Over recent months, I’ve enjoyed reading the regular interviews with poets published by Paul Brookes at The Wombwell Rainbow. This week Paul published an interview with poet Nathanael O’Reilly, born and raised in Australia, but currently living and teaching in the United States.

In the interview, Nathanael speaks of the influence of Keats, Yeats and Heaney, his “holy trinity”, as well as his advice for young writers: “Every serious writer knows that it takes years and years of practice to become a decent writer, let alone a great one […] Young writers are often impatient and in a rush to get published, and many of them don’t understand that writing requires a really long apprenticeship […] Having the desire to write is just the first step.”

Nathanael’s interview can be read in full here, and is highly recommended, along with his most recent book of poems, Preparations for Departure (UWA Publishing, 2017).