I disappeared for a while and although I would like to say that I was busy meeting writers and chasing them for interviews, I must confess that it is completely untrue. However I did come back with one interview. I spoke with the enigmatic figure of the Emerging Writer.  That’s the name of her popular blog. Yet no one knows what she looks like and her real name.  So without further delay, here is the mystery unveiled:

Hi Kate, after talking to one person in particular — and I am sorry I can’t reveal that source (Peter Goulding) — he revealed inadvertently that your full name was Kate Dempsey, am I right?

Yes!

So with that information, I did a bit of detective work about you on Google and discovered that you write fiction and non-fiction as well as poetry and are widely published in Ireland and abroad, in magazines, anthologies and on the radio.

Yes.

Still very mysterious. So how long have you been writing? Can you tell us where we can read your work? Also out of this impressive diversity of genres in which you write, which one do you feel the most at ease with? And the least? And did it change over time?

I always assumed I’d write but never got round to starting anything. Apparently you actually have to put pen to paper. So I made a new year resolution in 1999 to write a novel. It was harder than I thought!

Here’s some links to my work: Ignite at the Science Gallery, O Bheal reading, Glor Sessions Part I. (Starts around 09:15)

There are some poems around online BUT there is also another poet out there with my name. Be warned! You can, of course, go on to my site emergingwriter.blogspot.com and order my pamphlet Good Sherry Trifle. I have a few copies left.
I’ve also done non-fiction, radio pieces, short stories, travel articles and a short play that was performed in Waterford Royal Theatre but I always come back to the novel and the poems.
On top of that I have a family and a full time job.

My! My! My! How do you fit it all in? How or where do you find inspiration with such a busy life?

I’m working full time now to finance my high life pretensions, my book buying addiction and my annual rail card. I write a lot on the train, commuting in and out to Dublin. The rhythm is infiltrating my poems actually. I go to two writers’ groups and find the regular meetings a very useful deadline for finishing something to workshop.

You also regularly update your very useful blog with the latest writing competitions and events. I have discovered that it won an Irish Blog Award.  Your dedication shows that promoting arts/writing is something that you feel strongly about.

I was nominated for the Irish Blog Awards but that’s as far as it went. Other, more worthy, shiny, happy blogs won. I started blogging to keep track of events and competitions for myself and threw in a few personal essays and rants to keep me sane. I do post my successes but also my failures. I get fed up reading relentless self-promotion and how brilliant-am-I posts on some blogs. I’ve made some great online friends and had a lot of fun. There’s also the Poetry Bus, a weekly online movement that provides prompts and swaps links to new poems. There’s already been one, real life print magazine and another is in the works.

What do you think of the Upstart project?

I’m up for anything that promotes the arts, that exposes it to people who haven’t read a poem since school or seen modern art outside of a hotel lobby. I just adored the Upstart posters around Dublin for the election – a brilliant idea and a real boost to my day. I would like to see a lot more art in public places. Poems on the Dart is small fry. Let’s get much bigger than that. We have a small campaign every December online to leave guerrilla poetry in shops and post pictures online. The only drawback is the lack of compensation for the artists at this stage. In the long run, we have to eat (and buy books.)

And what are your thoughts on arts funding and government arts policy?

The arts provides jobs for many people and generates income for the country in the form of tourism and taxes on top of the other good things arts does to the community. But the percentage of artists who make a comfortable living is very small. So yes, of course government funding is a necessity for the arts. But in the current disastrous economic climate, we have to accept cutbacks.

If the choice is between an incubator and an opera, the incubator will always win. For Arts funding, there is always a problem of who gets what and the high administrative costs in running it. Cronyism is rampant and, in my opinion, too much emphasis is put on academic, hi-falutin’ art and not enough on down to earth, real stuff.

Accessible is almost a dirty word. And I say this as someone who has been lucky enough to have received an Arts council bursary and also one from South Dublin county council, for which I am very grateful. But it’s never enough. I spend more traveling to readings and events that I get from them so I’ve had to cut back.

Most poets and other writers work or are supported by partners or parents or pensions. I would love to write full time but until someone snaps up my multi-million bestseller novel or award winning poem and flogs it to Hollywood, that’s a pipe dream.

If you could invite anybody for an interview on your blog, who would it be and what would you say to him or her?

Juicy question. I would love to meet the poet Simon Armitage. Yes, a masterclass in writing poems from him. Or how about William Shakespeare? I’d love to know about the missing plays. And how he moved from Stratford to London. I’d also like to chat to the author Bill Bryson. He’s so funny and self-deprecatory. That’s all men. I’d like to meet Meg Cabot, author of the Princess Diaries and other giggly, sparkly books and get her secret for having so much bubbly energy for writing and for social networking.

What projects are you working on?

I have The Novel, 64,000 words and counting, first draft. I’m considering making my first, bottom drawer novel into an eBook as an experiment. And in between, the poems. I’m working on a first collection and will have a pamphlet coming out later this year with the Moth Editions. This is exclusive news and you heard it here first!

Have you any more news?

I also run the Poetry Divas Collective. We are a glittery group of women poets who between us are well published. Each lineup and show is different, blended to the occasion but we guarantee a deliciously infectious show that’s bound to touch a nerve and blur the wobbly boundaries between page and stage. We’ve at festivals and other events all round the country, in a castle, a tee-pee, a turf cabin, a horse box, a bird cage, a rose garden and a cabaret.  We read our own poetry, accessible, humorous, thought-provoking and fun.

Thanks Kate. I hope you keep on touching a nerve or two around the country.

Interviewer: L.A. Speedwing