Acclaimed Longford poet Noel Monahan reflects on his love of his poetry and life

Noel Monahan is from Granard, Co. Longford, and is a poet who has received much acclaim for his works. His works span the decades, from ‘Opposite Walls’ (1991), to his most recent collection called ‘Journey Upstream’ (2024), all of which have been published by Salmon Press.

He has also been a writer for musicals prior to his poetry background, as well as known for his playwriting. He received the PJ O'Connor Award in 2001 for a radio play, ‘Broken Cups’, and is thus one of the most prominent contemporary artists in the Longford area. ‘Journey Upstream’ received a glowing review in ‘The Irish Catholic’ in May 2025. His poem ‘All Day Long’ was used in the 2011 Leaving Certificate English exam.

With plenty to talk about and a fascinating life from training to become a priest in Maynooth before not going ahead with it, to teaching and exploring musicals for students to perform, to eventually reaching his profession in poetry, Noel came to sit and chat about his love for poetry and how it evolved.

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What inspired you to create poetry?

First of all, poetry just seemed to come to me. I started off wanting to be a musician, and I always had a choir when I started teaching. I started doing musicals. I taught in St Clare’s college for all my teaching life. In 1973, I decided that the nun in charge asked if I was up to put on a show–to do a Gilbert and Sullivan. That was a big demand.
We ended up doing the Mikado; even the vocabulary is very hard. The commitment that the students had was miraculous. It was all worked outside of class hours. It was a history and English teacher, I was teaching Latin and religion–they were the days when they were teaching everything.

I then went on and put on ‘The Sound of Music’; the nuns were still teaching there. That was a real success. From that on, we did ‘Oliver’, and then I wrote my own ‘The Pied Piper’ with Martin Cahill.

We wanted to excite the young people. It was a lot of hard work. There were 36 pieces of new music, and then it went from Fiddler and the Roof–I love it because it has a wonderful story.

We had a great time. It is very sad and very Russian. I was teaching history at the time. Great music, great story. ‘Theatre of Sorrows’ with Martin Cahill I wrote with, it was a love story.

That was performed in Dublin and elsewhere; the music was very difficult, but the students were gaining great confidence.

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At some stage, I’m doing all these musicals with a cast of 100 people and orchestra, and I’ve no time of my own. I’m getting tired of it. I did a u-turn.

I worked with a choir, and then wrote a mass for the opening of the new school, which included 16 pieces of music. People were saying they loved my lyrics–the lyrics, little poems in the mass.

I already arrived at writing lyrics through music, and that was exciting. I married Ann O’Leary from Galway and went down there on a regular basis, to her family, and there was a publishing group meeting, and Jessie Lendennie was the publisher, and she had a magazine called ‘Salmon’.

And I wrote this poem ‘The Bishop’s Gallop’ and it was from a historical point of view, a satirical questioning.
You couldn’t go through Ireland as St Patrick as reported. She published it. She said she liked it, and it got a good result.

That magazine was publishing the best of contemporary writers, how I got in with Salmon. I began to win prizes; I won the Kilkenny Prize for Poetry; the Alan Hamming Award in Donegal; The Honest Ulster Man in Belfast (magazine); met John Montague. That’s how I got to poetry. Poetry is music.

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You appear to be very passionate about art as well, going by the covers of your books–very traditionally made, rather than digital. Would you like to talk about it?

I like to do a lot of collabs with artists. I would describe myself as not a “poet in isolation.” What I mean by that is that I like to mix the talent around. I performed with them and opened exhibitions.

The ‘Cathedral for Sonas agus Siocain na nollag’, for example. It had Padraic Lynch’s painting in ‘Journey Upstream’ and ‘Chalk Dust’.

I worked with Daragh Slacke, who’s a rock musician but took an interest in my work; so it was a seventy-year-old working with the age of my own sons. That’s what poetry does.

I move with the artists, musicians and plays. I won the PJ O’Connell Award for a radio play. Kenny’s Library has my archives.

All the letters from poets of Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland–all the greats of Irish writing are included in it. ‘Chalk Dust’ captured my experience in secondary school; an interesting place. It’s a long poem. Chalk Dust was directed for stage; it was a great success, travelling to Longford, Roscommon, Drogheda and Dublin but Covid ruined it. It got three standing ovations and packed halls.

What is your creative process: handwritten, typed, noted?

Handwriting, and I work on images. You think in images, and you try to get the music right. What is poetry? Thinking in images with the right music.

‘Opposite Walls’ is fascinated with opposites. Poetry is all about images. You are moving into the metaphor. Metaphor is a lovely Greek word meta is “to carry” across the image.

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I often illustrate that with the poem ‘Opposite Walls’. That poem got a lot of notoriety. They liked it in ‘The Sunday Tribune’--they’d pick one poet a week on Sunday, and I happened to get ‘Opposite Walls’ about home, and ‘The Granada Ballroom’, a Granard ballroom; it was a very interesting take.

I have written a lot about Granard and Longford from childhood because it’s the world I know and it excites me.

Are you ever nervous after releasing your works while waiting for the reviews?

Yes. Always nervous. There’s a lot of tension. But when you’re waiting to walk on stage, it’s a pretty terrifying experience.

You’re reading your own poetry. Who wants to listen to poetry? Most people don’t. And I can get saturated with Poetry. I got adjudicated with the Patrick Cavanagh Award and 195 books of poetry to read.

The person who won was pretty good. I adjudicated the Oliver Goldsmith Award this year, giving the results in Pallas, in a field, where Goldsmith was born. The standard was high this year; great writing. A lot of hard work.

When you read 200 poems in one day, it’s tiring. It’s a lot. My works have been translated into French, German and into Italian. Italians like me. I read in Milan, in the university, and in Bologne–the first university in the world. Good experiences. Romanian, Russian, as well.

Any sort of advice you would like to give young poets in Longford who may want to pursue this literary style?

My advice? There is a poem that I wrote on page eighteen which is in ‘Journey Upstream’ about this as advice for the young poet:

“Break the lock on the field gate

Avoid the muck-worms at the gap

Abandon old visions you have of yourself ‘...]

You'll feel the warmth of a candle burning inside you,

The blur of its flame constantly changing[...]”

That would be my advice to a young poet. But my advice, in short? People are getting published easily, but they’re publishing themselves, not with a publishing house. Like all art forms, poetry is about talent.

If you have the talent, you need to be with a good writer’s group. Never stay long; get out of it. You’ll just vegetate, because that’s what happens. You have to be faced with the challenge.

It may all sound very elitist, but that’s my advice. I have Granard Irish; I learnt it in the national schools. It’s important to see where you are. It is because I write in Irish, as well as in English.