In terms of poetry, I worry about being far from the voice of my childhood, the rhythms of Ulster speech, and the liveliness of its dialect. I know there is a vitality to New York talk, but living among people of different cultures does mean you're forced to homogenize and lose the interesting words and phrases in order to be understood.
Nick LairdThere used to be one writer rather than a team of writers. It's the old line about a camel being a horse designed by committee.
Nick LairdThe whole process of having to put the thing into the world seems so antithetical to the act of writing. Poetry is slightly easier, because there's less money and fewer people involved. You just let a book of poems trickle out in the world, and it finds its own people. Novels are much harder, and you don't think you should have to do some of the things you're made to do.
Nick LairdThe reason that the book exists is because there was a gap in you. You wrote the book to fulfill that gap in some way.
Nick Laird