EXCLUSIVE AUTHOR INTERVIEW 

Lani O'Hanlon

Lani O’Hanlon is a movement artist, writer, and poet, born and raised in Cork who currently lives in West Waterford. She teaches meditative, bodily movement and creative writing in collaboration with The Arts Office in Waterford City and Waterford Healing Arts. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. Lani O’Hanlon´s talent has been recognised several times through the years, in occasions such as when she was the Winner of the Poetry Ireland Trócaire Award (2022), selected for Poetry Ireland Introductions (2020), the Recipient of the Arts Council Agility Award (2022) or the Participatory Project Award (2023). The books she has published are Dancing the Rainbow (2007), The Little Theatre (2017) and Landscape of the body (2023).
Picture taken from - ​https://images.app.goo.gl/YEBReEhUTjvCsD7WA
Q; Ever since you’ve begun your writing journey, In your view, has the literature world become more welcoming to female writers in recent years?

​A; In some ways, the literature world has become much more welcoming to female writers because poets like Eavan Boland and Paula Meehan broke through the visible and less visible constrictions and constraints and women's novels are thriving, though it is more women who read them than men but my husband reads every one. And there are more female editors now. However, I hear women speaking and writing things in private groups that will not go into the public domain. To write about the Magdalene Laundries now is acceptable in our culture but wasn’t some years ago. However, other subjects are emerging now where there is huge censorship and silencing. People are afraid to speak out or debate certain issues because they are afraid of being cancelled by powerful lobby groups. So that never changes and it influences what all people write. In other cultures women are censored, silenced and tortured for writing A film director friend told me that the women in Iran have stopped wearing headscarves (she is an Irish
woman married to an Iranian man and was on a visit to his relatives) so she stopped wearing her scarf also except at the roadblocks! And her daughter was too afraid not to wear hers. I think that a woman writing about this would find it hard to find a publisher even in Ireland as the publisher wouldn't want to offend anyone or they might be afraid they would be accused of being racist. This is a form of censorship as some women are very happy to wear their scarves as it feels part of a culture they love and respect whereas in Iran and other countries, it is used as a way to control women.

Q; From your own experience, how have the challenges that women in literature face, particularly when it comes to recognition and visibility, changed since you first started your writing journey?

A; In many ways, they have changed but you can still see the way women are chosen because they are young and female editors are also inclined to do this, publishers looking for the next best sexy thing. There is still a barrier for the mature woman who is writing truth to power unless she has already established herself as a writer when young. And I see older women who started writing after their families were reared who may never have a collection of short stories, essays or poetry, published even though their poems etc may be published in the best journals etc. There is ageism but many of the independent publishers know this and work to bring balance. I heard one editor say that the publishers should be ashamed of themselves for not publishing older women. There are efforts to publish more marginalised writers but sometimes this can seem to be like a box-ticking exercise and does not seem to include writers who may be marginalised in ways that are not so obvious eg writers on low incomes who cannot afford to enter competitions and subscribe to all the different journals or rural writers who cannot afford to travel to the cities and meet publishers which helps them get published. However, if a woman takes this into her own hands she can find her own audience online and go directly to them. Also, writers who put the work in and self-publish high-quality genre novels are earning more than writers who are
signed by regular publishers. Also, audiobooks are selling more and I intend to do more audio work and go directly to listeners.

Q; 3) Do you think women approach art and storytelling differently from men? If so, have you noticed this in any particular works you have read in recent years or perhaps any of your own work?

A; I think this depends on the way their minds work rather than male and female. But journals still say that if a woman has a piece rejected she may not submit again whereas men will. Also, men are inclined to submit more writing to journals, publishers etc than women.

Q; Do you see a growing interest in creative writing and poetry among younger generations? If so, do you see a difference in how writers from younger generations approach poetry and creative writing than older generations of writers?

A; Again I think this depends on the person. My granddaughter writes with pen and paper and has little interest in her phone. But she also grows food and bakes and plays the piano and practices archery so she is unusual, however, we are very similar in the way we write and read and what interests us, other young people write on their phones, many of them and they are influenced by the time they spend on the phone. I see that this often leads to a more fragmented way of writing that can illustrate the nature of our fragmented minds in the world now. However, if a writer can find a way to enter the dream of writing, and be more embodied it can bring about a sense of peace in the writer and the reader rather than re-traumatising both writer and reader. There is a lot of focus on violence in literature with crime novels being the bestsellers, films and serials. I don’t know what that says about us as a society. I facilitate creative writing groups with young and older people who have been through the mental health system and I have a lot to say about that but I think too much for this interview.

Q; Your poem, 'This Other Thing' explores a variety of emotions and themes. When you are writing poetry, do you start with a specific emotional core, or does the tone evolve as you write?

A; I think that the better poems seem to come through from another zone, but when I workshopped 'This Other Thing', at a master class, the poet leading said that I was writing about shame but I would need to dig deeper and find specific instances of shaming for the narrator. So the poem went deeper. The same thing happened with A Copper Basin in Florence, a mentor said that I would need to show how the narrator had made the journey from feeling oppressed by the Catholic Church and the Irish Culture to a place of freedom. The best poems seem to come through me but when I see certain themes emerging I take time to consider them and dream into the poem and the language. Not so much from the head but from the unconscious which can throw up the word or the image that the poem needs. A friend of mine calls this ‘serving the poem.’

Q; What has writing taught you about yourself? Has it changed you in any ways you did not expect?

I have a much greater awareness and knowledge about the natural world and the changing seasons. I was always aware of how people moved because I was observing them in my mother’s dance classes and as a movement therapist, but now I am often writing about people making things, eg in Shaping the Clay – the Potter, Mary Lincoln in Ardmore Pottery. I study what they
are doing and the tools and materials they work with. In the same way I study birds and animals and notice small subtle movements and behaviours. Writing about someone's house I might need to find out exactly what the material in the curtain is to write about it. So there is more observing. Also I research the myths and medicines associated with a particular plant I might have written about spontaneously eg frankincense or mistletoe berries, or a bird like a swan or flamingo etc. The research shows me how little I know about the natural world and how miraculous even the smallest plant or creature is. Writing slows me down and helps me to reflect on the life I am living, even writing about my ordinary morning can throw up riches to write about. I have a piece in the Sunday Miscellany anthology 2018 to 2023 called Moments of Being which reflects on the power of keeping a writing journal. This piece can also be found on the Sunday Miscellany podcasts.

What was unexpected for me was the power of working with movement and creative writing together. How working with the body allows the tension or anxiety I feel as a writer to melt away and I have greater access to a more sensual embodiment when I am writing. This is research that I am doing now, noticing how the writing changes when I move, often subtle movements done in a conscious meditative and reflective way. I find I am not going on on but entering a scene or poem and dwelling within it. When I am moving like this my mind is freer and more flexible and a scene becomes multi-dimensional, as I become more aware of sensual details and the narrators position in any given room or landscape - what is behind me and in front of me, above me etc and what it feels like to be in the body I am writing from, and this could be me as a child or a character. So we will see where this leads. I have also discovered that I can teach this to others and teach them about the writing craft in a more embodied and flowing way. So I am not teaching things from the head down but using their embodied experience in life and showing them how to set that down as writers.
A big thank you to Lani O'Hanlon for taking the time to answer these questions and give us such detailed and intimate responses! 

MORE FROM LANI O'HANLON AND HER WORK HERE!

If you have any further questions for Lani O'Hanlon her email is; [email protected]

This Other Thing BY LANI O'HANLON
My daughter Louise asks about shame
and I want to tell her about the seer,
Marie Taréis, who worked with colors
and mirrors. The way she took my egg
drawing, yellow in the middle, then orange
then indigo, moved a pyramid of two mirrors
over and around it searching for my soul.

But it was just an egg.
Other people’s drawings had symbols
multiplied and reflected--
the tree of life, Egyptian dancers,
a caduceus, gods and goddesses.
I cringed, kneeling at her feet
in a sweat of old shames.

The time Ellen spotted nits in my hair,
that old perv dribbling over my fat thighs,
thread worms, the squirm and itch. Age ten,
sneaking in to read Playboy magazines
under my father’s bed. Disgust whitening
his face when he caught me looking
and reading about the ways I would be seen.

Like that young priest colliding
with my dancer’s body all sweaty
and vital running up the stairs of the priory,
the pleasure in his smile quickly
changed to a pursed-up sneer, rejection,
blame, his shame smeared all over me.
Depression then, clinging to the bed,

even the purple green pink I saw haloed
around a rose, too witchy and weird
like the wildflower remedies
I used in my practice. Circles
of  women, their whispered secrets
and me a kind of sin-eater grubbing
in the muck. She moved the mirrors

searching for my soul in that childish drawing,
and I wished that I could do it all again.
I’d been so naïve when I made it,
playful like a child who’s forgotten
she isn’t loved. Somebody laughed.
The mirrors moved, opened,
kaleidoscoped the egg into a circle of candles.


Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/152113/this-other-thing