Q&A with Maddison O’Donnell
A new week means new fabulous poetry to share with you! This time, we are publishing two poems from Maddison O’Donnell. We loved O’Donnell’s poetic voice — its authority and almost mystical understanding of the world. Both ‘Goosegog’ and ‘A Prayer to Saint Stachybotrys for Mercy’ carry such depth, and we’re delighted to dig into these poems with O’Donnell and one of our poetry editors, Lara Tokar.
I have to start by saying I absolutely love your poetry. It is so unique and fanciful. I would love to hear about what led you to writing poetry, and if you have had any big influences in your writing.
Thank you, Lara! What a lovely compliment to receive.
My path to writing poetry is bound up in my writing journey more generally. Writing has been a massive part of my life since before I could even hold a pen (thanks to relatives who kindly dictated stories I spoke aloud!), and I won several writing competitions – some of them poetry-based – throughout my schooling years. I owe a lot of that success to the influence of a former English teacher, Mrs Walters, who consistently encouraged my imagination by never placing restrictions on the stories and poems I produced.
As a teenager, and later, a university student, my writing outlook changed. I took more advanced creative writing courses, in which the rigour, critique, and subject matter were obviously a bit more academic in nature. Instead of bolstering my passion for poetry and stories, this time of my life left me feeling jaded. As a result, my writing transitioned to a more private practise: novels, novellas, short stories, and poems penned and then stowed away in a drawer because I thought they were too quirky or off-kilter for any serious writing pursuits.
It wasn’t until I got older and eschewed the notion that I needed to write with the approval of others in mind (which, in hindsight, so wrongly but perhaps stereotypically characterised my young adult years), that I found my niche. While I still like to keep a healthy bit of privacy around my craft, I simultaneously love the fact that writers can carve out little hollows for themselves in which their particular flavour of work is allowed to flourish.
Your poetry has such a strong and distinct voice, playful and self-aware. Would you say your poetic voice is something you consciously shape or something that emerges naturally? Do you see your work existing in a particular tradition?
To be honest, I don’t often consciously think about my poetic voice, which I suppose points more towards it being something that emerges naturally. I’m particularly interested in exploring the interplay of contradictory ideas through poetry, which maybe lends a bit of whimsy and strangeness to the voice that emerges. But at the end of the day, I don’t endeavour to write anything that takes itself so seriously that it can’t simultaneously be a bit mischievous.
As far as existing in a particular tradition: I’m not sure. It took me a long while, and plenty of rejection, to finally find the right space for my writing. Sometimes I feel it exists in a weird in-between grey area that can be hard to pin down. I tend to write both fiction and poetry that might traditionally sit within the horror or speculative genres, but I have a hard time putting restrictions on my own work. Sometimes I like writing about the intricacies and beauties of the natural world; other days, I write visceral, nightmare-inspired stories of vampirism and psychological disturbance. Almost everything I write has some darker element to it.
Both of your poems lean heavily on sensory detail, from taste and texture in ‘Goosegog’ to smell, sight and the bodily in ‘Saint Stachybotrys’. Do senses typically guide your writing?
Most of my writing typically starts as a thought or a concept, and then I use senses to fill in the details to round out the idea and bring it to life.
‘Goosegog’ was a bit out of the ordinary for me, as it was inspired by the senses from the get-go. I remember the poem emerging after I’d tried a particularly delicious gooseberry fool in Liverpool (which, for those who may be unfamiliar, is a type of dessert). It got me thinking about the components of the dish: a wild ingredient transformed into something more refined. The sour gooseberries go through a process of change in structure, texture, and flavour. They become more edible when you cook them down and mix them with sugar, yogurt, and cream to form a syllabub.
From there, I started making connections between the sensory components of this dessert and the process of aging: the undiluted wildness of childhood, the tempering of that wonder as we age, and what we might lose or gain in that process. I love that the dish itself is called a ‘fool’, too – it made me question foolishness as a concept: both the myriad ways we define it, but also what we consider to be ‘foolish’ in the context of journeying from youth to adulthood. Some might say that aging, too, is an inherently sensory experience, so perhaps it’s fitting that the writing of this poem was so governed by the senses.
Both poems beautifully find the extraordinary in the ordinary, whether it’s a fruit or a household hazard. I’m particularly fascinated by the way you were able to turn the disturbing experience of having mould in your house into such a whimsical and funny piece. What is your process like when deciding what to take on as the focus of the poem?
The focus usually reveals itself organically via some thought or idea that keeps worming its way through my consciousness until I do something about it. In the case of “Saint Stachybotrys”, the poem’s thesis was based on a series of repetitive thoughts about – as you ascertained – a struggle with a particularly egregious case of black mould. At the time of its writing, I was living in a worryingly damp rental home in Galway. I had bleached, scrubbed, anti-moulded, and sugar-washed the walls for maybe the fourth time in the space of a week to no avail – this stubborn mould just kept appearing at a truly astonishing rate. It was almost otherworldly.
There were a lot of potent emotions running through me at the time, both towards my current living situation, and towards the looming, consuming monster that is the housing crisis here in Ireland. By that point, I’d moved past anger and frustration towards this deep, searing feeling of defeat that was almost religious in its intensity. The poem emerged from that psychological space of paralysis and humility – how was I going to singlehandedly (or even with help that unfortunately never materialised) eradicate this black mould when its spores had already microscopically colonised half the house? It seemed like the only option left to me was prayer: interceding with this massive mycological spectre to stop consuming my walls and rafters and making me physically ill.
And so, I think the idea of characterising the mould as this apparition that was both seen and unseen, immense in its gravity and dominion over my house and my life, felt appropriate. The Latin commonality between what we find in liturgical texts, as well as the Latin we use today for scientific classification, worked well to tie the poem together in title. The process of deciding what to write about may have come directly from a real-life disaster, but the catharsis of writing whimsy into something so objectively horrible was quite fun!
Looking ahead, are there new subjects, forms or experiments in voice and style that you’re planning to explore in your poetry?
Most of the poems I’ve written are told from the vantage point of someone or something outside myself, which I’d like to continue exploring because I find it so enjoyable. I love writing poems from the perspective of a character, whether it be one from literature/folklore or a character I create myself. In the past I’ve written from the point-of-view of Dr. Frankenstein, biblical Eve, a spider living in my car, and my very own sleep-paralysis demon, so I’d like to continue the exploration of someone else’s voice in my writing. I enjoy the out-of-body anonymity of it; there is something about channelling another voice that allows for so much experimentation and imagination. Beyond that, who knows! I’m open to whatever comes my way, as long as it’s not another bout of black mould.
