Off the Record! Poetry as an instruction manual on how to live

GROWING up, Victoria Kennefick used poetry as an “instruction manual about how to live.”

In Eat or We Both Starve, she tackles consumption, whether related to food, or the past – and how to not be consumed by it.

“I suppose it’s a book that has been my whole lifetime in the making. I wrote a pamphlet, and I realised as I was writing it, that it was mostly about the death of my father in 2010, but kernels of the collection of Eat or We Both Starve were already present there.”

In her first collection, the Shanagarry native explores consumption, vegetarianism, sex, and being a young woman in an Irish Catholic society.

“There are elements about being consumed by a culture and a society, and yet having to be perfect in a sense. Those ideas were percolating in my head. There were little hints in my earlier poems, that these themes would become very important for me,” she said.

Busy Limerick post office unable to open due to circumstances beyond control

As a child, she found reading, particularly poetry, to be like an instruction manual about how to live. “The bigger life, beyond brushing your teeth, eating your dinner and tying your shoelaces,” she explains.

Sylvia Plath’s poem ‘Ariel’ made a big impression on a teenage Victoria. “I was so shocked by it, so impressed and excited by how unafraid she was to be inclined. To see her write about such difficult and embarrassing topics was revelatory.”

On October 18, Victoria did a poetry reading at the University of Limerick. “I've had the wonderful opportunity of doing workshops with Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, she really assisted me in moving through a kind of difficult creative period.”

As her grandad was from Pallaskenry, she’s always happy to pay Limerick a visit. “I feel a huge fondness for Limerick and a certain kinship with it.”

Poetry is arguably one of the most vulnerable forms of writing; one could wonder how much of an autobiographical element there is to it.

“I think that's a really important question as a writer because, it might sound like the poet is expressing their own biographical details. To a degree they are, but they're not necessarily the speaker in the poem.”

However, Victoria believes it is easy for an audience to get caught up with the idea that poems are autobiographical. “I think there's always going to be that level of distance, and that's when art exists between the speaker and the poem itself,” she says.

In her 20s, when her father became ill with cancer, Victoria developed an eating disorder.

As a writer, she wants to make sure she protects herself, while creating something that lives and exists separately from her. “I think you are ready to write about what you write about when you write about it. I do think they were certain topics that I found difficult to approach,” she says.

“I didn't know what angle to comment on them from, I didn’t know whether it would be exposing myself or my family and trying to acknowledge that while also creating something.”

Everyone has an outlet. For some, it can be running, sailing, or crocheting. For Victoria, it’s poetry. “I think poetry is essential for me because it helps me make sense of things, but also it gives me a reason to go on because I'm like ‘OK, I'm experiencing this really difficult time, but I'm going to write about it'. And at least, something will come out of it."

As the conversation comes to an end, this reporter wonders if there is someone she wishes would read her work?

From the whole wide world, she mentions Florence and the Machine. “I think I would really like Florence Welch to read it. And also Cillian Murphy because he’s very much engaged in this project of empathy and in how we can curate and expand our own.”