The following is a short interview with Maeve O'Sullivan about her latest edition of Haiku poetry.
Q & A with Maeve O’Sullivan, haiku poet,
first appearing in Many Roads, September 2015
Q1: What's the
significance of the title of your latest collection of poetry?
A1: A Train Hurtles West comes from the
title haiku which is also part of the title sequence of the book. The full
haiku is a short one-liner: ‘mother dying
a train hurtles west’, and the sequence contains haiku I wrote in the
few months before and after her death in October 2014. I live in Dublin, in an
apartment over the train line heading south and west towards Cork, Limerick and
Galway, so I can literally see and hear all the trains as they go by.
I also like the open-ness of the
idea of heading west which could have as many interpretations as readers.
Traditionally it means dying or being destroyed or lost, which chimes with my
mother’s passing away, but in Ireland everyone loves heading west of the
Shannon, so it’s probably got more positive connotations here, as I’m sure it
has in other countries also. Of course the gold rush in the US also involved
people heading west.
Q2: How does "death" affect
your writing?
I guess bereavement is an experience
to draw from in relation to poems and haiku. Of course it is more intense (at
times) than other experiences, so possibly more dramatic and more
‘inspirational’. I’ve heard quite a few stories about poets who only started to
write after the death of a parent. I had been writing for fifteen years before
the death of my father, the first person I lost who was very close to me. There
is a sequence called Father’s Death Day
in my first collection of haiku, Initial
Response (2011, Alba Publishing) which has haiku written around the time of
my Dad’s death in 2010. That book is out of print but now available to read or
download free in the Haiku Foundation’s Digital Library.
Q3: What brought you to Buddhism?
I had an interest in Buddhism as a
young woman, but it was many more years before I became one. I suppose, like
lots of others, I was searching for answers. I liked the fact that Buddhism was
a non-theistic faith, also the notion of Buddha-nature, which is pretty much the
opposite of the Catholic doctrine of original sin (I was raised a Catholic).
I took refuge five years ago, in the
Kagyu tradition. It coincided with my mother’s dementia diagnosis, and I found
my dharma very helpful in dealing with that process, with its emphasis on
impermanence and acceptance. I also like its stress on pacifism and welcome
having an ethical code by which to live my life, one which values compassion
above success or materialism.
I’ve
aimed to explore the dharma gradually, at my own pace, and that has
worked for me so far. I enjoy attending talks and pujas, and am a member of a
dharma book club. I’m lucky enough to live near the Kagyu centre in Dublin.
I’ve also attended Ringu Tulku’s Summercamp in Portugal for the last three
summers, and love connecting with teachings, practices and other sangha members
in that way. He is a very wise and inspiring teacher, with a great sense of
humour.
Q4: In your sequence Portugal and Galicia, as elsewhere, you
have captured the essence of an experience. Does meditation help you
formulate ideas about experiences?
A2: I
would say that meditation and mindfulness practices help to keep me in the
moment (or yank me back there). Haiku are more about sensations than ideas, so
being in the moment helps you to increase awareness and concentrate on the
senses, resulting in what we call ‘haiku moments’, some of which result in
haiku. It’s no accident that the tradition of haiku poetry is partly rooted in
Zen Buddhism, or that many of the old Japanese haiku masters were also Buddhist
monks and nuns, or practitioners at least.
Q5: Your haiku is not in the traditional
5-7-5 syllabic structure. Does it matter?
Since English is a very different
language to Japanese, the 5-7-5 structure does not have to be adhered to. I’m
told the English syllable packs more in than the Japanese onji, or word section, so 10-14 syllables are considered the
equivalent in English-language haiku to the Japanese 17.
Q6: Does the Irish
tradition of poetry - Yeats, Heaney, Colum - influence you at all?
It probably influences my
longer-form poetry more than my shorter-form poetry (O’Sullivan’s first
longer-form poetry collection, Vocal
Chords, was published by Alba Publishing in 2014). No Irish poet can avoid
the shadows of Yeats, Kavanagh, Hartnett, Heaney et al, or the influences of
the living greats such as Longley, Mahon, Boland, Kinsella, Montague, Ní
Dhomhnaill and others. We’re a nation of poets who have to find our own
individual voices while embracing those wonderful influences.
Maeve
O’Sullivan’s new collection of haiku
poetry, A Train Hurtles West,
is available from the publisher, Alba Publishing (info@albapublishing.com). 30% of profits go to
Ringu Tulku Rinpoche’s charity Rigul Trust (www.rigultrust.org). You can find Maeve
on Twitter (@maeveos). Her blog post Why Haiku?
is available here: http://bogmanscannon.com/2015/06/12/why-haiku-by-maeve-o-sullivan-of-haiku-ireland/
