In this week’s Third Degree, Paul Bradley chats to Donegal poet Denise Blake.
Hi Denise, how are you? Can I start by asking about growing up in Ohio?
I’m very good actually. We had a lovely childhood. I still kind of think of our street on Bonnieview Ave as home-home. There’s no way I’d go back to America at the minute, but thinking back, it was a lovely time. It was that encouraging, you could do whatever you want, kind of thing. But also, we moved back to Letterkenny in 1969, and mum died suddenly in 1972. So “a time before loss” would be the best way to describe it. But I love Donegal.
Do you have childhood memories of Donegal?
We were lucky – a lot of my parents’ friends never got home again. I was home (Donegal) about four times before we moved: all these cousins and aunts and uncles. And the change when we moved back: that phrase “you’re not in America now…”. But it was a huge adventure. I think Donegal’s home, but it’s fascinating because Daddy’s from Cork. We’d visit Cork as well, but Donegal was always home.
The loss of your mother so young must have been hard.
Mum ran a clothes shop at Lower Main Street. And on December 3, 1972, we were driving over the Port Bridge, we skidded on black ice and ended up in the ditch. Mum died a few hours later.
The funeral was Wednesday. The inquest was Friday, and I went to school on Monday. And that was it. She just wasn’t mentioned again. And you didn’t cry, and that was the feeling in the 70s. would always get, “Were you the wee girl in the car?”
There were four of us kids. I was the eldest and our Paul was six years old. Poor Dad was totally shattered by the loss.
Has Donegal changed noticeably since then?
Attitudes have changed. I remember one woman in the Convent gave me an awful hard time. I smile now when people say, “I love listening to your voice on the radio”, because every time I’d speak (with an American accent), she’d be, “yeah, you can stop showing off”. But there was one nun, Sister Christine, she encouraged me to do public speaking, so I’m grateful to her. That’s a skill to have.
You’re busy visiting schools and working as a facilitator.
I don’t think of it as work. I’m lucky. At college, I did hotel and catering supervision. And if you had said to me, Denise, pick the 100 per cent worst career for yourself, that was it. I gave it up when Damien was born.
In my 30s, I went to Magee College, and part of the course was poetry. That triggered something in me, so I joined Letterkenny Writers and started to meet with a group I like. I did a Masters In Falcarragh with Lancaster University, and started to get on Sunday Miscellany, RTÉ Radio 1. I love that: you send your script in, and now if Sarah Binchy likes it, she contacts you to record it at RTÉ studios.
It’s lovely because you meet people who say, “I love hearing you on the radio.” And what’s a gift too, especially in Letterkenny, is somebody saying, “Are you still writing?” I think that’s an endorsement: they’ve accepted this is what I do.
And you were involved in the Letterkenny Cathedral Quarter Literary Festival lately…
Funny, I did the podcast for that with Philip O’Kennedy, and underneath it Meta AI said “More about Denise Blake”. So I clicked into that. And it said Denise Blake, renowned Irish poet, author and creative writing tutor, had passed away recently, and a Gofundme page was set up by her family to help with funeral expenses.
In fairness, I Googled it: a woman of my name had died in Florida and the family did a Gofundme. But that’s AI, it does hallucinate. It gave me an MSC in marine biology and currently working towards a PhD in geography. I hated geography.
Apparently I recently worked as a visitor manager at the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands. But actually my son Aiden has just got a good job with an AI company so there is good in it too!
For students, has poetry changed? It seems to have become more popular but from the sidelines I’m not sure if it’s all good.
We used to send stuff away to competitions or magazines, or spoke/workshopped with other writers. You’d learn the process through critiques. Every poem I write, when I first write it, is the best poem ever written. And then I come back and look at it and think, actually, no. It can take many drafts to get it right. But you learn like that. That’s not happening so much with online poetry.
I love visiting schools to do poetry sessions. I love when students respond to my prompts and then read out what they’ve written. I want them to enjoy poetry and be proud of their work.
Two years ago you lost your son Damien. Not that the process is ever over, but how did you cope with that?
The Donegal Hospice was wonderful in the way they cared for Damien and their kindnesses to us. I’ve learned that when you need to cry, you cry. It lodges in the body otherwise. Grief suddenly bites you unexpectedly. There are so many moments you think, I must message him or have this discussion with him….I’ve just learned to accept this is grief, this is where we are.
But I’m blessed to have Laurence at my side, our sons and family support. There were times I definitely was floundering. But people were so very kind.
Did it impact your writing?
I did a lot of personal writing in notebooks, but didn’t want to send out something that might upset someone else.
I did an online course with Moyra Donaldson that helped me start writing again. Then with the Sunday Miscellany, when Donegal were in the All-Ireland I submitted a piece about that; it was the first time I really wanted the producer to take it. She loved it. That was huge for me. And I got a lot of people saying, “I loved hearing you on the radio.”
If I wrote fiction, I probably would have been writing sooner – but this loss is just so personal. Writing has been a lifesaver. I do love reading for an audience. The most extraordinary gift is silence when I am reading. You feel them listen. It’s wonderful.
I’m getting a lot of invitations now for different events. There’s a grace in them; I know they’re right for me. I went out to Tory Island school by helicopter lately and it was gorgeous. Those kinds of things are definitely restoring something in me. I just want to name Damien as part of my life. It’s lovely to name him, just to be allowed to talk about him.
How do your ideas come? Do you write them down?
I carry a notebook, but there’s not one line of poetry in it. I feel that if an idea comes and stays with me, I should investigate. If in the evening I’m thinking, what was that? I know it’s gone. If I need to write it down, it’s not strong enough.
And things happen. I was watching Paddington Bear with my grandson, and Paddington wanted marmalade to give to somebody else, but realised he’s the one who likes marmalade, not the person he was giving it to. It stuck with me; I ended up doing a Sunday Miscellany piece about the foods we like, and how we are reminded of people through certain foods.
And we were going to Dublin recently and the sky was strange. A grey kind of sky ahead, but this glorious orange sky behind us. And we were in the middle of these two skies. And there’s something in that that hasn’t left me.
Which poets do you read yourself?
I love Ada Limón, Poet laureate in America now. And Pádraig Ó’Tuama’s anthologies and podcasts.
New projects?
I don’t have a book, but my Vicky Phelan poem is in a new Sunday Miscellany anthology just launched. And Isla McGuckin and Laura Buchanan have just launched a book called ‘Leap: 50 encouraging stories about living creatively in Donegal. It’s a lovely book and I am grateful that they included me.
But I am aware I need to start writing again.
by Paul Bradley
If anyone else would like to take part in this interview, to raise a profile or an issue, please contact Paul at Dnthirddegree@gmail.com
