Practising architect and psychotherapist John D. Kelly first discovered his passion for writing poetry following his relocation to the wilds of Fermanagh in 2010.

Over the past 10 years, the wordsmith, who grew up in Belfast, has written more than 130 poems – a selection of which feature in his recently published first collection, entitled, ‘Loss Of Yellowhammers’.

The collection contains a number of poems on the theme of loss, which John often uses nature to depict.

“T.S. Eliot said that all poems are elegy, so basically everything we write, it is already in the past. We are writing about the past or something that’s lost, whether that be a moment or a person, a relative or a friend, or a memory. They are all losses,” he said, adding: “I think I use the metaphor of nature just to look at that.”

After working for nearly 30 years as an architect in his own practice, John was aiming for some sort of substantial change in lifestyle when he moved to the Fermanagh countryside with his wife, the artist Rita Duffy, and their two sons in 2010.

In his new rural setting, where he lives and works near Newtownbutler and Lisnaskea, John thought he would return to his first passion – drawing and painting the natural world.

Encouragement

However it turned out that this was not to be as he began writing instead and, with the encouragement of other poets and the support of Fermanagh Writers in the early years, a passion or addiction for “painting with words” took hold.

Talking about his writing process, John explained that he would get most of his ideas and inspiration early in the morning: “It’s somewhat connected to the subconscious, where you’re half in an awake or a dream state.”

He added that as ideas or images come to him, he starts putting down words that relate to them. “Then you see where it goes; that’s the exciting bit for me. When I start writing a poem, I don’t know where it’s going to go.”

Commenting that he “doesn’t like to be confined by a particular style” when writing poetry, John said: “I think the style of each poem will be dependent on the subject matter of that poem.

“That’s where the structure, the form or the style, comes from.”

He continued: “My background as an architect for most of my working career has given me the notion that a poem is different from prose, in that it has a structure, it has a form, and the way it looks on the page is quite important to me.

“It’s about the emotional content as opposed to if it has a style or not – does it hit you in the heart or the gut when you read it,” he added.

Although loss is a predominant theme throughout the collection, John noted how this wasn’t necessarily intentional.

“There was no sense that the book was going to be about loss, but when it was completed and put together, when I look at it, that is what it is about. It’s about loss,” he explained.

“But in a way, that celebrates the value of life, and the loss of nature – the extinction of species, birds like the Yellowhammer,” added John, referring back to the title of the collection.

The writing of poetry and its contemplative aspect has, he says, “seamlessly” led him to begin and complete an honours degree in psychotherapy – a lifelong interest − and he now spends part of his time in this area too, and uses poetry, art and creativity as useful tools for assisting communication in the therapy room when so-called ‘normal’ language often can’t quite express what a client is trying to say.

He agrees with the definition by the Anglo-Irish poet David Whyte that “poetry is language against which you have no defences”. He believes it has to be sensory and visceral for it to be successful as a poem – not only cerebral.

To date, John’s writing has been published in many well-respected literary magazines and anthologies in Ireland and the UK, and his poetry has won, or been shortlisted, in numerous competitions. Most recently he won the prestigious Listowel Short Collection Prize, 2020, judged by Thomas McCarthy, and the Desmond O’Grady competition, 2020, judged by John Liddy.

John’s first collection, ‘Loss Of Yellowhammers’, is now available to purchase locally from Ramsey’s Picture Framing at the Buttermarket, Enniskillen.