Research Seminar 2: Retro-Spectres

For the second in our series of research seminars, the poet Rita Kelly gave a fascinating talk about her creative writing in what was described as a retrospective autoethnographic consideration. Entitled ‘Revisiting Thus the Glimpses of the Moon’, Kelly’s discussion explored a collection of her writings published half a century ago. Released at the beginning of her writing career, she reflected on the impressions left on her today through this temporal distance and the dual identity of her early work as both preserved in solid form and frozen in time. Kelly talked about the difference between these two states, and probed the negative associations of being frozen in time in a deeply personal and captivating talk. Setting out with questions about her original aim, or agenda, her conscious or unconscious impulse, and whether her style and tone were deliberately formed or organically shaped, this talk simultaneously provoked a deep reflection in her audience about the creative or corrosive powers of time. What became apparent during her talk, was how immersive and challenging an act was this engagement of looking back and re-analysing her original influences. Focusing on two particular stories within the collection, "The Whispering Arch & Other Stories" (published in 1986), she travelled back to her childhood and examined the inevitable presence of her father in her subsequent writings.

Rita Kelly has undoubtedly led a very interesting life. Growing up in Ballinasloe in east Galway, she took us along a ‘scenic route’, in her own words, not only through her fascinating early years, but back to her mother’s and grandmother’s, to map her relationship to language. Kelly attributes the atmospheric quality of her short story collection to these early years, and especially to her mother, whose language was peppered with Irish. As a bilingual writer, it was fascinating to learn how her grandmother was a native Irish speaker, but on moving to Boston, she deterred her children from speaking as Gaeilge and experiencing the same discrimination and communication barriers as herself. But this scenic path also describes Kelly’s route to a PhD by prior publication. Her success is such that her work has been taught on courses in Yale, been translated into German, Italian, French and Dutch, and been awarded the Patrick and Kathleen Kavanagh Memorial Award (“Rita Kelly: Portraits”).

Reading the introductions to two short stories - ‘The Intruders’ and ‘Soundtracks’ - Kelly admitted she was returning almost as much a reader as ourselves. Both stories were noticeably different in language, atmosphere and material, but shared a preoccupation with Kelly’s school days for reasons which became apparent. She described home life growing up with a father with mental health difficulties, and who ended up in an asylum. One particular incident left the room in silence, as Kelly related her experience finding him post-electric shock, frothing at the mouth. With such an image that usually appears in film, she conveyed how these episodes inevitably filtered into her work, leaving their imprint everywhere unconsciously. As Kelly reminded us, if we are too conscious, we are likely to be hindered in writing successfully about a memory from our lives. Just as she unorthodoxly began ‘Soundtracks’ with four words, and no verb, she stated she would never write that way now with all her years of experience and knowledge, and in some ways, with all the restraint that can have on creativity. But as Kelly said, her impetus in those years was to remove the tameness from her narrative, and such formative experiences with her father shaped her collection in tangible and immediate ways.

Kelly also brought up an interesting link between creativity and academia. The latter she asserts, is inherently creative, and I would have to agree. Quoting T.S. Eliot’s ‘good writers borrow, great writers steal’, she posits that it is much harder nowadays to create original material, not just because we are at a point of recycling, but because it is increasingly harder to filter out the noise of modern life. But as Kelly illuminates, this noise is what can make your work original and authentic when funnelled through your own unique circumstances. Influences including childhood memories, environment, and cultural exposure amongst others, all form a haze of white noise which can become easy to filter out but ultimately must be let in to enrich creative writing. Mentioning the Greek god of (amongst many other things) eloquence, boundaries, and dreams, Kelly made an interesting point about Hermes’ link (through the Latin hermeticus) to the phrase ‘hermetically sealed’. Considering eloquence, boundaries, and dreams are all innate to literature, this was a fascinating etymology for Kelly’s concept of her book as an insulated and complete form. Its own entity after publication, it ceases to live in the author's private sphere and enters the public; not only physically becoming someone else’s, but through marginalia growing intellectually further from its author through interpretation.

While Kelly reminded us that the author “gives to airy nothing/A local habitation and a name” (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” 5.1.16-17), once named it goes forth into the world with an independence and autonomy that no longer requires the authorial figure, and even scorns authorial intent. The first line of every story too, according to Kelly, becomes a ghost and must be discarded. Returning to her title – “Revisiting Thus the Glimpses of the Moon” – Kelly seems to identify with Hamlet’s sublunary experience at Elsinore (1.4.53). Referring to Hamlet senior’s revisiting ghost, Kelly expanded the quote to encompass that sublime sense we often feel in the presence of a full moon, when we seem to know that what we are doing is worthwhile, and gain validation from nature’s supreme symbol of illumination in darkness. This retrospective conjured spectres for both Kelly and us her audience, of those haunting presences that infiltrate our work at conscious and subconscious levels. Those social, recollective, and cultural forces that shaped us, once released from their hermetic enclosure though writing, gain powers to shape those they come in contact with, independent of their author.

Works Cited "Hermetic." New Oxford American Dictionary, edited by Stevenson, Angus, and Christine A.

Lindberg, Oxford UP, Oxford Reference, www-oxfordreference-com.ucc.idm.oclc.org/

view/10.1093/acref/9780195392883.001.0001/m_en_us1254595>.

Kelly, Rita. The Whispering Arch & Other Stories. Arlen House, Dublin, 1986.

“Rita Kelly: Portraits of Irish-Language Writers.” Portráidí, 10 Jun. 2011, www.portráidí.ie/en

/rita-kelly/.

Shakespeare, William. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The Norton Shakespeare, edited by

Stephen Greenblatt, 3rd ed., Norton, 2016, pp. 1048-1095.

Shakespeare, William. “Hamlet.” The Norton Shakespeare, edited by Stephen Greenblatt,

3rd ed., Norton, 2016, pp. 1764-1853.