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Chapter 1: Who is Steve Denehan and what is his background?
Steve Denahan is an award-winning poet who lives in rural County Kildare with his wife Eimear and his teenage daughter Robin. I met Steve last year when his book of poetry A Quarter Dead and Half Alive was published. We promised to continue our conversation, so I went down to Steve's house for a chat. We got to talk about how Steve left a good job in IT to write poetry.
We also spoke about his adoption, his dad's dementia, and Steve's struggle to understand people and life. There's an explanation of ekphrastic poetry in there as well, but don't let that scare you. It's a bit la-di-da for Steve as well. I do hope you enjoy our chat. Thanks so much for having us in your home. No, thanks for coming. We're here in Allum Wood with Steve Dennehan. poet.
What sort of poet are you? Simple. Yeah, I keep it simple. Somebody said confessional. I don't know if that's the case, because sometimes I get a little story and I write about these fictional people, I suppose, for the most part, maybe confessional. But I keep things very simple because my hope is that I don't want any sort of barrier between me and the reader.
So I find if I'm reading these snazzy poems, and I have to keep interrupting myself to go and look in a dictionary, it breaks the whole momentum of the poem and the spell is gone and everything. So I try and keep it really simple.
Chapter 2: Why did Steve leave his IT job to pursue poetry?
And in fact, that's the only way I can write anyway. Sandy. I suppose poets are a bit like content creators, aren't they? Yeah, I mean, yeah.
Chapter 3: How does Steve's personal life influence his poetry?
And that's what everything is now, I know. But the original content creators, maybe, you know. But I wasn't... There was no objective for me. It was just to create for me. It wasn't content for anyone else other than myself. But I suppose... Everything in your life is content.
Chapter 4: What is ekphrastic poetry and how does it relate to Steve's work?
If you know what I mean. 100%. Absolutely 100%. When I arrived, I mentioned a phrase and you said, I'll start that one. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Therapeutic filling. That's lovely. Yeah, no, that's going to turn up somewhere along the line. Yeah, no, every single thing is content. Yeah, absolutely everything.
And in fact, I think I said it to you before, but for me anyway, it's the small things that are content. That's where all the meaning is, I think. And in fact, I've actually, over the last few years especially, I found less meaning in big things. I've actually, in fact, lost meaning in the big things. I don't know what the meaning of any of it is, life, death, you name it.
But the small things keep, they're always there and there's something to them always. I find meaning in all of those small things. So every day, every minute, every second is content. It's great. So that bird chirping outside. All day. I have a hundred poems about that bird. I mean, he comes every day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's lovely. So you disappointed me there a little bit, Stephen.
No, but I thought, this is a poet, right? He has to examine the human condition for his work. And that in doing that, he may have a better understanding than most of the human condition. Yeah, you would like to think that, yeah. And in fact, actually, I ended up writing a poem about it, but I got some nice messages, you know, and people are very kind.
And I got a message from a girl and a person, but I didn't know if she had a foreign name, didn't know male or female. And so I responded. A couple of emails went back and forth and ended up being an 18 year old girl. And she said, I hope that I have, I eventually get the understanding of people that you have.
And I had to burst a bullet because the older I get, I'm 50 now, the older I get, the less understanding I have of people. I cannot understand people at all. And it's getting worse and worse and worse. I thought I understood people.
In fact, the poem that I wrote ends up being me saying I wish she had asked me that question when I was 18 because I would have had an answer for it because back then I thought I did. The further I go, I don't understand anyone. But therein lies the rub, I think, Stephen, that we all think when we're 18 that we know it all. We know people, we know the world, we know how to cure all the ails.
Yeah, it's true. Yeah. And it's sort of this, it's a hubris of youth, I suppose. Yeah, but it's I liked it. I kind of liked it. It was secure. There was. I don't mind asking questions, but I hate when there's no answers. And as I'm getting older, all the questions I'm asking now have no answers whatsoever. And that drives me. I find that difficult.
Whereas at 18, every question had an answer and or at least something that was satisfactory to me. I don't I didn't mind. They say wisdom, you know, or age with age comes wisdom. I don't mind not having that wisdom because it's driving me bananas. Have you got any answers to these questions? Ask me some of them and I'll attempt to. Okay, what's the point? It's a big one.
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Chapter 5: How does Steve find meaning in small things?
I was in there for a couple of years and then went into the insurance industry. It's not a good industry to be in if you have a soul. And so I went into insurance and then from there went from sort of admin to IT and I was in IT for a long, long time. What felt like an incredibly long time. It wasn't for me at all, but it took me a long time to realise that. Then after that, I fell into
a brilliant job, a corporate detective, which was investigating serial false accident claimants. And so it was literally like James Bond. It was like sort of mini cameras and hats and whatnot. It was fantastic. But yeah, they were kind of my careers up to then. At the end of that poem, The Hat Street Years, you're in a lift with a guy.
It's very good at depicting the drudgery of a job that you don't like. And he says, it's a living, he said. And you say, is it? That's it. I can't believe you remember that. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. And that would have been a very strong, I mean, that feeling over, it genuinely overwhelmed me at the time. I was really struggling. In fact, you know, you talk about mental illness. I was
I look, I was never official, but I was really struggling. I was in there and I was in trouble and I was going to the bathroom for half an hour, an hour and just in pieces. And I hated it. I hated it. It wasn't just of me. It's a means to an end. And that's what it was for quite a while.
But I really felt like I was wasting my time, not like wasting my time on Earth, you know, I'm alive and a living. So I hated it so much. And I could write a book. There's a book of those poems, if you want. I felt when he said it's a living, it was not a living. I was giving away time that I was never going to get back. And I felt like I was squandering it with no real.
There was no payoff at all other than money. And money is obviously an important thing.
but it was hurting and it's still actually that's 10 no hang on 40 robin was it was about 15 years ago and i genuinely still have i'd say once every two or three weeks an actual nightmare about the office about the lift about trying to find a doorway out all of this mad stuff it was really really affecting me deeply so yeah there's a ton of those hatchery ears poems well isn't it
You're a brilliant, a brilliant study for James Hollis. Yeah, because you have the, you know, the finding true, your true meaning sort of thing and you have the dreams as well because he's a big believer in interpreting dreams and the subconscious and all that sort of thing. I don't know. Subconscious is scary.
Yes, yeah, because there's so much we don't know that's going on and it has such a huge effect on what we do. Yeah, I don't think we'll ever know, but that's, what an amazing man. I'll listen to that. I'd love to talk to him. What a guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So poetry now, let's talk about it. So you use it to obviously, you know, observe the world and report on the world.
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Chapter 6: What insights does Steve share about understanding people?
What's the meaning? Well, that's the biggest, isn't it? That is the one. Yeah. But that spawns tons. I mean, you know, look, we both lost parents over the last recent past. And I find it very difficult to understand. Dad, my dad, he was this kind of very interesting man. And he built his own self into a person that at 87 or 86, whatever he was, he died. And I can't understand the whole thing of
his soul or essence or whatever. I can't understand where it is. I don't have religion. And so I don't really have a heaven or any of that stuff. But the whole thing of energy is not supposed to be able to be created or destroyed. Is that energy? And if so, what has happened? Those kind of things. And I get a bit tangled up because I ask people and sure, nobody has.
No, nobody knows.
But there's loads of those kind of things. I go around and again, I try and answer my own questions. Again, there's a lot of poems about that. And at the end of them, I kind of go, yeah, okay, it doesn't answer the question, but I feel better. So that's good. And your dad had dementia for a number of years. Yeah, he did, yeah. It was a gradual thing, you know.
There's an aunt of mine who has kind of come into it and it's been quite fast. I don't know how, you know, but dad was a gradual thing and not a nice thing, yeah. See, he knew, you know, I think I'm saying, he knew that he had it and I think I'd rather him not know, you know, that was tough. What a horrible, cruel disease. I mean, I don't have religion because of those kind of questions.
How are these things in existence? How are children being treated the way? It's so hard. I mean, are you a religious person? No, no, no. I'd love to have religion. Would you? No. Would you not? No, no. But the ignorance is bliss. Well, that's a horrible statement. But do you know what I mean? Having that absolute conviction that there's a paradise waiting.
And they're as convinced as we are about the opposite. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. And then they say that to be convinced by anything, you know, isn't healthy to think that you're... Oh, yeah, you always got to ask questions. What? Yeah, yeah. But if you think that there's no God, then there's no... There might be a 50% God or a 30% God. It's binary, isn't it?
There either is no God or there is a God. Yeah, but they're kind of... Okay, I'm not religious, but I think... You're agnostic then, are you?
Yeah.
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