Poetry is alive and well in Guildford thanks to Dónall Dempsey who runs a monthly open mic night for aspiring poets. Suzanne Antelme visits The 1000 Monkeys at The Keep and discovers a thriving community of scribes
I’m running five minutes late for the launch of What the Elephant Said to the Peacock, an anthology of work from the annual Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize. I wade through the bustling poetry enthusiasts towards a vacant sofa, angling myself between a coffee table and an armchair. Said armchair’s occupant graciously draws in her knees and says, smiling benevolently, that if I knock her drink over she’ll kill me.
Hugging my backpack, I assure her I’ll pay careful attention. As I settle down and examine a competition leaflet, the lady with the drink waves a dark Japanese-style fan and eyes me over the rim. ‘What’s the noun for a group of poets?’
I don’t have any idea, but she doesn’t seem to mind. ‘An envy,’ she tells me, grinning. ‘An envy of poets.’
‘An anthology of poets?’ Asks the person on my left, sidling closer.
We are interrupted by crackling speakers. Dónall Dempsey, our host and, along with his wife Janice, the locomotive of Guildford’s poetry scene, announces we have five minutes until poetry. Dónall has a voice that is generous and undeniably Irish. He leans into the microphone and sets off on a confident run of random warm-up noises, curiously mesmerising with his great ropes of silver hair sprawling down his shoulders and the fedora perched iconically above his broad features.
This year, the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize garnered four hundred entries from over one hundred and forty poets. Robbie Frazer, who won joint first prize next to Georgia Hilton for his poem The three days that followed, says it has given him confidence in his own writing, and restored his opinion of poetry. ‘I feared that the poetry I was reading was in a self-referential funk, dominated by kind of artless self indulgence. Instead, the competition has introduced me to a community of people who are open, warm, and inquiring.’
Author of five poetry collections, Joan Michelson came second with In Our Time. ‘Winning second prize encouraged me with the new sequence I am working on. It was an early poem, and it helped to realise it had reached and engaged a reader.’
Arthur de Lisle, age ten, earned a special commendation. Dónall is enthusiastic about the young writer.
‘We hadn’t conceived of that. Next year we might have a children’s section, but then it was nice not to have a distinction between ‘adult poetry’ and ‘child poetry’. Maybe if we make the distinction, we’ll get child poetry. Arthur’s poem stood on its own merit.’
Arthur is surprised and delighted to be included in the anthology. ‘Being published has opened many doors for me. Reading the anthology, I’ve enjoyed looking at people who are on the same journey as me.’
Tonight would normally be the monthly congregation for The 1000 Monkeys, and the anthology holds several familiar names. Facing me over a hand-me-down voice recorder two days later, Dónall says he loves watching their regulars gain confidence.
‘The important thing is to take somebody who is frightened and turn them into somebody who can talk, who’s at home in that five minute slot.’ He laughs. ‘The first time they come to us, it’s all shaking paper and quailing knees. Now they stand up like hey, this is me and I’m about to tell you more me. That’s what a year’s difference will do. It’s like learning to ride a bicycle.’
Ray Pool, who’s been with The 1000 Monkeys for three years, has found the experience encouraging in many ways. ‘My own writing has improved in leaps and bounds, and I’ve been fortunate enough to have two pamphlets published with Dempsey & Windle, which would have been inconceivable back in 2015.’
Jeremy Loynes, another regular at the events, has just published his first collection, Turning. ‘So much of writing is a solitary experience, and as a breed, I think writers tend to be riddled with self-doubt. There is a great feeling of camaraderie and tolerance amongst the group. I think we all feed off each other.’
Dónall’s been running these poetry nights since 2011, first under the name Pop Up Poetry and now as The 1000 Monkeys. He’s also one half of the publishing house Dempsey & Windle, though confesses to having nothing to do with it.
‘That’s all Janice’s doing. She makes everything happen. I wouldn’t know how to make a book.’ We’re sitting around a small metal table, sipping lemon water from wine glasses. ‘I just get up and talk. Sometimes I fall flat on my face, sometimes I don’t. You just have to hope it works.’
And it does. Presenting several of his poems, he’s conspicuously comfortable, carrying the charismatic presence that has lead to his reputation as something of a performance poet. Though to Dónall, it’s not a performance.
‘I’m just being me. And I’m being Irish. In Ireland we’re all like this. When you get it streamed through you like that, that’s the only way you know back out.’
Born in 1956, Dónall grew up in the Curragh of Kildare, Ireland. He was just two pounds when he was born, he tells me, like a bag of sugar.
‘Dónall Dempsey means Almighty Spear Power the Proud One. A big name for a little baby. That’s Irish humour.’
As a dyslexic, he learnt by being talked to. His first Yeats was on his sister’s knee, during a thunderstorm. As she recited the last line, lightning flashed outside and seven year old Dónall thought poetry could do that every time. His father would come in from the garden, covered in grime, quoting directly from Thomas Hood.
‘I thought he was just talking to me. I didn’t know I was being poemed, as such. But poetry comes in like that. It’s a person’s voice, their breath on your cheek. It’s touch, it’s comfort. Very human, and nothing to do with a page at all.’
For Dónall, it’s all about the people. He’s been a mental health worker, teacher, and old age carer. Many of his poems are triggered by a need to preserve something of the people he’s worked so closely with.
‘I don’t want somebody to be forgotten, so I’ll tell their story. Their stories are really important. All these stories stored away, and once they come by me, God, I’m not going to let them get away.’
Loss is a driving theme behind much of his work. When he was nine, his sister died in a car accident. He’d wanted so desperately to be ten, but when the double figures finally came around his world had turned to black and white. Dónall’s latest collection, Gerry Sweeney’s Mammy, was meant to be based on his childhood.
‘People started dying left right and centre. The writing stopped. It was broken. They all got into the book and it stopped being that funny little look back. It’s to reclaim the past, to go back in time. Death has a terrible habit of tearing out your tongue and telling you to speak.’ He pauses, pursing his lips. ‘The first book was all about trying to return to being nine, when Junie was still alive, and keep it so. Even my happy poems are based on that loss. I thought that death had walked in and taken my sister, so I used to sit and watch my Dad sleep all night, making sure death didn’t come in.’
Despite these sombre tones, Dónall is smiling and animated. He’s made us salmon on sourdough toast and a fabulous apple pie, which we eat indoors with mugs of tea while Dónall explains that he makes himself write every day.
‘I’ve got very bad handwriting. I scribble a lot, invariably on the smallest scrap of paper I can find. Often I can’t read what I’ve written. If I look at it a week later I won’t have a clue what it says. But it’s good enough that I had the thrill of writing it. Of seeking it and going after it. To write is miracle enough. I don’t know what I’m going to write tomorrow – that’s the lovely thing. I write poetry to find out what I’m thinking. Not knowing and the journey of finding out.’
Though Dónall has four anthologies to his name and is thinking about compiling another under the working title Crawling Out and Falling Up, he’s adamant he wouldn’t describe himself as a poet. It’s an accolade, he tells me, that someone else gives you.
‘I don’t know if what I do is poetry. I just talk, and not always in rhyme. I don’t think of it as poetry, unless somebody calls it poetry. To me it’s just the telling of a tale, the passing on of something that should not be let go.’
Dónall’s passionate about poetry’s ability to connect people and share their inner lives. He feels privileged to get, as he calls it, backstage access to somebody’s head.
‘It’s a truth. About yourself, a situation, a moment. A poem is so hard to write, so valuable. You carry it like water in your hands, trying not to spill a single word. I can’t understand your mind, but poetry gives me half a chance. It’s as near to you as I can get. That’s what literature is great for. You can be someone else for the journey of a poem.’
I ask Dónall for three pieces of advice he wishes he’d been given. He doesn’t think there’s any one way to tell a person how to write. Just reading, writing, and performing. Ad infinitum.
‘Read outside of your own sort of thing. Finnish poetry, Japanese poetry. See how people do it differently, how different cultures hold words. That’s really important. People think they’ll just come up and it’ll work automatically. No it won’t. Looking in the mirror is not the same as a real audience – coughing, smiling, frowning. With my dyslexia I read slowly. But I get to savour the words.’ He sighs and offers me a broad smile. ‘It’s too hard to explain poetry backwards. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Once you extract it to see what makes the frog tick, you’ve got a dead frog in your hands. If people asked if I’m a writer, rather than a poet, I’d say yes. Because I write every day, I can say I’m a writer. Whether I’m a good writer or a bad writer, that’s another matter.’
We’ve nearly reached the recorder’s 80-minute limit. Dónall apologises for the unstructured nature of our conversation, although I can’t help thinking that something of him would have been lost in the rigidity of my ambitiously bulletined interview plan of yesterday. Later in the week, I run into Dónall in the town centre. He’s happy to see me, and hands over the same leaflet I spotted at the launch. Submit something, he says, patting my shoulder.
The 1000 Monkeys are back on the 3rd of September, featuring Alan Franks and Patrick Osada, from 7.30pm at The Keep in Guildford, Surrey. Get there a little early to sign yourself up for one of the five-minute open mic slots. Entry is free. Find out more at the1000monkeys.com, or follow them on Facebook @the1000monkeyspoetry.
National Poetry Day Competition is a free competition held by Dempsey & Windle with a prize-giving and readings at the Guildford Waterstones on National Poetry Day, October 4. 1st prize is a Waterstones voucher and three books from Dempsey & Windle, runners up will receive book prizes, and the top 20 entries will be published in a pamphlet. Poems can be on any subject and must be previously unpublished and no more than 40 lines long. You may send up to 5 poems by email to dempseyandwindle@gmail.com. Please include name, address and phone number, and attach your poems in a single document (standard doc or docx format). Submissions close on the 31st of August. More information at the1000monkeys.com
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