Brendan Kennelly interview, copyright Victoria Mary Clarke 2004
I am prejudiced about poetry.  I was taught it in school, and in school, poems were dissected with a view to passing exams about them. Because you were forced to learn it, even if you did like it, there was always the memory of having been in that powerless situation, a bad memory.
These days, I never read poetry.  But I was invited to interview Brendan Kennelly, one of Ireland’s most prominent poets.
‘Brendan Kennelly?” said the woman next to me in Bewleys, where I began to research my subject.  ‘Oh he’s very sexy.  He’s got a twinkle in his eye.’
Several other females, of varying ages said the same thing.
‘You would want to watch yourself,’ a male friend warned me.  ‘He’s a ladies man.’
‘Absolutely not,’ I assured my friend.  Having been introduced to Mr Kennelly at a ‘Poetry Ireland’ launch, I had judged him to be a sweet, affable soul.
‘Yes, but those are the ones to watch.’
This morning, on my way to the interview, I did two things.   I read a section of a poem about Judas, which Kennelly had written, in which Judas advises Hitler to be his own man and walk his own walk.  Which leaves the world ‘frozen to the bone.’  Stunned and captivated by the audacity and wit of the work, I stopped at Waterstones and bought ‘Poetry My Arse,’ an epic poem, the title of which intrigued me.
Upon arrival at our meeting place, I was punctual, but my poet was ahead of me.  He is also a professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College, and was convenient to the Westin, where we were due to have coffee.
‘Sit down next to me and I’ll hear your confession,’ he said, patting the seat.  And he confessed that he hates having his photograph taken, and hoped that I wouldn’t require him to pose.
Within moments, we were on the subject of women and sex, just as I had been warned.  Admiring a table of women next to us, he told me something he had overheard a woman say about priests.
‘‘Do as they say and don’t mind what they do,’ she said.  Only a woman could have said that.”
‘Why’s that?’ I asked.
‘Because women see both sides of things.’
Women, he said, are the intellectual superiors of men.
‘Women don’t separate the intellectual from the emotional.  And women run everything, even if it is behind the scenes.  They especially run Trinity.’
‘Do you have a female partner?”  I asked.  He actually blushed.
‘I have a friend, yes.’
The reason we were meeting was to discuss the CD of Christmas poems and prose, which he has recorded for the Sunday Independent.  I told him that I would have to tape record him, otherwise I might forget what he told me, my memory not  being that great.
‘Memory is useless,’ he said.  ‘Use your imagination and create.  Make it up.’
‘You want me to make up the interview?’  I asked.
‘Oh definitely.’
After we had spent half an hour or so encompassing such subjects as celibacy -the anticipation of the event can be much more exciting than the event, he says, which is why celibacy is as relevant a sexual state as actually fucking- and football,-he always wanted to be a footballer, but lost an All Ireland at the age of twelve -I managed to get him onto the subject of the CD.
‘Oh, all right then.  It’s about getting the feeling of Christmas.  What I did was I read a lot of prose and poetry and I tried to arrange them in a way that would be evocative and suggestive of the spirit of Christmas.’
The Christmas spirit, he says, is something that doesn’t have to be confined to Christmas.  It can be there all year round and the stories and poems he has chosen aren’t necessarily confined to the festival itself, but evoke the theme.  I asked him what he plans to do for Christmas.  He doesn’t know, he said. 
‘I may go walking.  Christmas is a time which is as much about being alone and meditating as it is about being with people, even though I love being with people, I find it’s necessary to get the balance right and spend time alone.’
It is in the aloneness, or the loneliness that poetry can come, he says.  And it is in the aloneness that one senses the connection to God or to Being.
‘Christmas is a time to slow down, but most people are afraid to slow down.  They are afraid to confront themselves without the television or the newspapers or whatever they are afraid of the silence.’
It is also a time to reflect on the miracle of nature.
‘Looking at the swans on the canal, or studying a bird in flight.  I think nature is still the most wonderful and inspiring creation imaginable.  Poetry and writing are only imitations of what is happening all around us.’
Kennelly is a man who loves to read and he spends every evening studying and writing.  But he appreciates that he is a rarity and that most people don’t share his passion. 
‘One of the strange ironies in relation to education and the arts is that you have to be very logical and rational about something that is not in itself merely logical and rational.  It’s passionate and imaginative.’
‘They take the joy out of poetry when they teach it in school,’ I suggested.
‘ They should do away with the worry and neurosis of studying.  If you make the boys and girls worry, they will commit suicide over it.  They have to adjust the system and do away with this stupid concept of failure.  There is no such thing as a failure.’
Last night, at the Poetry Ireland launch, the Minister for education made a speech.
Did he tell her his thoughts about the system?  I wondered.
‘No.  I didn’t get talking to her.  But will you underline that in the article?  That we owe it to our children to take the worry out of education?’
I promised him that I will.
I have revised my prejudice about poetry, having had the opportunity to meet Brendan Kennelly.  I am now the owner of a book of poems, signed by the author, which I look forward to reading, when I get the time. 
‘Do people have time to read poetry?’ I asked.  ‘Given that we have such busy lives?”
‘Do you know what I think?’ he responded, carefully.  ‘I can’t drive.  But I think people should listen to poetry in their cars, in traffic jams.  It would be good for them.’
To my surprise, I am in agreement.