Sarah Kanowski

When you were brought back to the family home in a school where your dad was in sort of convalescing for a period, what was different about you, Colm?

How had you changed?

How did that show up in the way you communicated?

A clutter?

Your dad never fully recovered his health and he died when you were just 12, Colin.

What was the atmosphere like at home after that?

How do you remember it?

Did you inherit that skill?

You fell in love with poetry as a 12, 13-year-old.

Was it something about the way language is used in poetry that was seductive for someone with a speech impediment?

I'm just thinking, was it stuff that you'd read out loud, the first poets you fell in love with, or what was it?

What grabbed you?

And there we go.

It's been happening ever since.

Did you have teachers who encouraged you in that?

It's unfair competition that you have as an Irishman.

You've got to find another country and write poetry and you'd be ahead of the pack.

As a little boy, you were saying even just going to Wexford to go to the shops was an exciting adventure, let alone the summer by the beach.

So when you were old enough to have finished school and set off to university in Dublin, was this a chance to remake yourself the way that so many adolescents take that chance of first moving away from home and entering university?

Was it a new column who appeared in Dublin?