by Sarah J. Sloat

Talk Poetry, by Mairéad Byrne

“My ambition to talk only in poetry hasn’t been completely achieved.”

Mairéad Byrne’s collection of prose poems, “Talk Poetry” (Miami University Press 2007), is going on 3 years old but it’s still as fresh as the smell of a new car. The bright green cover should clue you in: think energy. Think breath mints for the brain.

Like a lot of her fans, I discovered Byrne’s poetry through her blog, which provides temporary housing to a number of the poems in the collection. One of the first things you’ll notice about the poems is the voice — funny, open and ready to take on the world. Everything is fair game for her, even terrorism, as in this excerpt from “The Tired Terrorist”:

The terrorist was tired. Goddammit he said, I could do with some bacon & eggs. He was sick to the back teeth of killing. It was ugly. He’d had enough. He laid down his shotgun, his nail-gun, his knife. He emptied his pockets. He unzipped his jacket. He thought of the spare room in his mother’s house.

What I particularly like about these poems is the diction. They read like someone talking, and can careen off into unselfconscious monologues, or bend away on a hilarious tangent. This, for example, is the beginning of “Quick Movie”:

I had to watch the movie very fast because I was going out. The valedictorian. The guy. His sister. Her father. Inexplicable love. The break-up. Jail time. On a plane to England. Good movie!

Or this from “The Russian Week”:

Inside this week is another week & inside that week is another week & inside that week is another week & inside that is another week & inside that is another week & inside that week is another week so that instead of 7 days each week is actually composed of 7 weeks each one a little smaller than its container week but still workable & with rosy cheeks.

Byrne’s poetry is highly original, and very inviting because it’s like eavesdropping on an interesting conversation. It makes you want to get a good look at the person talking, to find out their take on things. In this book, you’ll find Byrne’s take on divorce, parking, family photographs, shingles and whether you can die from eating pancakes.

Although I think her poetry speaks for itself, I asked the poet about the meaning of “Talk Poetry.” Is it a kind of poetry, or an invitation, as in “let’s talk poetry?”

What’s meant by the title Talk Poetry?

On my blog, “Heaven,” in 2005, I began to notice a few poems which mentioned the phrase or concept talk poetry. The first was about my plan to learn or improve on languages: Italian (2005-2010), French (2010-2013), Spanish (2013-2018), Irish (2018-2021), Turkish (2021-2026), and my concurrent realization that all I really wanted to talk was poetry. That poem was actually called “Talk Poetry.” Then there was another one that year:

Writing Practice

I write every day.
But not really.
But really.
This is a new way of speaking.
Talk poetry.

And, in early 2006, this, which doesn’t mention talk poetry but it’s the same idea:

A New Way of Talking

Poetry is important poetry is not important.
I am an important poet I am not important.

He was indifferent as to what might happen to his pictures even
though what might happen
to them affected him profoundly, well that is the way one is, why not,
one is like that.

Welcome to our enclosure.

One of the good things about poetry is that it lets you say contradictory things, and multiple things, at once. Another thing that happened in 2004-2005 was Brendan Lorber asked me to do a talk/poetry reading at the Zinc Bar in New York. Instead of doing a talk, and then a reading, I put the poems into the talk. It was such a relief. Really, I wanted to talk only in poetry.

Also in 2005, I did a radio interview with William Gillespie, who had a show on Brown Student Radio, and I answered every question with a poem. I had a big sheaf of them with me and I had to think quick. Ideally I would write a colossal swathe of poems and my memory would be sharp enough to pluck them out as needed. I think this would be better than the way I usually talk.

It’s not just a question of talking only in poetry. It’s also the relief of excluding everything that isn’t poetry. My ambition to talk only in poetry hasn’t been completely achieved. But poetry is where my talk is most alive, or at least most like me. I’m aware it’s kind of one-way traffic. Following from my ambition to talk only in poetry, however, came an intense interest in audience, and a posture of listening.

One of these years I might even get a conversation going. I know I wrote the stuff but, for me, it’s like the poems are zones, meeting places where spirits can flash up. It’s very talky, and material, but that materiality (which I also love) can clear in an instant and open on joy, which is shared. That’s what it’s about.

Order “Talk Poetry” from Miami University Press. Learn more about Mairéad Byrne by visiting her blog.

Sarah J. Sloat lives in Germany, where she works in news. Sarah likes red wine, olives and stinky cheese, rather like Marlon Brando in The Godfather. Her chapbook “In the Voice of a Minor Saint” was published by Tilt Press in 2009. She writes at The Rain in My Purse.