came from, because I started working in independent retailers on Liffey Street, which at the time was like a souk in Marrakesh but for jeans and flares.
Then I worked in a shop on Trinity Street underneath the Hot Press office. Niall Stokes came down to me one day and he said, “Listen, you’re into fashion, aren’t you? We’re doing a shoot with Ash the day after tomorrow, in a studio in Rathmines, and I need someone to style them. You could do that, right?”
So I did the styling for the shoot and it ended up being the next Hot Press cover. A friend of mine, who was a designer and a photographer, said to me, “I didn’t know you wanted to be a stylist.” And I said, “Yeah, me neither.” He was doing a shoot the next week and asked me to be the stylist, and that’s how I got into being a stylist. I just kept going.
I had dreams and illusions of going over to London when I was working in those independent boutiques because naturally enough, even though there’s all that lovely camaraderie and everyone’s looking out for you, it does feel a bit overpowering [in Dublin] sometimes. And you do end up thinking, I’d love to just be anonymous. But I am a home bird.
I didn’t even know what day it was because all the days were melting into one
— Jan Brierton
Dublin is a small town with a big-town attitude. It’s still trying on a couple of big-town jumpers, I think, but it’s not quite the right fit. I love Dublin, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t always love it when I was living it.
The people you love are the ones you can slag and have a bit of craic about and point out all their imperfections, but love all those things at the same time. That can be true of a city where you’re living too.
I wrote my first poem in 2021. We were a good year into Covid and lockdowns and I was browned off with the toxic positivity. All I wanted was to go out and have a cup of tea out of a proper cup and not have to stand two metres away from someone. And I wanted to just be able to drop everything and say, “Come on, we’ll go out for a bite to eat,” or, “We’ll go shopping.”
And I didn’t even know what day it was because all the days were melting into one, and I thought, if another person tells me to bake banana bread or to put my feet in the grass I’ll box them in the head.
So that’s where the poem came from – it was my internal dialogue. Now I still don’t know why I wrote it down, and I still don’t know why it was a poem, and I still don’t know why it came out like that. My daughter was sitting in the bed beside me reading Harry Potter, and I just picked up a notebook and just went, “What day is it? Who gives a f**k?” Ironically, as much as I’m not a fan of the idea of people going, “Oh, you know, there’s always a silver lining,” there actually was a bit of silver lining during that time for me.
I do call myself an accidental poet, because I didn’t really go, “Let’s sit down and write a poem today.”
In conversation with Niamh Browne. This is part of a series of interviews with well-known people about their lives and relationship with Ireland. Jan Brierton will be performing around Ireland with fellow poet Henry Normal from May 10th to 16th; see @jbgoodtome on Instagram for dates.
