An Interview with Irish Poet Daragh Fleming
The poet discusses the intersection of mental health & poetry
Ben: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Words That Burn On this special episode, I have an interview with Daragh Fleming. Daragh Fleming is a poet, writer and mental health advocate from Cork Ireland. He writes the Thoughts two Big blog, which won the Mental Health Blog of the year 2022. He has written several publications with his most recent being Lonely Boy in 2022, and he has an upcoming collection, enigmatic soon to be published From Sunday mornings at the river. Hi Daragh. How's it going?
Daragh: Beautiful intro, man. Beautiful. No, doing really good. I'm very excited to be on, like, I've been a fan of the podcast forever. A lot of my favourite poets have been on, so it's an absolute honour to be here.
Ben: Oh, that's very, very kind of you. That is high praise from my podcast and I appreciate it. So Daragh, I wanted to have you on just to talk about you're a huge mental health advocate and a poet in your own right. And I wanted to talk to you about the intersection of mental health and poetry,
and kind of get a sense of how [00:01:00] those two things interact
in your life. So in general, how, how has poetry influenced your approach to mental health and wellbeing?
Daragh: Yeah, it's, it's something that's coming up a lot recently, kind of because. Since Lonely Boy came out, my two worlds have kind of collided with like writing meaning mental health. And, but it's always been there in, in my poetry. And I, I started writing poetry, taking it kind of seriously I suppose when I was depressed when I was in my early twenties.
Because what I found was when I was depressed, I couldn't really feel emotions very strongly. and the ones I did feel were so convoluted and vague that I didn't even know which ones I was feeling. And so I started to write about them. And, , these writings, my journaling style generally takes the form of poetry anyway.
And it just, it started allowing me to be mindful and in the moment with the emotion, which allowed me to feel it stronger. So if I was feeling happiness and I started writing about it. I could kind of maintain the [00:02:00] emotion 'cause it was very difficult at that time. And that's kind of how the poetry fer mental health started for me.
It was very much a, a tool I used to claim out of depression because I. The, the strange thing about depression for me was that like I, because I wasn't feeling emotions, I wasn't feeling the fear of not being able to feel emotion, I just thought it was normal. I thought it was just how I was. And then once I found poetry and I realized, oh no, I'm supposed to be feeling emotion dinner, really latched onto the poetic form and just use this to allow myself to actually express and feel emotion.
Ben: Great. Were there any particular poets or poems that really connected with you during that time? Or was it just whatever came
Daragh: Yeah. Yeah, it's 'cause like I'm probably not the most traditional poet in that, like, I didn't come to poetry as a fan of it initially. came to it as like,
need to do something to. Figure out my own mental health. So I [00:03:00] wasn't even like when I started naturally any poetry starting.
My poems were terrible and I wasn't reading enough of it to get good at it. And it's only been in the last three or four years that I've been, you know, actually, embodying poetry and reading a lot of it. And, you know, improving the, the, the form. Because like when I started, it was a very much a tool for mental health.
There wasn't anything beyond that. I wasn't even thinking about publishing or getting published. That came later when a friend told me I could. so Like poet, like one poet that stands out to me is a very good mental health writer as Molly Tomy. Patrick Holloway does a lot of great, poetry in men's mental health and masculinity.
And it's just that whatever feels raw and vulnerable and scary to, to show people is the poetry I tend to, to lean towards because you're being extremely vulnerable in order to try and connect with someone. And I think that's why I'm, I'm more lean towards like poets like Molly Poet, poets like Patrick.
Ben: Yeah, absolutely. [00:04:00] Two phenomenal poets who really do kind of a lyric poetry style that is incredibly confessional, but also hopeful at the same
time. I Don't think I, I still haven't recovered from raised among vultures. I, I
think kind of, .Yeah, it's an unreal
collection. Absolutely. So when you talk about that connection, you know, and and bridging that gap between other people and yourself, or between you and certain emotions, do you find that poetry is an easy way for you to connect with other people? Do you find that you get a good response to the poetry that you write in that way or.
Daragh: Yeah, like I. Definitely. But it's interesting how, how people connect with the poetry. So like, I often say the subsection of the population who read is quite small, and the subsection of that population who read poetry is even smaller. Like a lot of my friends wouldn't be writers and they'd rarely into a shop and buy a book, so they'd never go into a shop and buy a poetry book.
What I found is like using video form [00:05:00] and using music and doing like your reading your own poetry. people find it in that way, they really, really resonate with it and it really hits them in a different way, whereas they ever read the poem, but when they hear it, and it's very much like, like my style's quite conversational.
I don't typically try anything very fancy. My, my language 'cause I'm just trying to reach people who mightn't ever pick up a poetry book. And trying to get them to think about different aspects of mental health. Loneliness comes up a lot for me. Depression, rejection you know, longing for relationships.
So all these kind of themes come up and these come up for everyone in, in life. So it's just trying to make sure people . don't feel alone and feeling that way.
Ben: Hmm. Yeah, so those are, those are quite complex topics I suppose, that you choose to write about when you started to look at publishing your work or approaching it Towards bringing it to a wider audience, I suppose, other than as a, [00:06:00] as your own self-care tool.
Daragh: Mm-Hmm.
Ben: Do you find that it's challenging to write about those topics in the moment? Do, are you a take a break, come back to it kind of guy? Is it a a single burst of emotion for you or, you know, what's, what's the process there for? 'cause they're heavy topics, you know.
Daragh: Yeah, no, for sure. And I'm very much a . A kind of impromptu, instinctive poet, like when I write essays or write short fiction, it's, it's far more structured. Like you, you make time and you, you sit down and you force yourself to write. But for me, with poetry, it's very much if I'm feeling the emotion, I'll try and write about it as soon as possible.
So often I'm jotting notes on my phone or a notebook that's near my bed or whatever. And I just try to get to it as soon as possible and, and get a first draft. And it's, it, it's always been like that. It's never been something that I'll be kind of sitting down with purpose to write poetry. It almost comes at the, the wrong time.
Like I'll be out with friends or I'll be out for a walk and I'm like, the poem's coming now and I have to try and try and [00:07:00] write it down. So the, my creative process and poetry's very instinctive rather than like you know, trying to actually write poems. I let the poems come to me.
Ben: Yeah, absolutely. I suppose it keeps that kind of essence of the emotion that you're trying to bring across.
Alive and well in the work when that happens. You also spoke a little bit about performing poetry over reading poetry as a way of kind of reaching that, as you said, very minority subsection of the population that reads
poetry. That, that this podcast was very much founded on the basis of hearing poetry
aloud. Which I, I can't remember where I heard that, but it, it really struck a chord with me and got me into poetry. I'm gonna have to look that up now and, and put it somewhere in the description. But you are quite active on social media in lots of different forms. I think you and I first connected over Twitter.
Mm-Hmm.
for
Or, or X as it's called, now. I, I, I really shudder to call it
that. [00:08:00] But anyway, I've also found your work spontaneously through TikTok. You've, you've come up on my for you page. It seems that you are. Performance aspect is, is much clearer on, on something like TikTok than it is on X because obviously it's a, a, written format versus an audio one.
How, how do you find reading your poetry for social media, how do you find that impacts the style that you work in?
Daragh: I Think it impacts it greatly. Like, and I, I always prefer to read someone my poetry than have them read it. 'cause like . I didn't I didn't go to, college to study creative writing. I have no real education writing poetry. It's very much something I, I fell into 'cause I liked it. So I don't necessarily have that technical ability that other poets have.
You know, that with the form and all that. So for me it really comes from evoking the emotion. And I can do that in the performance. And often, like someone might read a poem and they'll be like, yeah, that's good. And then I'll [00:09:00] perform the poem and they'll be like, that's brilliant. And it all comes down to like
Where I'm making the breaks, where I'm taking my stops, the intonation, it all plays a part and I'm very aware of that. Like I, I did a master's in linguistics and I'm like, I've been always acutely interested in how language can impact people depending on how you use it. And like can read one poem one way and someone else can read it a different way and two different poems.
So I think that that aspect's really important to me and it's something I'm trying to do more, trying to perform poetry more as I, as I kind of go on in my career.
Ben: Yeah, so you just had your first pamphlet there I think you said last year. That was notes for a Mid youth crisis.
And that was your first pamphlet and that came out from Bottle Cap
Press. How did you find your way to deciding that? Like a pamphlet was something that you wanted to put out there? And how do you find navigating, performing those poems? Is there any kind of particular preparation that you do before [00:10:00] you perform or, or anything like that?
Daragh: So like I, I actually performed, I'm in Barcelona at the moment and I performed here a few weeks ago at an open mic that I was invited to. And so I, I've just, in May I wrote a new pamphlet called The Hole which was highly commended for the Patrick Kavanaugh Award, which was absolutely huge.
And I wanted like. Thank you very much and like I, the reason I wrote that pamphlet is 'cause I wanted it to be a performance piece, whereas with Notes for a Mini Crisis, I didn't write that with the intention of it being a performance piece. It was very much just kind of my journalistic style. Here are some things I've thought of in mid twenties that might affect other people.
And so it was kind of like . I was very new to like what a pamphlet could be. So if, if I was gonna do it now, I'd probably do it quite differently because like, the hole is quite thematic. Like, it's very, like, we're focusing on masculinity and that's all we're kind of focusing on. Whereas Notes for a Minute Crisis was kind of, and I, I like it in that like it was, it reflects how my life [00:11:00] was when I wrote it, which is kind of chaos.
Like there's a poem about depression, there's a poem about Tinder, there's a poem about. I dunno, going to the shop. Like there's, there's a lot of different things going on and it's just kind of mirroring the life I was living. Whereas the more recent pamphlet, the whole has been more like focused and it's, it was written to be performed.
So they're, they're quite different in that sense.
Ben: There. There does seem to be a massive uptick in Community-based performance of arts and literature.
I'm thinking particularly here in Dublin, we have which kind of kicked off here, which is the
bimonthly storytelling kind of initiative. Do you find that, first of all, do you attend a lot of these kinds of things and what do you think the, the hurdles are for yourself when it comes to performance, and why do you think that might resonate so much with people?
Daragh: Yeah, I do find I do find it fascinating as a concept because writers are like stereotypically [00:12:00] introverted and hate being in public. And moving into a space where writers have to be extroverted and be confident public speaking and out there in the world on social media where, wherever else.
So I find it interesting that the juxtaposition of where we are. 'cause I remember when I was growing up, I didn't know . The faces of any of my favourite writers. I just knew they wrote my favourite books and I didn't ever hear from them. So it's different now. But like, like anything else, it just takes practice.
Like I remember, like I do a lot of public speaking, uh, writing and just in mental health in general. And when I started absolutely nerve wracking. I remember my first poetry reading was at the Rebound Arts Festival in Cork. And it was for notes for Mid East Crisis and I was absolutely petrified to read in front of people.
And what I, what I found, what I still find actually is that like, it's far easier to just talk to people. Like, here's my journey with mental health. And you just kinda ramble on. find that easier than reading in front of people. 'cause you kinda have to focus [00:13:00] on the words and you know, you can stumble over words.
So I still find that process challenging. Another challenge that . Blows my mind, especially when people do like these long poetry shows that are 30, 40 minutes that they've memorized every single word of their performance. Still finding that a challenge, but we'll get there. 'cause I'm like tomorrow evening, like, I'm coming to Dublin tomorrow because I'm performing a spoken word piece for the launch of November.
So which is exciting, like I'm, I'm very much want to be in that space, but it's also
daunting because, you know, you're, you're performing rather than speaking to people, which is different.
Ben: Mm-Hmm. Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's a whole other kind of interaction, like speaking to people candidly is, I suppose in one way easier to do because it's. Just reality. That's you do it every day. You, you interact with people every
day. Giving people your art is, is a whole other risk. Like the
thing that you spend time on or [00:14:00] the effort that you made. And then you kind of have to show it to people and be like, this is, this is my
poetry. Enjoy that.
so I, I don't know if, if you find this, but because you and I are Irish, there is a kind of a slow Emergence of art, I guess in the Irish scene, depending on where you grew up and how you grew up in Ireland. You know, writing poetry, reading poetry, performing poetry would've gotten you laughed at
maybe even 10 years ago, you know?
But we do seem to have reached a point now. And you mentioned that you wrote the whole, which is about masculinity and things like that. we do seem to be reaching a new kind of point where, you know, efforts to talk about MAs masculinity, toxic masculinity, all of these things are becoming a little bit more mainstream.
And I was just wondering what you thought of that both from a, a poetry point of view and from your work in mental [00:15:00] health. Do you find that, speaking about that type of masculinity. Kind of engaging with young men, is that getting easier, do you think, as we move forward, or are we in the same kind of spot that we were?
No, I think it's, it's definitely changing and like I can see that in the last 10 years, even just from my own experience of mental health and my own friend group. But like, um, it's, it's getting. easier, but there's also new challenges. So like while we are in a space where men are encouraged to talk about mental health and their emotions, um, you know, you've bad actors coming into the space as well.
You're, you know, you're Andrew Tates and people like that who are kind of trying to reinforce a more traditional and often dangerous form of masculinity. So there's new challenges and that comes with social media. But in general, . . I Do a lot, a lot of talks for like TY students which would be men and women, but you know, the engagement from both you know, well, all genders is quite high.
Like there's not, I [00:16:00] wouldn't go into a, a classroom or go into a talk and be like, okay, like the girls engaged with that, but the boys were tuned out often and like, I benefit from the fact that I still . Thank God look a bit young that they can kind of relate to me in a sense, you know, so when I go on stage, you're like, oh, it's not like a a 50 year old man trying to tell him I'm about mental health.
It's a guy that, you know, I can kind of relate to and that we don't look that far apart in age, and that helps. But like for sure, it's getting easier to talk about. I think it'll still take another long while. Because we're talking about like a shift in behaviour and culture that's been ingrained for centuries, that it's not gonna change overnight, it's gonna take years, it's gonna be slow, it's gonna be back and forth, but we're moving in the right direction, which is good.
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. In terms of, you know, um, poet we spoke a little bit at the start of the interview about the intersection between poetry and your [00:17:00] mental health work.
I was wondering if you would have advice for anyone listening who wanted to try a similar poetic journalism
approach. If, if you wanna look at it that way, if they wanted to write their own thoughts and ideas down, would you have a starting point for them to do that in?
Would you have any advice for someone who is looking to try something similar?
Daragh: Yeah, like, I think, you know, the first thing, ' cause like the only reason I was able to start is 'cause I had to accept how I was feeling. So for a long time I, I rejected the idea that I was feeling sad or feeling lonely. And then once I accepted it. Then I had all these things to figure out. But like to, as a very, very starting point, probably forget about the poetry for the first instance and just get to journaling and get comfortable with talking about your emotions, or writing about your emotions.
And I do a thing, I, I'm not sure the technical title for it, but like brain dump, brain dump journaling, where basically there's no wrong answers. The first few paragraphs are just gonna be about like the day [00:18:00] you had the room you're in, and then all of a sudden, eventually your mind will just take you to the place it needs to be.
Like, this thing is bothering me. I'm feeling stressed about this, I'm feeling anxious about this. And then you find the thing that's really the, the crux of what's bothering you. And from that you can . You know, okay, so this thing is making me anxious or this situation and this relationship is making me uncomfortable.
You can lift that out as a detail and then begin to write a poem about it. Because like, the thing about writing poetry about your emotions is like you're never gonna run out of subject matter. You're always feeling emotions at different levels about different things. So there's always a lot to, to write about, and it's just finding a new perspective into that arena.
Is where the poetry and the poet technique comes in. But if you wanna find the subject matter, just do brain dump journaling 10 minutes every day, you will get the stuff out of it and then you can use that. And it not to say that that's easy either, because like you are now taking the most [00:19:00] vulnerable part of how you're feeling and using it to make art.
Which makes the best art, but it's also the scariest way to make art because you're being extremely vulnerable. But that comes down to the decision you have to make as a poet, whether you want to to do that or not.
Ben: Absolutely. Yeah. No really solid advice. So you, I suppose, are probably preparing to talk about this a little bit more because in about a week and a half I think you have your TED talk.
Daragh: That is correct. Yeah. So, Thursday, November 2nd, which is yet, another thing I have to memorize is, so we're talking about how to use, like, my example is poetry, but how to use creativity in general to pull yourself out of a kind of mental health spiral. And the, the idea is quite simple, that if you use creativity to make something out of a bad experience.
So for example, I've written a lot about . Depression and masculinity and loneliness because I've experienced bad depression and severe loneliness and [00:20:00] had issues with masculinity and what it means to be a man. So they're all very tough experiences, but if you can use that matter to make art, you're turning the negative stuff into something positive and something unique and something new in the world.
And doing creative stuff inherently makes you feel . Fulfilled. It gives you purpose, it gives you meaning, and you need all of those things to live a, a content and a happy life. So it will inherently improve your mental health to use creativity in that way. And that isn't to say it has to just be poetry.
Like I talk a lot about how driving home a different way is creative. How you cook is creative. How you construct a narrative of your own life is creative. There's multiple ways to be creative, but it's just looking at your life through a lens of creativity. Brings mental health benefits inherently.
Ben: Yeah, absolutely. When you talk about that kind of, you know, introducing creativity into your life, when it, when it came to your own [00:21:00] journey into creativity, which you might not have always had, were there any particularly influential people that kind of made you decide to try that approach? Or was there a particular moment that you decided, okay, I'll, I'll try and come up with. A more creative way of doing it. And then did you build that into a structure or do you just let creativity come to you as spontaneously as possible?
Daragh: Yeah, that's a good question. I think like it comes from multiple avenues. There's poets, there's musicians, singers authors that have been influential. I think one . One my favourite poets is Frank O'Hara. a Poet from New York. His notes for an emergency is actually kind of Notes for Media Crisis.
Was kind of a, a nod to that pamphlet. I thought that absolutely stunning. And then like I've always been. Very interested in the poetic nature of good lyrics and songs. So like whether it's rap music or your kind of more traditional sings songy. Like I, when I was younger, Eminem was a huge influence.
[00:22:00] Your kid Cudi, your Derma Kennedys, like, he's probably one of the most poetic singers songwriters there is at the moment. and it's just, I think, not that you have to, 'cause I think we get caught up in like, we find someone we like and we feel like we have to be. , almost the exact same as them. And I find like you can, you can pull pieces from everyone that influences you.
Like, I like how this person does that and I like how that person does this. And it can, you can draw it in or often like I remember even just in May, and this is the reason I wrote the whole to begin with, is that I went to see Max Porter perform and I thought was absolutely . Mind bending how he performed his work.
'cause he wasn't just reading it like it was an actual performance. And I woke up the next day just a head full of ideas and I scrambled and I think I wrote the whole, it's 28 pages. I wrote it in about four days. It was just like after that inspiration,
Ben: Wow.
Daragh: and and it's just moments like that.
And I think, you know, I've read the Creative Way by Rick Rubin last year. And [00:23:00] Rick Rubin, obviously, you know famous for getting the best music out of his artist and he doesn't have a clue about And he says that himself. He's not very like musical, but he talks about living your life in the creative ways to like be open to anything.
Being an inspiration and something very mundane could lead to something very not mundane. And I think it's just living and embodying that idea is what I try to do. And it's what I've been trying to do for the last six years I think.
Ben: Yeah. Absolutely. It's, it's a daily task, um, that has to be undertaken every single day. It never ends. But yeah, absolutely. So it never ends. You gotta keep doing it. I, I find, anyway, sometimes, you know, you get stuck in that Cycle of, of not being creative or not accomplishing the things that you set out to do
in best way possible.
And I, I find it can really impact your, your, getting on with it kind of vibe. Do you know what I mean? So the other thing I wanted
to ask you, because you have a, [00:24:00] a collection coming out called Enigma. What what kind of prompted you to go from pamphlets mini collection to full-blown collection and, and what can we kind of expect from
that?
Daragh: Yeah, like, so it's, so we had notes for media crisis and then last summer I did a pamphlet with another small press called . The pamphlet was called poems that were written on trains but weren't written about trains which is an absolute mouthful. And so I was kind of like building it up in that way.
And I suppose for the pamphlets, I was like getting to a point. I. I'd get to the stage where I had enough poems to do a pamphlet, and then I'd be like, right, I should try and get these published. And then trained poems was kind of more thematic. It's kind of a short story in poetic form. So that was different.
And it was based on a very specific point in my life. then with the collection, it kind of just came about because for the last two years, I think I've been writing more poetry than I've been writing anything else. And there's just [00:25:00] like my hard drive was just . brimming with all these poems. And I was just like, okay, not all of these poems are gonna be in a collection, but some of these poems make sense together.
And so it was the process of like figuring out which ones went together, which ones didn't, which ones were good, which ones were bad. Then Rebecca, who's the editor at Sunday mornings, published three poems in an anthology last October. And then. after that was like, if you ever wanna do a collection, just let me know.
And 'cause she, she just wanted to do a collection with me. And then it was a case of like, right, I really need to get into a space where I can figure out where the collection will come from, from all this work, because it was just kind of sitting there. And then, yeah, and then since then, like it's been another.
Another pamphlet in the whole, I've written a collaboration with Gdd Mani, who's a brilliant poet from London. And then just like writing, like I set myself bizarre, almost insurmountable tasks. Like for October, I was like, um, [00:26:00] write one poem a day for the entire month. So, which is really, really hard to do.
And most, most of them are terrible, but like some of them have been like, oh, that's surprising. I'm actually gonna work on this one. So like, I just do, I just enjoy writing. I think that's the, the basis of everything is like, I just, I don't feel right myself if I don't do a little bit of writing every day.
And it's not like I'm not trying to, uh, promote the idea that, like, to be a writer, you have to write every day. I just feel uncomfortable if I don't. I try to do something every day, and usually poem is the most accessible way.
Ben: Fantastic. Yeah, absolutely. Is there anything that you would like to let listeners know about that's coming up for you?
Daragh: So enigmatic is coming out . . Yeah, for sure, for sure. Enigmatic is coming out on November 24th. There'll be a launch in Cork on January 10th in the Cork City Library, and I'll pass on details for that. The TED talk is November 2nd which is ticketed, but it'll be on [00:27:00] YouTube at some point, which is very exciting.
And then other than that oh, I'm doing the first Fortnite festival with Veil on . January 8th, and that's a mental health festival. So all very related to mental health as always, which is really exciting.
Ben: Absolutely amazing. That's a, that's a shock of luck. Couple of months coming up for you. Daragh Fleming, thank you so much for coming on and giving me your time. Hearing about your process and your journey to poetry through mental health advocacy has been absolutely amazing. Thank you so, so much.
Daragh: I appreciate it Ben. Thanks a million man.
Ben: No problem.
Daragh: We did it. We did it
Follow the podcast:
Follow the Podcast On Instagram