Writer in Residence Shares His Funny Words

The months of February and March were busy for a number of folks in Galway. However, if you had a chance to stop by 126 Gallery & Studios, you would have come across Poetry Your Way, a four-week-long series of poetry workshops intended to bring writers from the beginning stages of a poem to writing and performing poetry, in their very own way.

As one of the artists in residence, Liam McBrearty hosted this weekly workshop, providing attendees with prompts of various genres and themes, encouraging writers to think outside of the box. I had the opportunity to sit down with Liam to learn more about him and his journey with poetry.

LM: I am originally from Donegal and am now living and working in Galway. I have a background in psychology, and I’m currently pursuing psychotherapy. Aside from that, for the last couple years, I’ve been writing poetry, largely for verbal performance. I got into open mic spaces, and especially ones that are more music-focused because I can just have poetry as a side bit. From there, I started doing more shows, I started doing workshops as well to facilitate for other people. I’m a jack of all trades really (laughing).

SS: So, how did you get into writing? You said that just happened a few years ago?

LM: Yes, just over two years ago, in March 2024. I was working on short-term contracts, so I was in a contract gap where I still had a job coming but it needed to be processed, so I had this period of time where I wasn’t working. I just shortly before had dipped my toe into writing, and I guess I just had this time to fill, because I wasn’t actually going to be job hunting, but I also had so much time on my hands, so I started writing. Then what was really encouraging for me was that I had such an immediate access to an audience in Galway through the open mic scene, because literally the first couple of poems I wrote, I had somewhere to read them and hear laughter or applause. On a human level, just getting the dopamine from people telling me to keep going, I think that’s probably the real reason of why I stuck with it.

Galway has been a hot spot for the Arts and has a great community for writers. This very community has created some great opportunities for Liam.

LM: The cynical way of putting it is, it’s who you know, not what you know. Every option that was ever given to me, everything I got to do was through community building. Even just to know what options are out there, I can apply for something, and I can still get through it because of solid works and solid applications, but to even know that that exists or to even know what resources to have. Friends to look over things for example, that all just comes from meeting other people in Galway, which is a great place to get into the Arts and to build that community I find.

Though Liam has found great success with poetry, it isn’t the only art form he has dabbled in. Performing music covers at open mics was how he first entered the Galway arts.

LM: I was in no way pursuing the Arts in any way or even writing anything original. But doing that for years now, I made the transition and had the idea of ‘what if I tried poetry?’, so yeah it’s funny I think that once I started writing poetry that became something I wanted to pursue and get good at, whereas the music stays there as its own little fun thing. For a period of time, I wasn’t playing and then I brought it back and I was like ‘oh wait there’s this little way of thinking’ you know? I also really like visual arts even though I don’t practice much, but then when I do it I’m like ‘oh this is different’, you know it’s another way of thinking about things.

I’ve had the pleasure of hearing Liam perform his poetry on numerous occasions during the Poetry Your Way workshops. I found many of his poems provided unique perspectives that I had previously never considered. Naturally, I wondered what inspires his poetry.

LM: When I started writing, the most insistent thing was that I was thinking about how it would sound in a room, where would the laughs and the pauses be, and all that. I did notice after a while that the first couple of poems I wrote had a familial relationship come up, or a parent-child relationship. Even though I wasn’t directly writing about my family it was always in there, even just a single line that would come up and I was like ‘mmh, that must come from somewhere.’ So, there was that, but to think more broadly I asked a friend once, because I was asked by somebody else what I write about. So, I called another person like, ‘you know a lot of my poetry, what do I write about?’ and they gave me a very nice tag line which was ‘largely about people and how much you like/love them.’ Which I think is probably accurate, I try to write quite optimistically about people—either individual characters or people I’ve observed, like people-watching—or just more broadly about humans.

The topic of family seems to have become a theme in much of his work.

LM: I was thinking this once, I said to a friend: ‘having some kind of feeling or experience about a family is the only thing every human being has. Even if someone doesn’t have a family, that’s a family thing.’ So, that came up a lot for me and it’s just something that I always gravitate towards, and besides I think it’s a humanist piece, because I don’t know, am I very optimistic about people? I try to be I guess; it comes out in whatever I write, so I guess it makes me feel better and I hope it makes other people feel better to write optimistically.

SS: Do you have a specific creative process you go through when you’re writing?

LM: I don’t really, I almost wish I had one because I could just do that, but I think it depends on the kind of poem I’m doing. I think some of the better poetry I write just starts with a feeling that I don’t have somewhere else to go with. So, I just try to write about that and build something around that. I also have a few good-sounding lines that just float around in my head sometimes, so that would be the other way: just combinations of words that scratch my brain and I want to find a home for. The other quite common thing I do is that I write in free hand for the first couple of drafts and then the editing stage happens when I’m up for getting it digitalized. I definitely try to start with the feeling and the emotion first, and then I’ll let my brain get in the way when I’m doing the editing afterwards.

SS: Are there any authors or musicians that you look up to when you’re thinking about your work?

LM: I shared a poem with my brother, and he called it ‘very Tom Waits’ and he had no idea that that was a huge compliment to me, so Tom Waits is probably one. I also have one that is so recent and contemporary: Doechii, the rapper, I just can’t stop listening to the rhythm, the energy of her lyrics and rhymes. Aside from that it’s fairly broad, I guess another one would probably be Pat Ingoldsby, the Irish poet who has a very humorous and accessible poetry. He passed away recently, but he used to sell everything on the streets himself, so his works are just scattered across the country now, but I love his poetry as well.

In March, Liam finished his residency with the 126 Gallery & Studios where he led Poetry Your Way. During this time, he had collaborated with the artist Sarah Lewtas, who created a participatory art piece called Cadis. I asked Liam how he felt about his time in the residency.

LM: It was great. It was a bit unorthodox because, in theory, poetry was my art form, but what I pitched was poetry-writing workshops. So, the actual art that I was doing was just facilitation. I guess I didn’t know entirely what to expect from week one, I knew I had only planned out one week, and concepts for the next week in advance, so I could just respond to what the group wanted. But I was just so blown away by the feedback and what everyone brought to the table. I was really pleased with it. The final showcase and collaborating with Sarah as well was wonderful because I don’t know a lot about the visual arts, I guess I just don’t have the language for it, but Sarah brought so much inspiration in her pieces and Cadis. I could just learn from her experience as well, we got to speak a couple times. So yeah, it was brilliant to take something that has been a weird little me activity which is writing, and then have this engagement. Being with the same group every week as well you get to build that link with people, it was just brilliant so I would be interested in doing something similar again.

SS: Yes, I enjoyed the workshop as well, it was so helpful for me and I’m sure for many other poets that were there, but what prompted that workshop?

LM: I guess it was only when I was thinking of the title that the theme solidified, which was ‘poetry your way’ because it was something that I had said over and over again, anytime I was giving a speech over the residency: if you have a capacity for language you have a capacity to write poetry. The second point about that is that when you have a blank page you are suffering over what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ to write on that page, so I just really wanted to give people the kind of crazy confidence that I seem to have when I started writing. To try and hold on to it the best I can, because I think that is the biggest requirement really. It would be really difficult to write if you start tying yourself up in knots and start thinking about what is or isn’t worth writing about. It was also just to bring out a group of people with various levels of writing experience as well, some who may not be familiar with writing poetry at all, I just wanted to give them that sense of ‘yes, what you want to write about is worth listening to.’ You know, everyone else in the group would listen to it as well, so I really enjoyed it.

SS: Yes, it was great, and I think a lot of people probably benefitted from the opportunity to have new prompts and new ideas to write about, and then to share them as well, I’m sure people gained some confidence with that, is that something that you felt too?

LM: Yes, I feel like there is a little bit of therapy in that, because I feel like saying something out loud in front of other sentient humans has an effect. The same people could have written something and read it at home out loud, or in front of the mirror or whatever, but to actually hear other people react to it and clap to it, just knowing that other people have heard it, there’s a different kind of energy in that. So, I definitely wanted to give that chance to people, because I know how great it was for me when I started out.

SS: How do you combine that psychological, therapeutic side with your poetry? Do you combine it at all?

LM: Sometimes I guess, I’m not sure because I could be doing it without realizing as well. As I said I write a lot about people, so it may not actually be the expertise of one world influencing the other but maybe it’s the same appetite in a way: I’m just very interested in looking closely at someone, and listening to somebody, and that is often source of poetry. I get a lot from people-watching or just from describing somebody that I might know—a friend or a family member—in a detailed loving way, it’s almost like a portrait. So, maybe not the same expertise but I think it’s the same appetite that leads me to both worlds.

Liam also participated in the Working Writers’ event, which I was curious to know more about.

LM: We were introduced through Eva, who was the curator at the 126, and it was scheduled for after, so it was really a bit of a coda because it was right after I finished my residency. That was brilliant as well for me, because I think it was funny to be part of a novelist and an essayist group, both of them who had been ‘real’ writers in my mind like writers-writers. It was really humbling, having the possibility to learn from their experience and just to bounce off each other. I said after we had spoken a bit that I could just stay there for an hour, I just really liked it.

I’ve enjoyed hearing Liam share his poetry, but I was eager to learn about his experience with publishing work.

SS: You’ve been doing a lot of spoken word poetry, have you done much with publishing?

LM: Yes, for the last couple of months I’ve been working more on written submissions, we’ve had a few community publications for pride in the previous years, the last two years there was one in Galway and then one in Belfast shortly after I started. I also have one going in Ropes, the student literary journal. It’s funny because it took me a while when I started doing that to actually work out what a different medium print poetry is. I also wasn’t reading a lot of poetry when I started. I was listening to more music, or watching things so I was much more used to spoken language, and that was what I was practicing, so I had to spend time reading poetry and get used to that as a medium because it’s completely different to think about.

When I was initially writing poetry, it didn’t matter how the words looked like on a page, I just wanted to be able to read it aloud, so punctuation didn’t really matter as long as I was reading it right. But then when I started thinking about print and publication, there’s a whole different language to that. From that I also started to entertain the possibility of some kind of pamphlet or collection but that’s still in process.

SS: I hope to see more! Are there any events in the future that we could hope to see you participating in?

LM: I’ll definitely be at the launch of the Ropes journal, as I will be featured in that, so definitely worth to check out Ropes, or get yourself a copy. This other one is related to another medium but it’s Fusebox comedy, it’s a comedy open-mic so we have some poets, and poet-like people in there as well.

The Fusebox comedy event will take place at Electric Nightclub, May 29th. The show is at 8:00pm. Doors will open at 7:30pm.

SS: Do you have any writing-related projects that you’re working on specifically at the moment? Any big goals, anything that you’re working towards or hoping to achieve?

LM: Yes, my big goal at the moment would be the pamphlet, because I have so many individual poems so just writing more connective tissue with the existing ones. I don’t want to say too much in terms of titles or themes, but that’s my main goal for now, get that finished first, and then possibly put it out there.

SS: Where can we find more of your work? Is it all waiting to be in the pamphlet?

LM: I don’t know if there are still copies available, but there was Poetry with Pride, the Belfast zine which I think is still available online, there was also Queer Verse in Galway.

I look forward to reading more of Liam’s work in Ropes and hopefully, very soon, his poetry pamphlet. For now, his work can be found on his Instagram @liamsfunnywords.