Maura Johnston — Real Women, Big Lives

My Life’s Journey

Life takes us on many paths, and while my particular journey saw me in interesting places, it has completed a circle and I am back where I was born, in Moneymore. And happy to be here. I am a writer, and life’s experiences and observations have provided me with material for stories and poems. I am a wife, mother of three, grandmother of two. I have lived in Belfast, Derry and Swaziland. I worked in education for many years and have, since retirement, found satisfaction in teaching creative writing and facilitating reminiscence groups. In recent years I have discovered the deep, heart-core satisfaction of working with musicians to enhance poetry readings.

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“I’m proudest of having my poems published. This is my day. I really am proud of that. I come from a rural village background and where women are not expected to produce books of poetry.”

“I was seven, I was in third class and an Inspector came in and he was talking to us about fractions and he got me to draw a cake on the board and he said ‘now could you cut me a quarter out of that cake’ and I did it and I don’t know what he said but I know I felt good about it.”

Maura Johnston- Sept 2019 L-2.jpg — “My father used to say two things and as I’ve grown older I’ve learned the wisdom of them. One of them is ‘Don’t tell everything you know’. You don’t have to keep talking and saying everything. And the other one was, ‘You can’t keep the whole world right. Just do what you can and don’t fret over things you have no control over.’.”

Maura Johnston-7.jpg — “I was encouraged to be educated, to go on to Grammar School and University but that didn’t happen to every girl when I was growing up. It was taken for granted. My father never put a step in our way. It was taken for granted that we would go on as far as we could. Hard work was instilled into us.”

“And to put up with things. I think that is a great thing to have. To thole things, go on. You might be cold but be cold. You might have a long walk to school, go in the rain, but get on with it. Don’t complain about things, just get on with them.”

“My grannie was great in that she never criticised. My grannie just took whatever we said, let us do what we wanted. She had long, long hair, she could sit on it, white hair. She would let us brush it and plait it and put it up and do whatever we wanted and she fed us hard boiled eggs and jelly and she never criticised.”

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“Well the very first poem I published was in the ‘Ulster Tatler’. Sean Breslin who was in charge of that page in the ‘Ulster Tatler’ said to me to go on, to find another audience. Ruth Carr was about to produce a book called ‘The Female Line’ which was about women’s writing in N. Ireland and as a result I was published in that. And then I went ahead and I was published in ‘Poetry Ireland’, ‘Honest Ulsterman’, ‘Orbits’, ‘Fortnight’, and ‘Belfast Review’ and then I had two books of poetry published.”

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“And I remember one of the reviews of ‘The Female Line’ was by Diarmuid Healey and he picked out two writers to comment on and I was one of them. He only mentioned me in one sentence, mind you, but that gave me a real sense of self and I thought ‘maybe I could do something here’.”

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“Anne Tracey, Roy Arbuckle, Ursula McHugh, Joan and Kate Newman, Moyra Donaldson, Grainne Tobin, and all of those people would be supportive and say encouraging things and be pleased for me. I’m very lucky but I think N. Ireland has that. It is such a small place and all the writers more or less know one another and we see each other over the years at readings and launches and so on.”

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“And I’m a planner. If I’m in a school or somewhere I’m a planner to the last detail but then I go in and just do it. Without notes or anything. But I do plan things”

“On stage I can think, ‘Who am I to be here and I will never be able to give the audience what they want because I don’t really know what they want, I don’t know what they expect from me and whatever it is I may not be able to deliver’. Yes, it can be very nerve wracking.”

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“I think what I really like about women is their ability to talk to one another and share things. Even if it is somebody in a queue in a shop, you’ll hear their life story or the latest problem.”

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“I’d tell other women to be bold, I’d tell them to go out there. I would tell them to get together with like-minded people and I would tell them to promote each other and to keep going no matter what, that they have a lot to offer.”

Mary McGuiggan

Ursula McHugh