How have you been affected professionally?
In my teaching role, everything is now occurring online, whether or not we like it. I've been impressed by how quickly people have adapted and got on with it. You don't have the same energy as when you teach students in a room, nor all the facilities, but ultimately it is working OK. I live in Derry with my girlfriend and it's noticeable that we shut down more in line with Dublin than Belfast. There is an east-west variance. In terms of my writing, I'm fortunate in that we don't have children so I do have the time. The constraints seem to have stimulated creativity. I'm caught between two impulses, to record this time like a historian and to shut up because this is not the time. It's not quite the same, but in the 1960s and 70s, poets of Ireland and the north were very careful about what they wrote. And perhaps lockdown is too universal an experience to work as a subject and we may be swamped with books about it afterwards.
And what about personally?
At the start, I remember I suffered some anxiety on a trip to Sainsbury's but that's gone now. My relationship with my girlfriend is good, we've been enjoying long, legal walks together during this time. But we are in two worlds now and I have been thinking about this. We're now in a period of uncertainty and that's difficult as we have no idea how long it will last and it could be a long time. Are we in the doorway between the past and the future? It is concerning that the populist kinds of government seem to be able to use uncertainty to their advantage. But I also feel everybody is drawing on their resources. I went to India on an Arts Council trip a few months ago, and it was great but it seems like another time; there's before and, we hope, after lockdown.
Are there any positives in this?
I'm trying to be hopeful. I can continue to work and, in terms of literature, many of the things I've missed such as readings and festivals have done good work and gone online. So on a Thursday night I can't actually go to a poetry reading in New York or Perth or Galway but I can go online. For many people who have difficulty accessing festivals because of health reasons, it's made it possible for them to join in and I hope that continues.
What keeps you going?
I haven't got round to Bob Dylan's new album yet but I've been listening to Nick Cave. Food is important and I'm always two meals ahead. Tonight we're having a chicken and chickpea balti curry, tomorrow pasta with pesto. Also, I have been reviewing my famous pancake recipe, the balance of the ingredients. The books propping up my PC include Can Poetry Matter? by Dana Gioia and Derry poet Colette Bryce's new book. I've also been reading a lot of Yeats, biographies about his ridiculous mystical experiments. I do miss contact with people. Poetry events are 60 per cent the poems, 40 per cent the other part. When we emerge from this, we'll have got used to being two metres apart. It's an unfathomable thing.
