Writing, says Micheal O Ruairc, "is a lonely, reclusive thing, it's a separate world. But you'd go mad if you had no social side to your life. I don't think I could stick writing full-time." As a teacher and a poet, he has learned to keep the two callings separate. "Teaching has the human contact, I like that," he says. "The writing is a very private thing. They are two separate things. Writing is not part of my daily life in school.
"Like my father, whose heart was in the fishing, he couldn't survive on the fishing alone. Writing is the imagination and working is the intellect.
"I can see, down the line, that a choice will have to be made. One will have to go."
O Ruairc, who teaches at St Vincent's CBS in Glasnevin, Dublin, says that, for the moment at least, like T S Elliot who worked in the bank all his life, his "energy levels are high." He continues to teach and write at every opportunity, following in a line of Irish poets, such as Mairtin O Direain and Sean O Riordain, who also worked at jobs that were not connected with their writing.
"It's not uncommon, especially in literature. You wouldn't survive on it on it's own."
O Ruairc teaches Irish, English and history in the all-boys school. Most of his students know that he writes, many study his work for the Leaving Cert - and "sometimes they appreciate" having him as a teacher.
As for colleagues, in the beginning he found it difficult being exposed to comments and criticisms in the staff-room - "but now I'm unshockable."
Working with people who are reading all the time can be intimidating, he says. "But you become immune. I was very sensitive, but then you pass that point and you go on as Beckett would say.
"You write your observations. It's good to get it out of your system. It's therapeutic. My strongest themes would be about my own area and the decline of a way of life in West Kerry. I also write about city life and educational things as well."
ORuairc has been writing poetry and short stories since the Seventies when he was a student in UCC. He comes from Brandon, Cloghane, Co Kerry, which is a breac-Ghaeltacht.
"Baineann si le mo cheantar duchais fein, le cursai oideachais agus leis an saol i gcoitinne. Teim abhaile go minic. Scriobhaim san oiche, ag an deireadh seachtaine, i rith na laethanta saoire, gach aon seans a fhaighim. `'Ta an dha rud eagsuil. Faighim faoiseamh on mhuinteoireacht trid an scriobh."
Like his father, who worked as both a fisherman and a farmer, "ta an dha rud ann, nil go leor dushlan sa mhuinteoireacht ann dom. Sin an sort duine me." The two activities compliment each other, he says. Writing, he says, "relieves the stress valves involved in teaching."
