20 Oct 2025

Interview with our poet-in-residence at Inverewe

Written by Ginevra House

A woman stands beside a poem carved on a wooden board in a raised flower bed.

Clare O’Brien beside one of her carved poems in the walled garden at Inverewe

Clare O’Brien talks to Ginevra House about her role as poet-in-residence at Inverewe Garden.

What does it mean to be a poet, in this place?

Anything written in this kind of landscape tends to be very influenced by the landscape, by the natural world; by history; by folklore, mythology, ghosts and spirits – not necessarily the Halloween kind, but the spirits of place, genius loci; things that have happened here, events – sometimes the spaces between events – the implications of landscape; things you could imagine happening.

Where I live, on the banks of Loch Ewe, is completely surrounded by hills and the sea at one end. I feel like I’m living in this sort of green cauldron, surrounded by rock, with water in the bottom. It’s a very good place for containing an atmosphere; it’s a good place to write.

What does a poet-in-residence do?

You try to translate, I think, the place in which you find yourself – whether it be a garden or a college or a building. Poetry is always, to some extent, a form of translation because you’re taking experience or visual stimuli – or auditory or sense – and translating them into words. It’s almost like translating between two languages, two modes of communication.

So, it’s taking the place and its atmosphere, its people and its purpose, its place in the world, and trying to encapsulate different aspects of that in poems. This is what I’ve been trying to do with the seasonal poems that we’ve carved on wood and placed in the garden.

Tell us about your connection to Inverewe Garden.

The first time we ever went, my kids were still really tiny and we were still living near Cambridge. We came on holiday and took the boys to the garden. They absolutely loved it! Some people say that it isn’t really a place for children, but my two absolutely adored it; they would run about there all day.

My oldest, Callum, probably had no idea he would end up working there one day. He’s now one of the gardeners and met his wife Cassie there. My husband Ally was for a while a chef in the restaurant, so we’ve all done our bit at Inverewe.

But I’ve always felt personally the garden was a powerful place; similar to some of the gardens in Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, it has that kind of feel to it.

A gravel path runs through a terraced walled garden, with a loch shore covered in seaweed to the right. Mountains can be seen in the distance.

Some of the trees are very old and definitely have a personality.

They certainly do. And it’s a very beautiful place, especially in high summer, when there’s such a profusion of flowers; it can be quite overwhelming. It’s just to be treated with respect I think, because it is a place of power as well as being attractive or unusual – because obviously it’s unusual to have a garden of this kind this far north. It’s remarkable in more ways than one.

What do you have to do to be a poet?

I don’t think you have to ‘be’ anything in particular. The poets I know have completely different personalities – some are very outgoing, the life and soul of the party; some are terrified hamsters that won’t come out from behind their hair. So, I don’t think it’s any particular type of personality that’s needed.

But what you need to be able to do, I think, is go quiet; stop being busy. And just listen.

And then the thing presents itself. It’s harder to do than you would think, especially if you spend quite a lot of your time running hither and yon. It takes discipline to get into that flow state, where you can create things without any interruption.

I guess it’s about going somewhere where you’re not. It’s more difficult to do than you would think, because you interrupt yourself a lot of the time. A lot of it is about getting out of your own way.

Do you plan your writing?

I almost never write anything worth reading if I try and plan it beforehand. I find if I do that, I don’t want to write it any more – my brain feels like I’ve done it already. I try to sidle up to a cloud of vague subject matter and try to stick it all together. It’s almost covert.

I think that’s what the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is about: going down into the underworld, retrieving something you mustn’t look at. You just have to bring it back to the surface and not look back, not try and see what it is, otherwise it will sink back down and be lost forever, like Eurydice.

A close-up shot of a woman standing in a field with long, dry grass. She has long hair and is looking up towards the sky, smiling. A sea loch is in the background.

Clare O’Brien, poet-in-residence at Inverewe

Clare lives in Inverasdale with her husband and cat. Her first poetry pamphlet, Who Am I Supposed To Be Driving?, came out in 2022 with Hedgehog Poetry Press, and her fantasy novelette Airloc, set in Gairloch, was published in February 2024 with ELJ Editions. Her second poetry pamphlet, Breathing Out Becomes White And Snowfall, is out this autumn with Intergraphia Books.

She’s currently working on an experimental novel entitled Light Switch and a full poetry collection.

You can see Clare’s poems at Inverewe Garden. Her summer poem, carved on wood, can be found in the walled garden, and her sinister Tourist Trap forms part of the Myths and Beasties exhibition in the Sawyer Gallery.

Read more on Clare’s website

This story was first published in the Gairloch Times.

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