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Declan O’Rourke on his new novel: ‘You have to put yourself in a position, literally, to write prose’

With arrival of A Whisper from Oblivion, the singer joins select club of Irish songwriters to have published two novels

Declan O'Rourke: 'Obviously, the glaring difference is there is no music or instrumentation in writing prose, yet, when I write songs, words are at the forefront, the most important element.' Photograph: Lawrence Watson

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Tony Clayton-Lea
Thu Oct 12 2023 - 05:00

He could say yes and bask in the glory. Yet when I say to Declan O’Rourke that, with the publication of A Whisper from Oblivion, he must be the only living Irish songwriter to have published two novels, he immediately says, “I don’t think I’m the only one, actually. Brian Kennedy and Brendan Graham are two people I know who have written books.”

Being the fastidious fact-checker that he is, O’Rourke is correct. (Graham has three novels to his name; Kennedy has two.) He isn’t unique, then, but he is a member of a very small club. His books – the first is The Pawnbroker’s Reward, from 2021 – are the first parts of a trilogy about the Great Famine, a topic he was inspired to write about by John O’Connor’s 1995 book The Workhouses of Ireland: The Fate of Ireland’s Poor.

Combined with his own research – to which there’s a personal angle, as his grandfather was born in a workhouse in 1916 – and with the process of recording Chronicles of the Great Irish Famine, from 2017, O’Connor’s book made O’Rourke feel he needed to write something that an album of songs couldn’t contain. Then, as he was writing The Pawnbroker’s Reward, he realised that one book wouldn’t be enough to tell the full story of, as one review put it, “a battle that wages profit against humanity”.

The final part of the trilogy will be published next year. “I have lumps of it done, so I could anchor myself, but I’ve also given myself a bit of leeway in that I don’t want to know exactly what I have to do, because that might take the fun out of it,” he says. O’Rourke knows he’s fortunate to have these two strings to his bow. “There are many people out there who are full-time writers. It’s a very competitive industry, so I’m extremely lucky to have this chance that partially drives, I suppose, my obsession with it to make sure I do it well.”

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But he adds that he doesn’t see much difference, artistically, between writing prose and writing songs. “Obviously, the glaring difference is there is no music or instrumentation in writing prose, yet, when I write songs, words are at the forefront, the most important element. There is no song if I don’t have something to say or if I’m not happy with what I’ve crafted or sculpted in terms of the words… The discipline is different, mainly because you have to put yourself in a position, literally, to write long-form prose. With songs, they’re so short you can remember them on the go – you could be toying with them while you’re driving, in the shower, walking or washing dishes. With writing prose you have to sit down, because what you’re working with is just so dense.”

In one sense, he says, long-form writing “liberates you, but that’s a dangerous kind of poison, because you have to go back and edit, and the more you do that the more you’re going to want to tweak it. Every time you read it your brain will give you options and say, maybe it’s better this way, or would be more fluent if I did this or that. It’s a can of worms, but therein lie the fun and the enjoyment.”

Declan O’Rourke: 'I was so unfamiliar with the feeling of not having songs falling out once a month..'

O’Rourke says he has ideas for what might come after the final book in the trilogy, but right now, with A Whisper from Oblivion safely on bookshop shelves, he’s back in music mode, for the tour that will take him around Ireland over the next six weeks. You can bet the gigs will feature three things: a comprehensive trawl through his 20-year recording career, a merchandise table groaning with books, CDs and vinyl – “without hammering it too much, because I’m lucky I have the support I have, it’s important that people who love somebody’s music or their artform support them, as it’s one of the last places to generate something that helps to keep them going” – and a preview of new material. New songs, he says, are arriving at a rapid pace.

[ John Boyne reviews The Pawnbroker’s Reward: A skilfully told famine tale ]

Following a period of time in which he had written no fresh material, he admits he thought he had severed some kind of creative connection. “I was so unfamiliar with the feeling of not having songs falling out once a month. Maybe there was a little bit of apprehension, thinking about it too much.” Thinking ruins things sometimes, he says with a grimace, but he says that more recently his songwriting engine has been firing on all cylinders. “I’m telling myself that I need to stop now and just hone the ones that are there, get them ready for the stage, because if I do any more I’ll have too much new material and not enough time for the older stuff.”

“It’s a quality complaint,” says O’Rourke, “but I also don’t want to turn off the tap.”

A Whisper from Oblivion is published by Gill Books. Declan O’Rourke is on tour until the end of November, with dates in Letterkenny, Westport, Killarney, Belfast, Waterford, Limerick, Galway, Navan, Dundalk, Wexford, Cork, Dublin, Mullingar and Kilkenny

Declan O’Rourke