Rory Brennan has lived in the Dublin 4 area for many years. While he was born in Westport, Co Mayo, in 1945, he grew up in Dublin. He mainly divides his time between his home in Sandymount and a farmhouse in Greece. He is married, with two grown-up daughters.

Rory, pictured right, studied at Trinity and is currently a Lecturer in Communications in Dublin City University Business School. His experience includes a decade as presenter and programme-maker in the Education Department of RTE Radio.

He was at one time director of Poetry Ireland with responsibility for organizing readings throughout the country and for publishing a quarterly review of international standing.

I caught up with Rory in Greece to ask him a few questions.

What inspired you to become a poet?
What drew me to poetry was an early awareness of the excitement and richness in language. Also, the capacity of poetry to say so much in so few words was very attractive, and so I was tempted to try myself.

At school, though poetry was taught as something to be ‘learned off’, I could sense the underlying power of words when they are cunningly and forcefully arranged.

I have never been interested in ‘being a poet’ and sometimes dislike having my cover blown, preferring to pass as an arts administrator, a broadcaster or a lecturer, the occupations I have followed.

Work has been important to me as I do not think of myself just as a conventionally passive literary person, but also as someone who decides and implements things, a doer and maker as well as a reflective haunter of the book-lined study.

‘Being a poet’ is bit of a bore, writing poetry is one of the most enlivening occupations in the world.

Can you remember the first poem you ever wrote?
The first real poem I wrote was on holiday in a cottage in Sligo. It was the end of a holiday and I wrote a piece about the onset of autumn. The passage of the seasons is a constant theme in poetry, perhaps because the year’s passage echoes the human voyage from infancy to death.

Did you experiment with different poetic forms?
I began as a formalist in rhyme and metre and still use it. Once mastered, it can be very helpful. However, free verse can actually be harder as rhyme helps to stitch a poem together.

Were you inspired by other poets?
The poets I still return to are cosmopolitan ones with a great variety of themes: Louis MacNeice and W.H.Auden. Their work has a bravado and style that was very seductive when I was young and that I still find refreshing when measured against earnest dryness or attempts at whimsical humour.

Auden and MacNeice had a vernacular, apparently carefree style that was in fact the result of much effort. They dealt with private and public issues in a way that was original, witty and modern.

Has your writing changed in any way over the years?
My work has been influenced by periods abroad, especially in Greece, where I have had a small farmhouse for thirty years. The dramatic yet intimate landscape is a continuous source of imagery.

Would you have any advice for young poets?
The best form of advice is example, so read the poets you admire again and again, get to know the great classical tradition of verse in English as well as the modern, do not accept the verdict of established critics but decide for yourself, examine contemporary work but do not follow fashion, and finally keep an international outlook via translation if you do not know the language. That is not to say I have always followed this advice myself!

Rory Brennan’s work includes ‘The Sea on Fire’ (Dublin, Dolmen, 1978), which won the Patrick Kavanagh Award, ‘The Walking Wounded’ (Dublin, The Dedalus Press, 1985); and ‘The Old in Raphallo’ (Salmon, 1996).

Holding Hands
(For Luca,born 2nd December 2007)
Grandson, you have a splendid grip!
Your tiny fingers, palm and thumb
Cling like a limpet to a ship.
Such a clasping strikes me dumb.

Days old, swaddled in a sailcloth bed,
You seem to meditate and sleep,
Dreaming of high winds ahead
While in your so-small hand you keep

My finger round as a rough mast.
Yours are so fine and yet so strong.
With such spirit you will last
The voyage that’s a lifetime long.

Rory Brennan