'Poetry is a scary word for so many...' Acclaimed Donegal-based author Meg Grehan introduces her latest novel for young readers The Brightest Star, written entirely in verse.
Language and I have had a long and tempestuous relationship. As a child I found a love of poetry in my speech and drama classes. Choosing poems to perform for my exams and competitions was very serious business. I never felt more real or more myself than when I was on a stage reciting a poem I loved, finding the dips and swoops in the language, the emotion in that particular assembly of words. Rhyme was a playground, a swing that consistently brought you back, again and again, until you were ready to leap. The sound words could form delighted me, a word with bite grew fangs, a softer sibilant offering could soothe. I loved language, I loved words, I loved poetry. As a teenager I played more with my own words, I wrote my own poems. They were clumsy and try-hard but they were mine and I loved them. I loved the process of finding the right word to fill a gap, the right sound to evoke a feeling, the right structure to tell a tale.
Watch: Meg Grehan on how to get into poetry
When I decided to write my first book, The Space Between, my world was the quietest it had ever been and poetry was a friend I hadn't texted back in quite a while. I was in my early twenties and agoraphobic, stuck in my house, stuck in my head. My wonderful partner would head off to work in the morning and I would close the curtains the second she turned the corner. I would read in silence. I would put the tv on, some YouTube video of someone living a life, but they felt so far away. Mostly my life was quiet. I would go hours and hours without speaking. When I decided to write about a character like me, someone stuck, it felt like a lie to use all of the words that prose demanded. It was just too noisy. It just wasn’t true. So I turned to an old friend and found them ready and waiting. I wrote in verse. I found the poetry of the life I was living and I poured it into my writing. That book being published changed my life, got me unstuck and out into the world. Verse became my closest friend but my relationship was still to experience some bumps in the road.
I wrote my next book, The Deepest Breath, in verse and it felt like a reunion, a homecoming. But the timing and writing of my third book, Baby Teeth, are a blur, a smudged mess of ink in my head. The pandemic was happening and my mental health was drooping. This time is a foggy memory but I remember two things very clearly. One: I stopped being able to speak. Two: I wrote.
Good verse invites you in and guides you through, it takes the lead. All you have to do is enjoy the experience.
My speaking vanished with my breath during a panic attack and refused to come back for months and months. I would open my mouth and try my hardest but only guttural, desperate little sounds would come out. Language had left me. It felt claustrophobic and ironic and I hated it. But once again, verse was there. I filled Baby Teeth with all the sound my life was missing. I leaned into language. My fingers said what my mouth couldn’t and it was a life-saver. Writing, especially in verse, allowed me to express myself when it felt like all ability had been taken away.
When my voice came back my relationship with language was, oddly, in a much better place. I wrote another book, The Lonely Book, verse again of course. It was a softer experience. Life was quiet in a kinder way. Language was a partner to me again.
Watch: My 6am morning routine as a writer
When it came time to write book five, The Brightest Star, I found that verse had gifted me something lovely: confidence. It took a handful of books but suddenly I knew that this was something I could do, I could use language in my own way, I could express myself however I wanted, however worked for me. Writing The Brightest Star was a beautiful experience, I felt sure and assured, I felt I knew my characters and myself, I felt sturdy in my relationship with words and language and expression. It might seem audacious to say that writing in verse has brought me here, but it has. Finding the right outlet for my thoughts has been freeing and invigorating.
Writing in verse can seem intimidating. There are no rules in free-verse and yet it can feel as though the rules are endless. Poetry is a scary word for so many. Our childhoods are full of poetry and sound and language but at some point we begin to believe poetry just isn’t for us. I think free verse is the perfect way to fight this feeling. It is fun and liberating and instinctual. All you have to do is follow your gut and your pen. It’s such an accessible form of writing, for both readers and writers.
Good verse invites you in and guides you through, it takes the lead. All you have to do is enjoy the experience. Writing in verse is a similar story, you just have to let yourself go where you want to go and do what you want to do. If a word wants to have a line all to itself, let it! If you want to mash all your words together just because that's how you feel they should be, do it! It's all about expression. Every word is deliberate, every word carries a meaning and purpose, but that doesn’t mean you need to agonise over each one. Trust yourself and trust your words. Mostly, do whatever you need to do to create what you need to create, to give yourself what you need to give yourself. I needed a connection to the world, I needed confidence and I needed to breathe. Writing in verse brings me all three.
The Brightest Star is published by Little Island
