Dr Cherry Smyth is an Irish poet and writer, born in Ballymoney, County Antrim and raised in Portstewart. Here she talks to Ralph Barker about her latest work, If the River is Hidden, which was co-written with Craig Jordan-Baker.

Ralph Barker: Hi Cherry, lovely to chat with you. Firstly, it would be great if you could tell us a bit about the work you’ll be performing at Poetry International festival. What can we expect from your live reading of If the River is Hidden?

Dr Cherry Smyth: The performance uses poetry, prose and flute to give the experience of an eight-day pilgrimage up the River Bann, Northern Ireland’s longest river. My co-author, Craig Jordan-Baker, also beats out time on a bodhran, the Irish drum, which he taught himself in lockdown. If the flute represents the sinuous flow of the river, the bodhran is the rhythm of the walk. Both echo the use of music in the marching bands of the north. 

Ralph: Your work often features beautifully descriptive bodies of water and bathing. What is the significance of this for you? Is there something about being submerged that you feel holds a certain power, or lack thereof?

Dr Cherry: There’s something gorgeously sensual and primaeval about being in wild water. You feel the strength of the current and its direction as well as the abandonment in a lovely weightlessness. The water touches every part of you so there’s tremendous intimacy in that, which was so lacking for me during the pandemic. 

Ralph: Similarly, your work naturally tends to draw focus on gender and identity, with a wonderfully metaphoric blend of nature and body. Can you tell us a bit about what this means to you?

Dr Cherry: I’ve always been drawn to writing about the body, especially marginalised bodies, to portray them with a directness and dignity the culture can deny. Here is a body of water that is being neglected and abused, so I identified with it as a feminist and someone who cares about social and eco justice. 

Ralph: There’s a real echo of Confessionalist poets such as Sylvia Plath in your writing. Whose work do you think has most influenced your own?

Dr Cherry: The word ‘confessionalism’ implies a sin. I don’t find Plath sinful but I know her vivid, explicit emotional honesty ruffled male feathers. She was someone who gave me permission, yes. I go on being influenced and encouraged by many poets, from Natalie Diaz, a wonderful queer Native American poet, to Issa, an ancient Japanese haiku writer. 

Ralph: As an Irish poet, to what extent do you feel the landscape of your youth has shaped your work?

Dr Cherry: As I say in the book, ‘I see rath where Craig sees hill’, the language and wildness of the Irish landscape drew the desire from me to somehow match it in words from a young age. To meet that beauty and sometimes bleakness is a lifetime endeavour. Names and contestations over naming intrigue me more than ever and I always carry a small Irish-English dictionary of place names. ‘The harbour of the young lambs’ is a dream of a place compared to ‘Portstewart’, my home place.

Ralph: Do you have a favourite poem of yours? Were there any that were difficult to put into words?

Dr Cherry: ‘Water’ is one of my favourites - about swimming naked and how it feels like an immersive love: ‘you can’t tell if you’re in it or out of it.’ The energy and boldness of that poem were triggered by the inimitable Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska. An early poem about my father’s shop being bombed called ‘Maybe it was 1970’ was very hard to write. And the indistinct dates show the frailty of traumatic memory. 

Ralph: I find the inventiveness of your linguistics almost Joycean, with long, flowing imagery that contains so much in just a few words. Where do you find most of your inspiration comes from when it comes to laying out each sentence? Do you start with a single image and build it out, or do you write with a more stream-of-consciousness type approach?

Dr Cherry: Most sentences/lines begin a palpable sense of an image, almost like a mental warmth, and I start writing as if to capture it, as I am doing now, to feel its weight, texture and temperature as the words form. Then I go back and create more accuracy through editing. But the mood lasts if I’m lucky. 

Ralph: Finally, you have previously collaborated with singers and composers when performing your work. What do you feel the connections are with your writing and music, and how does one influence the other?

Dr Cherry: After years of solo working, I love collaborating with musicians and vocalists. They often find the secret substrata of the image that I didn’t know was there or couldn’t access.  I love how it has extended the audience for my poetry. It’s been a late and unexpected gift. 

cherrysmyth.com

If The River Is Hidden by Dr Cherry Smyth is available to buy at bookshop.org

Cherry Smyth performs at Poetry International festival at the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room on 22 July. Poetry International festival runs at the Southbank Centre from 21-23 July. southbankcentre.co.uk. The performance is also available as an audiobook from Spiracle Audio Books.