Imelda verses the lockdown blues
Imelda May has postponed an album, but is inspiring fans with her poetry
She might not yet be on the same level as her heroes, WB Yeats, Charles Bukowski or even John Cooper Clarke, but with the release of Slip Of The
Tongue, Imelda May reveals undoubted talents as a poet.
We’ve seen her evolve from rockabilly queen on 2008’s Love Tattoo through to torch songstress on 2017’s Life Love Flesh Blood where she really let her emotions show on an album of songs about the split from her former husband Daryl and the fallout from her next relationship.
Now, due to a combination of curiosity and necessity her poems are ready for the public’s perusal.
After deciding to postpone the release of an album of new songs because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Dublin singer will instead release an EP of nine poems recited by her with musical accompaniment.
They range from Stay, which is her reaction to life during lockdown and even dated 30/04/20, the day it was written, to Grievous
Battery Harm, a poem celebrating the finer points of enjoying one’s own body.
Like all good poets Imelda, by turns, makes you laugh, reflect and empathise. She recently featured on the Late Late Show and radio programmes where she imbued her recitations with the energy of the natural performer that she is.
‘I was curious to see what the reaction would be. I absolutely love how it has turned out,’ she tells me from her home in Hampshire, England.
‘Writing poetry is like writing songs. Sometimes you have to catch on to an idea as it flies past.
‘Sometimes it flows out so quickly that I can’t keep up with it. Then I have to go back and refine it. But I do that with songs too, right up until they are going off to be printed. I’m going, “hang on, I need to change a word!” I’m like any artist in any medium, I have to recognise when something I’ve created is as good as it can be and then just step away.’
She says that she is ‘freer’ when writing poetry. Any songwriter realises quickly that it is a discipline with structures that are best to adhere to whether it be a folk, pop or death metal song.
‘I am freer when I write poetry. You have to think about the overall structure, so I feel more liberated,’ she says.
‘But I shouldn’t need to be. I have to think about what different musicians are going to bring to a song and maybe I am thinking of that subconsciously when I am writing a song.
‘With poetry, I can just go for it.’ she says. ‘On a train, in my garden, I can just sit with a pen and paper and run away with myself.
‘On the last album and the next album, which I have already made, I have a thing that I said to myself when I am writing with other people: “keep my poetry head-on!”
‘I find I write much better with my poetry head on. With songwriting, you can slip into something that works and is easy rather than really expressing the emotion. Poetry is purer in that respect.’
Reading the words of particularly personal songs or poetry can make the reader feel like they are
I’VE HAD SOME WONDERFUL MESSAGES, INCLUDING
ONES FROM SEX THERAPISTS...
reading a diary, but listening to the EP, especially the aforementioned
Grievous Battery Harm which is also styled as GBH is like listening to Imelda reading her diary to us.
‘GBH is one that my girlfriends get me to recite on a night out with a few Margaritas onboard. Sometimes standing on a table,’ she says with a laugh.
‘Some people think it’s a sad poem, others find it hilarious and, sure, sadness and humour go hand in hand anyway. I put it out a couple of weeks ago ahead of the album.
‘I got a bit of a backlash from some people but most have jumped to my defence. I’ve had some wonderful messages, including ones from sex therapists.
‘Without sex we wouldn’t exist. Without knowing yourself, how do you expect someone else to know and it’s fabulous fun.’
My particular favourite is Roses which reflects on the highs and lows of being a performer. She tells me that she wrote it after watching the movie, Judy, which explored the sad final days in the professional life of Judy Garland and which earned actress Renee Zellweger an Oscar in February.
‘I remember Bono once said to me that a gig is almost sexual,’ she says.
‘You and the audience go on a journey together and you reach a high and a crescendo. But even if you are in band, afterwards you very often go back to a room and you’re alone.’
There are different degrees of being alone in this lockdown, I reply. Even if there are five people under the one roof, we are all reacting in different ways. Worrying about loved ones, finances or conversely, the guilty feeling of having a ‘good’ lockdown.
‘“Different degrees of being alone,’’ I like that! It would be a great title for a book. You should take that one and run with it,’ she laughs.
‘For me, during this isolation, connecting in any way couldn’t be more important. I wrote the poem Stay about how I’m feeling during all this. I heard that people are reading it to each other online and someone else told me that they had written it out and sent it to a family member which I thought was gorgeous.’
Like many people, Imelda says she has slowed down. Necessarily, she is doing all her meetings and interviews from home, But she is missing her family in Ireland ‘like crazy’.
‘In the middle of all this, my lovely dog Alfie died two weeks ago and I was, I am, heartbroken about him,’ she says.
‘I said this on the Late Late Show,
I’m aware it’s not my parents, I’m aware it’s not my child but he was my constant companion for 13 years and anybody who is a dog lover can relate. When I put my daughter to bed, it would be me and him sitting on the couch together. He was my pal. He was a lovely big Border Collie and he was an oul’ gent. He was always by my side. Even though they are not human, they are family members.’
Imelda has always been an animal lover and more than that. Members of the Corvidae genus seem to be uncommonly attracted to the Liberties belle.
‘I have acquired another crow,’ she says. ‘I had hand-reared one before… I found this one the other day. It fell out of the nest and his mammy isn’t coming down. It’s funny, I’ve just lost Alfie and this little fella has lost his mammy. We seem to be stuck together.
‘I’ll hand rear him back to the wild hopefully. So, if you hear him… there he is, right on cue, demanding food. He’s gorgeous but he’s not ready to fly. I hand-reared one, I called him Dave, it must be ten years ago or more and I’ve nursed a few who were older. They seem to come to me; I don’t know why. My friends call me The Crow Queen.’
If she believes in portents, then another crow falling into her care might herald some change of fortune as was the case with Dave the crow from ten years ago.
‘The crow that I had was how I ended up working with Jeff Beck,’ she says.
‘Hand-rearing him definitely changed the course of my life. I was on tour with Jools Holland (widely credited as having discovered Imelda). We were backstage one night with Jeff and his wife Sandra. She rescues animals. I had handreared Dave until he was an adult but I couldn’t let him go where I live in the city – I found him in a park – because he was used to my dog and everything.
‘Sandra said: “I’ll take him”. I took him down to their home. I ended up spending the weekend jamming and before I knew it, I was touring around America with Jeff Beck.’
Imelda, her daughter Violet, 7, and Imelda’s boyfriend, Niall McNamee, who is an actor and a musician, along with her new feathered friend, are shielding from the virus in the singer’s Hampshire home although she hadn’t intended Niall, 26, to be there.
‘My boyfriend has been great. It wasn’t the plan to have him here, but I’m glad he is and that has worked out well,’ she says.
‘He was fantastic with the dog dying, he was lovely. He would let me bawl and entertain Violet, take her out to the garden and play football with her.
‘He’s lovely and funny and I’m glad to have him. What all this has done is make me grateful. I am glad that I am not alone. I am thankful that I am in good health. I love having my garden. I am grateful for food. It has made me less fussy.
‘If I all I have in the house is a bag of flour, then that is food and I can figure out what it is going to be later. It makes you take stock but it is a kick up the ass for all of us, that’s for sure.’
WHAT ALL THIS HAS DONE IS MAKE ME GRATEFUL, I’M GLAD I AM NOT ALONE