Sandymount Strand, famed as the early 20th century setting for the musings of Bloom in Joyce’s Ulysess, today still draws writers such as Siobhan Campbell who comes here “because I like to spend time with my three children and they love the beach.”

I met with Siobhan in the Airfield Trust outside Dundrum where she is currently the Writer in Association. Seated in her office, a converted outhouse that faces onto an enclosed sunfilled courtyard, Siobhan summed up her year with Airfield in one word “Fantastic”

The first year was co-funded by Dunlaoghaire Rathdown County Council Arts Office and the Arts Council with Airfield giving the space. That year was extended and then Airfield asked her to stay on to run writing events and workshops.

She began writing poetry as a teenager and was encouraged by publication in Young Irish Writing in the ‘Irish Press’. Siobhan also laughingly recalls “When in fifth year I was thinking of becoming a vet. My English teacher sat me down one day and said ‘whats this I hear?’ She was not prescriptive but she gently swayed me towards doing arts and she was dead right.”

I asked Siobhan how she managed poetry writing with running a home, three children and her work “I suppose,” she replied, “I am very disciplined. We launched my first book in 1996 on the day my eldest child was born. I wonder how I have fitted it all in. Still I do not regard myself as prolific but think of myself as a very slow writer.

“It takes about three years preparation for each book of poems. There was a big hiatus after each baby was born when I went totally to ground. At any one time I nearly always have two or three different ideas on the go and find myself working with one today and one tomorrow maybe just getting half a line or a line, and move something on. A composer friend of mine remarked to me how it takes her one-year to compose 16 minutes of fully orchestrated music. That would probably be the equal to 10 or 12 poems for a 16-minute reading and it takes at least a year to do that. More probably.

“When I start a book I have no idea of what I am going to do. There are, I think, two kinds of writer, the one who knows beforehand what they are going to do and the other who is writing to find out something. The latter are writing for writing’s sake and then they begin to see the shape the writing is taking.”

Born in 1962 Siobhan has two books of poetry published, with inclusion in anthologies and other publications. Her work has been broadcast on BBC and RTE radio and she has given readings worldwide. While living in New York she worked on her first book ‘The Permanent Wave’ that was published in 1996. This was followed in 2000 by ‘The Cold that Burns’ which she worked on during two and a half years living with her husband and three children in San Francisco.

She explains that a friend who commented “your poetry is like liquid nitrogen, it feels soothing and it eats into your skin” had suggested this title to her. Paul Durcan described her second collection as “passionately precise, precisely passionate”. Siobhan agrees with those who describe her work as anti-romantic adding “I think it is poetry with a core of steel, I am glad when it packs a punch.”

Siobhan who is currently preparing to move lock stock and barrel to London where her husband has now been posted, is also well on the way with preparation for her third book of poems. She remarks “there is nothing glamorous or high-flying about writing, it is just to sit at the blooming desk and move on with what you are working on, reading it out loud to yourself, looking up a work that might just lead you on to something else.” Yes she says, “it is just like that, 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration.”

Siobhan explodes with laughter when I ask her how she likes to spend her leisure time, replying “I would love to have some leisure so I could tell you what I would do with it. I do love theatre but don’t often get the chance to attend. I spend some time reading and playing with my three children, I love to go to the park or beach with them.”

I ask “What is your proudest achievement as a poet?” She responds without hesitation “Being in the recent Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing Volume V. I am really delighted to be in there particularly because it was Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill who choose the ten poems and because of what she said about them.” And her proudest moment outside of her poetry? Quick as could be, she smilingly said “My three children.”

The Fabulist

She lived next door to us
in green suburbia, pebble-dashed
against the back side of urban
Dublin in those days that clear
the moment you think of them.
She ran her house like a ship.
She was the admiral, taking
the roll, calling all hands,
meting out inventive punishments:
You with the watering can,
for not making yours, you’ll weed
that bed instead. When we visited
to eat her biscuits, she despaired
of us ever knowing the value of money.
On washing days she would sprinkle
her sails with holy water and a prayer
for drying. She prayed to Saint Jude
of difficult cases for her offspring
to keep trying. At night she sat
with a hot cocoa for the day’s review.
She planned apple tarts, roast chicken,
stew; her cooking tasted as though
she cared. On her deck, you
dared to try for perfect fullness.
Her stern look still cuts a swathe
through the general dullness

By Siobhan Campbell