Dreams do come true, as a group of new Irish writers found when they published their first collection. Róisín Ingle meets the authors and their mentor, poet Nuala Ní Domhnaill
They were a group of just over 20 when they met for the first time in the Irish Writers' Centre on Parnell Square, Dublin around this time last year. They came from the worlds of business and accountancy, law and IT, and all they knew was that they wanted to write. To take all those unfinished bits and pieces of scribbling out from under their beds and inside their cupboards and just give it a go. Months passed and the numbers dropped, as they always do with night-classes. Now, eight of these aspiring writers, the "hard-core" they call themselves, with their tutor Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, have produced a book called The Incredible Hides In Every House. It is an achievement none of them could have predicted a year ago.
As some of the group sit around a desk in the Irish Writers' Centre, Jack Murray, a public relations consultant from Co Galway who blagged his way onto the course - "it was oversubscribed, but I said 'ah, go on' " - explains how the book came about. "Myself and Ian Mitchell (another contributor) had become friends, and a few weeks before the course was due to end, he called me and said: 'This writing group is great craic; we should keep it going, we should do some kind of project'. So together we hatched the plan for the book and took it to Nuala."
Ní Dhomhnaill takes up the story. "Of course I didn't want to let them go anyway. I'd never had a group like this before. The dynamic between them was so good," she says. When the course finished the group continued to meet, and even though Ní Dhomnaill was in Kerry, they sent work to her as she continued to provide feedback.
They all agree they were keen for the project not to be an exercise in vanity publishing, and knew if the proceeds were going to charity it would be easier to attract sponsorship. They decided the proceeds would go to Habitat for Humanity, the charity which supports people in building their homes. And so "Home" became the theme for this diverse collection of often astonishingly good poems and short stories.
At the beginning of the course, Ní Dhomnaill threw her new writers in at the deep end, telling them to write a page about some postcards of "big, fat women" that she had brought in. Another time she used a bag of apples as a muse.
Murray remembers one night spent composing Japanese haikus. "I was just so happy that night, thinking how writing haikus has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of my life. It's absolute nonsense, and it's great," he laughs.
The writers were sometimes nervous about offering their work for criticism, but their mentor had her own fears. "I always am afraid at the beginning of a group that I will dampen someone's enthusiasm without being aware of it. I could make a fatuous remark that would hurt someone and make them never want to write again," she says. "Oh God, it would be on my conscience forever." The worst criticism they ever got from her, though, was when Ní Dhomnaill would read their work and tell them to "type it up". "We knew what that meant," groans Emily Maher, who works in PR and is the author of several of the beautifully written 250-word short stories that pepper the book.
"There were one or two really good writers in the group and you knew their stuff was going in, so you had to keep raising the bar," says Ian Mitchell, who is originally from Belfast. "A bit like having Roy Keane and Paul McGrath in the group."
One of the most talented contributors is Caroline Lynch, a former actor and now lawyer from Cork, who had stopped writing for years before joining the group. Her poems, including the Incredible Hides In Every House which provided the book's title, are expertly crafted and oddly moving. Ní Dhomnaill predicts that Lynch, and other members of the group, will go on to "even greater things". "The sheer variety of styles is extraordinary. They really speak of Ireland today. I was watching this grow, and it was very exciting," says Ní Domhnaill, who acted as literary editor.
Apart from the writing, there was money to be raised and all the other challenges posed by the production of a book. "It was a case of ignorance being bliss," says Murray, who says it couldn't have been done without Angry Associates, a company they contacted to design and distribute the book. "We were lucky that the professional skills in the group, outside of the writing, helped. We had experience in the corporate world, in law, in PR, so when we all came together, we pooled our resources to get the book out."
It's the start of a new journey for most of the participants, who are keen to continue writing. "For so long, you write stuff and you literally shove it under the bed," says Lynch. "There is a time and a place for that and then there is time for this kind of coming out." The incredible hides in every writing group. This one, at any rate. u
The Incredible Hides in Every House, published by Imprint, €10, is available from bookshops nationwide