A New Life: Dairena Ní Chinnéide talks to Catherine Foley about leaving journalism to become a full-time poet
It was "a little bit scary" making the decision to give up her career as a news reporter and journalist to become a full-time poet, but Dairena Ní Chinnéide has no regrets.
She wondered about what she was going to live on, realising there was no money in poetry, that she had a son to raise and bills to pay, but still, she says: "I just threw caution to the wind and, for some reason, anytime I need something, it just falls into my lap."
Looking back on all her years in journalism, Ní Chinnéide now realises it was impossible to write creatively, even when she was working in the newsroom doing the night shift.
"You're still busy looking at the wires, getting ready for the next bulletin, updating stories. Whatever creative space was left in my head was just completely plugged."
Now, she explains, "I'm living on a lot less money but I made a conscious decision to just say, 'look, what's more important to me as a person?'. My writing at the minute calms me, I love doing it and I don't need the pressure. I've spent all my life working."
Ní Chinnéide's first collection of poems, An Trodaí agus dánta eile/ The Warrior and other poems, was published in bilingual format in May by Cló Iar-Chonnachta.
"Now I'm at home, I'm more relaxed. I'm just writing and writing and writing, and I'm writing every day, and becoming more disciplined about the way I write," she says.
"It's just something that I really enjoy, and I've lost my interest in joining the rat race, getting up at six o'clock in the morning and going in and broadcasting bad news to the nation. I just said no, I'm going to give this a rest."
Ní Chinnéide is currently working on her second book of poetry. "I want the second manuscript to go to the publishers in September. I already have about 56 poems ready to go into it. It's a totally different feel from the first book," she says.
Her career as a journalist started after she graduated from Dublin City University in 1989 with a BA in communications studies.
"I finished college on a Friday and I started working the following Monday. I've been working since. I went to Radio Kerry to the newsroom, then I went to Century Radio . . . I was very driven and very ambitious all those years and that's a good thing to do too, but now I kind of think what was I doing?"
Ní Chinnéide also worked on RTÉ's arts and current affairs programme, Cúrsaí, before moving to Galway as manager of Media Antenna, which provides information and support to audiovisual professionals.
"This also was very pressurised," she says. "During that period of my middle to late 20s, the pressure of working at that pace all the time was really getting to me and I started getting things like panic attacks when I was driving and flying.
"It [ my work] involved an awful lot of travel to different film festivals around Europe and it just wore me down. By 28 I was burnt out."
Ní Chinnéide worked as a film and television producer and as director on a number of films, developing scripts and also teaching film and television at third level.
She finally moved back to Kerry to work in the Raidió na Gaeltachta newsroom. But now, she says: "I've given up my Raidió na Gaeltachta slot and basically when I need to cover costs I do some translation work because I have that qualification as well."
The impetus to take up full-time writing happened while attending a workshop at the Dingle Writers' Centre. "Although I always wrote, I only ever wrote for my own personal satisfaction. I never thought they were good enough to do anything with."
As Cathal Ó Searcaigh was doing a weekend workshop, she decided to show her manuscript to the established poet.
"I was very shy about it but he was very pleased. When he saw the manuscript he just said in Irish, 'Is file thú'. And that gave me enormous confidence. And I thought, here goes: I'm going to try to organise all these poems into some form of book," she recalls.
"And another positive thing that happened directly after was that I got a small bursary from Ealaíon na Gaeltachta, which is a co-operation between the Arts Council and Údarás na Gaeltachta. That was a nice surprise and a validation for the work as well."
Ní Chinnéide also received a bursary from Bord na Leabhar Gaeilge, which allowed her to work with an established poet. And so Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill took her on for three to four months, "not so much changing the poems, as organising them into a coherent series".
Publishing the collection was a very important step: "The book itself was cathartic because I got a lot of my demons out in poetry," she explains.
As well as the poetry, Ní Chinnéide has had a radio play broadcast on RTÉ. She is now completing a second play, which she hopes will be broadcast sometime next year.
Ní Chinnéide lives with her seven-year-old son, Jack, in Ballyferriter, west Kerry.
She likes to write in the corner of her little sitting room, where she is "literally cornered between the sofa and the wall".
"There might be cartoons on the TV and I'm writing about God only knows what, but I block it out and I'm perfectly capable of writing with a lot of racket around me," she says.
"There might be five kids in the house and I'd still be writing. I just get lost."