Kevin Ireland
Cover of A Month At The Back Of My Brain: a third memoir (Quentin Wilson Publishing, 2022) by Kevin Ireland.
Dear Kevin Ireland, sadly, died today
I wrote this piece about Kevin Ireland’s third memoir a few weeks ago, He knew it was to be posted here today. So, with gratitude for his writing and his kindness, this has become a tribute to his memory. My thoughts are with his wife Janet Wilson, his sons, grandchildren and friends.
For almost fifteen years now, I’ve been going as often as I can to a small London-based NZ Book Circle. During London lockdown 2020, the group went online. One bonus of this shift is that the author of the book of the month can be invited, whether or not they are currently in the UK. And in April 2023, the book was A Month At The Back of My Brain: a third memoir (Quentin Wilson Publishing, 2022) by the poet Kevin Ireland. At this very special book circle event, Kevin spoke about his writing method (and editing process), including a deceptively simple technique that Frank Sargeson shared with him. What a privilege to have been at this group, where Kevin was so happy to see everyone and we were so happy to see him, and hear him and his wife Janet Wilson talk about his latest work.
In order to prepare for this writing circle, I reread A Month At The Back of My Brain; and I kept thinking how very helpful this memoir would be for anyone writing a book. Not necessarily just memoirists and poets, but also perhaps short story writers and even novelists. Because every chapter/day contains a (true) story, as well as a little something (never dull) about the author’s writing method – how he invokes memories and images. It made me think of Proust, who was fascinated by optical devices, like the magic lantern, stereoscope, kinetoscope – and kaleidoscope.
Kevin Ireland writes, on day two, about the first time he looked through a kaleidoscope: ‘I was dazzled and thrilled – there were no other words. I can still remember how I jumped up and down with excitement’ (p. 15). And further down the same page, after using the ‘eyes-shut, blanking-out’ writing method that he learnt from his friend and writing mentor Frank Sargeson, Kevin opened his eyes and began: ‘to scribble down the first images that came to mind. A swirl of glinting memories ended in capricious confusion’.
Here’s another example of a magical result of using the blanking out method, from day four: ‘I blinked and found I had been transported into the clouds. It was like drawing back a curtain – I stepped forward and there I was, inside the Mai Thai’ (p. 24). (A restaurant in Tāmaki Makaurau, where some writers from the NZSA used to meet.)
A bonus of the book is that it contains several poems by the author, including: one in memory of his maternal grandfather, Joseph McKenney; one dedicated to Peter Bland; one to Karl Stead; and one, ‘Today’s love poem’, for Kevin Ireland’s wife, Janet Wilson.
An intelligent, witty, entertaining book that wears its literary cloak lightly, by a poet who didn’t take himself too seriously but took the writing very seriously.
I am grateful for such writing – and for the simple genius behind, for example, Chapter 25, ‘In praise of an absence of action …’:
‘in which nothing much happens. A kind of day off. And why not? It’s about time that writers shared more frequently and honestly the truth that visits them often as they slave away at their desks’
This chapter is about writing and not writing, and the art of selection, and of not dismissing the ‘plain and uneventful’ (p.145). It finishes with one of my favourite poems by Kevin Ireland: ‘An unforgettable day’. I was lucky to hear Kevin read it at a New Zealand Studies Network event back in 2013, at Keynes Library, Birkbeck School of Arts, in Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, London. This reading happened not long after the publication of Kevin’s Selected Poems 1963-2013 (Steele Roberts, 2013). There seems to me such kindness in the gentle humour behind this poem. Thank you, Kevin.
You can listen to Kevin Ireland reading ‘An Unforgettable Day’ at The Poetry Archive.
