SPEAKER_00 0:25

Today we have a special guest. We're speaking with author Sean Ogamorka, who recently wrote the book Erin Gabrok, being published by Bog Bodies Press. Oh, not Habrielik. Don't mention a hero. So wow. So uh so leading up to this interview, I'm looking over uh you've so you've written before. I see you've written for RTE, uh The New Arab, I see uh Crack Magazine. Um man, I I have to admit, I I didn't see you coming. I didn't know that you were out here. Uh but uh what this particular book though, this isn't an article for RTE or for news agency. Um this is really deep stuff. Uh what what pulled this book out of you? Where did this come from?

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Um well the thing is with the articles, I suppose like they're um they're kind of work, do you know what I mean? Um like I didn't whenever I sort of began writing, it was with the intention to write um prose, do you know? Um and then yeah, I suppose like I suppose it was sort of coming for a while. Like I I'd written this poem for Shaunakiha, which is like a it's like a storytelling. Um it's in the name, I suppose, you know, Shaka. And uh I wrote Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um they did a they did a crossover with Hinge, the dating app, um, and I read on it the the prompt was like uh like changing perspectives and relationships. So I wrote this poem uh uh called Tossing Gagjaro La Ahru. But it was uh a sort of long-ish sort of poem. Um it was sort of this narrative through it. And yeah, I just had the I put it on Instagram and I had the idea of um it did really well on Instagram and I had the idea of sort of extending it and giving it room to breathe um into this sort of novella that it is now, you know.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Um what kind of time period were you writing this over? Like it seems very it seems very thoughtful, it seems very uh rich and considerate in a lot of the language. Uh how long was this one how were how long were you working on this one? Did it all just come out of you in a shot or did you have to revise it a ton?

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Because it it's very the book itself came out Yeah, the book itself came out like a like a weapon to be honest with you. The thing is though I had written um there's parts of the the first part of the book that I had written between like 2021 and 2023 around the end. Um and I sort of adapted these sort of short stories that I was just posting online. I had some of them published here and there. Um I adopted these and these poems and things into the book, you know. So like technically I've been writing it for years, you know, but like obviously I didn't write those with the intention of putting into a book. Yeah, yeah. But when I actually sat down, then when I got to deal with bog bodies and I got to go ahead to sit down and write it. Um I'd say the process in t in its entirety took about nine or ten months or something. I started in uh July, I think.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Yeah, can we let's in the main of a crazy committee like a whip it uh the actually have several friends that are also uh um authors of a kind here and there, and I of course I've got to talk to a few. And man, that is that's an explosion of a book. Normally it takes years. It takes years and lots of revision to get that stuff out, but man, so I love the interspersing of the poetry and the use of Irish language as kind of a seasoning throughout, but never really demanding that you had a that you had a commanding fluency to engage with what was there. It felt really tasteful in that the the Irish that you used, the context of where you used it gave you a lot of clues. So you weren't just lost in the woods with a whole sentence without any idea what room you're in or who you're talking to. Like you really do try to help folks. And I feel like there's a lot of feeling that crops up around the level of Irish that people have. And even just before this conversation, we were having we were having a little cora too. You know? Uh Nismo de Kupaluk, fuck lagat. You got a few more and a few more a few words to you. Um so I I wonder I wonder if that's something you also observe, because it it seems like that's reflected. I I don't know if that was an intentional direction or if it was just something that maybe felt right in the process and it just came out, but I did notice that that it it felt like the the clues that there was extra clues there to help make it less bewildering when you came across it. So it wasn't like a requirement for engagement, it was more like a little extra if you had it. I thought that was just ah, chef kiss.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Yeah, the thing is like, you know, name my leafer, you know, um to quick before go on. You know. Yeah, well so like I I would never be able to write, you know, so my sort of I try to use as much as I can and I'm sort of surrounded by it a lot. And like the way Iris exists in the book is kind of the way it exists in my life, you know, in these just small parts where if I can use it I will, you know. And I just wrote the book that way. I've kind of always uh written that way when I've been writing sort of stories and poems and things, you know. Um it is it's you know it's it's beautiful, like you know, and it's it's nice to but I think I I think it feels it was important when I had someone read it who was wasn't Irish, I had no Irish at all. And no like a few people read it was no Irish and they didn't struggle or anything like you know, but I think the yeah, I think the way you put it is like if if you have Irish, it is kind of like this uh nice sort of extra, you know what I mean? Yeah, you know. Um and the Irish I think suits the sort of situation that it's put in really well, I think.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Mm-hmm. No, I'm gonna take my own orange. No no no, I think myself, but I gotta tell you, I I um I am absolutely swimming in uh kind of Berla and uh Gel Grichte like all the time. Like that's you know Nelane, Nelane Lossin, Gan, you know, Gel Gavichta. It's always there. So it would be weird if it was absent, but it also feels like I feel like you and I are are we're also straddling that line of there is kind of a weird elitism that crops up around the language sometimes and it becomes kind of gatekeepy. And I feel like that's not how a language thrives, and I I honestly do think that the little bits here and there that have the context that help people understand what the word would be, even without a dictionary there, that's doing work. So that's you know, I'm gushing a little bit. I loved this book. So um that's part of that's part of what I really enjoyed. And um, speaking of gushing about this book, there is a part of here I think I warned you that might be one of my favorite parts of the book, and I wanted to read it. This was really resonant. I enjoyed the crap out of this one. Yeah, rather than throw it out, the least ridiculous thing to do, you hold on to the thing. I wantin you to have something, anything, that acts as your proof of relationship with her, however small the extent uh of the relationship. God, I butchered that. See how good I am at this? Cheese. But no, I love that. I love that a lot. And it feels like the reason that I bring that up is it feels germane to what we're talking about, uh vis-a-vis the language, and not throwing it out whenever it seems like it's broken or whenever it seems like it's imperfect, when we're letting perfection be the enemy of the good that serves no one. And I feel like it's captured really cogently in that one little spot. Although that theme and that tone is absolutely throughout. That resilience through perseverance and overcoming problems without an air of domination, it's just it's being able to circumvent and summit those problems as they as they come. And that's resilience. That's resilience reading. And I think the world could really give us a good resilience read right now. So, you know, Mahuen Arish, that's a timely, timely book release. I mean, I know that I know that Northern Ireland is absolutely no stranger to hard times and political turmoil, but ho ho ho What a time to be alive, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:46

Yeah, for sure. I mean, um yeah, there's a lot of um there's a lot, particularly in West Belfast, um, there's a lot of you know, serious talent that's sort of spilling out of the place, I think. But I think yeah, in terms of resilience, like obviously a a massive um theme in the book is sort of poverty, you know. I think to be poor is to be resilient, you know. So um yeah, I think that's just it's naturally going to exist within the text, like yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

For sure. And there I have to say there is that authenticity, I think. Uh so I will uh without going into it in too too much in depth, you know, I I did come up through pretty modest meetings myself, and uh we learned about a billion ways to cook spaghetti. You know, you know what I mean? Like you you have the food that you can get access to, and then you do whatever you can with it, and you come up with the weird recipes, you know, like you know, mo families have like weird names for this stuff. But I know when I'm reading this, when I'm reading this book, it f it has that authenticity. When you see a lot of people play acting in this area, like if you were broke as a kid or if you ever, you know, had hard times as a kid that you can remember, it doesn't take a whole lot. Like I think little kids pick up on something's wrong. Like when the math doesn't math and you're tiny, I think kids they pick up on the wrongness and you carry it. And it kind of colors how you see things because you know that that hard floor is always there, and that people tell you there's something that's gonna catch you, but we know too many people that were caught. So like the it's easy for the kids to catch that stuff, and it really does, it really does stay with us, I think, as we age, but we get more context for why we were there, how things occurred that way, why is it such a pattern amongst ourselves and our peers? Um, why are the the bad choices I had to make, the kinds of bad choices all my friends had to make, you know, when all of this seems like an unnecessary system that doesn't really benefit anyone that directly funds their system through their labor or their time. But I'm not I'm not trying to I'm not trying to stump. I'm not trying to stump. I just get fired up about the stuff. But I absolutely love the authenticity in the book. There's a lot of folks that love to they love to put on dirty shoes and pretend to have like straight philosophy or whatever. And you can see them coming a mile away because you're like, I don't see that in you. Like I don't see that edge of your eye where you're like, this is not right. Like this is messed up. And if you had ever touched that before, you would know that you were parroting something that mattered. But uh I don't see that in this book. This book feels real.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Well that's it. I think like the um to to be genuinely genuinely working class and genuinely poor, um, you're you're constantly it's constantly about escape, you know. Like this um this is a working class book written by a working class person, and the whole thing is about you're tr trying elevation, you know. Part one is whether elevation is even possible. Sort of trying to fathom elevation and escape, yeah. And then part two is that sort of is the escape thing, you know. But like no one who's genuinely poor is like wants to be or enjoys that, you know. It's like these sort of people that um dress up as being poor, do you know, and they sort of um make it into like this sort of aesthetic, which is a very common thing now. Um in Ireland and in London, you know. But yeah, that's it's you can yeah, that I think that's why you can tell it's not genuine because no one who is actually poor wants to be, or war is it with like this sort of you know, there's this I I find there's a sort of like shame about it or something, you know. But maybe that's my Catholic uh well, you know, I think you do touch I do think you touch something there.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

There's I think that in moments of global turmoil, that is when we see spikes in class consciousness. And in moments of class consciousness, boy, those three yachts in a second house, that's a bad look, isn't it? You know, so they distance, they do it through clothes, they do it through aesthetic, they do it through swagger. But I mean at the end of the day, they still have more resilience against failure that other families don't have. And folks don't realize it's more expensive for poor families than for affluent ones. And it's not merely like the George Carlin joke of if you have lots of money in the bank, they give you money for having too much money, and if you don't have enough money in the bank, they charge you money because you don't have enough money. And that's like that's one angle of it. But uh I feel like in moments of turmoil, and boy, the world's on fire, folks do spend your activism points where you can, and I think as long as you're not doing nothing, if you're doing something, so just just do something, pick something, work hard, do something. But everybody's- I know everybody's trying right now. It's a crazy time, but it spikes that consciousness and that that awareness, that like visceral understanding and recognition of the disparities of the world and the uh asymmetries of the power between the people that generate worth and the people that enjoy the wealth. I see that in this book too. Just the feeling of like, it's that it's dirty old town, you know, it's like Donovan singing dirty old town, where it's that simultaneous it's home and it's where my friends and the people I care about are, it's where my struggles live, but I also kind of resent it and I don't like the the I don't like big pieces of it or what it did to me as a person or to people I care about or the things and places I care about. You know, so you have to simultaneously kind of hate it and love it at the same time. You know, I kissed my girl by the factory wall, dreamed a dream, you know, but dirty old town, dirty old town, you know? It's that feeling that that duality, and it's hard because I I think we swing back and forth between one extreme to another sometimes whenever our passions are high. And again, that's another thing that spikes in the world's on fire. So yeah, speak speaking of which there's a tone, there's an undercurrent of like the the struggle of emigration from having to leave the island to work. Like there's always that tension for folks in the north where they don't necessarily want to leave their social safety nets and their support networks that are close, but you know, you can't eat hope. So you're like it's like you were saying before, when you're poor, it's always trying to escape. You're always trying to escape.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

I think that's uh it's kind of the Irish condition, you know. Um like it's uh obviously it's so well documented, and like I've been doing a lot of work on researching uh London Irish diaspora. Um so it's something I've been looking into a lot at the moment, and like um obviously I experienced it. I'm in Belfast at the moment, but I I was living in London for a while. And like I think, yeah, I mean like the the main thing that sort of stood out to me as an immigrant there was how beneficial it is at the moment to be Irish in places like London and how sort of trendy and cool and popular it is, you know. But um when I compare it to sort of older the older Irish generation that I met, you know, the ones that built the roads and stuff, you know. Um they had a much different experience, I think. And uh yeah, that sort of difference there was I don't know, I felt that that's why they're I mentioned them in the book as well, you know, because to sort of bring up that sort of, you know, like although this character is over here and they're over there and things are going so well for him and he's uh elevating and transcending uh poverty in this. Um but yeah, I wanted them to come into direct contact with the uh the that older sort of generation that were had it a bit harder, you know, and uh were the were dealt a lot less respect. Yeah, it was the opposite of Kulap for Sure, particularly during the troubles and things, you know.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Yeah, yeah. Tickum Shingamai. I understand that one well. Oh man. And you're you're dead on too. There there is a a big spike recently of like, you know, I've been I've had Irish my entire life. I've been running the Conrad for Washington, DC, like solo mission since 2018. That's one of my other hats, my hatella. But all the same, it's oh how to me. But it was not cool. It was not cool, like it was it wasn't until I want to say like maybe a year and a half, two years ago, maybe, there's just been this like kind of upturn. I've I've been I've been in the community for a long time. The only reason I uh part of the reason I started the podcast, maybe it's the only reason, was because I was gainfully employed before and uh I was a cybersecurity senior and I got yeeted in the season of the doge. So one of the things I always kind of joked about with my friends was starting up this podcast. I was they were like, dude, you should fire up that podcast. Like, you never shut up about this stuff. Like you should just instead of talking to all us about it, you should just go and put it in a microphone. And it's been wild, it's popped up fast, but uh man, yeah, um you know, but we're we're not here for me. Right? Um man, you know what? So I had to gush for a second about the way that Bob Bodies Press was talking about the book. I just love this language. I do want folks to know that I did not write this. This is uh superior quality writing to what I normally script. So I don't want to don't install in value here. Again, Bog Bodies Press. Whoever got this, you brought your A game. I appreciate you. So it goes. Based on his own experience living in working-class Belfast, Erin Gabrach is a much anticipated debut novel from Belfast-based writer and activist Sean Ogamorho, published by award-winning independent press, Bog Bodies Press, in May of 2026. And then we go and the tone shifts. I feel like this is where like the the studio lights dim. Sorry, like you're in the theater. In the last call center in Belfast. Maybe we should do spooky voice for this. Maybe we should do spooky voice for this. Here you go. In the last call center in Belfast, he hasn't yet been fired from. A young man falls hopelessly in love with a girl called Erin. I'm picking it back up. Jesus, sound it on me. He's studying for an access to university course, writing poems he shows to nobody, and setting a maths exam for the final time. Erin is spending the summer at the job that is, for her, a stepping stone. For him, it is the ceiling. What follows is a story in two acts separated by three years and significant distance, geographical, economic, emotional. In the first, love opens a door, the protagonist didn't know is there. In the second, in London, it closes again. Gently, and he's left standing in the aftermath of a love that changed him. Dear God.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Yeah, it's nicely summed up for a player to the night.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

Oof. Oh my goodness. And the the little stub under too. You get um I love this because it gives you a feeling for what we were talking about before where you were finding a balance to intersperse the Irish without detracting from the tone or the ability to follow. And this is actually around kind of a nice uh flavor sampling of that one. And your heart will need mending. Of course it will. This is how it always would have felt in the end. But invite grief now as an old friend instead. Shadow Bahoalya. Let there be no pain, and let there be no panic. You deserve this ending for the last time being, at least. And how beautiful to have had it. How beautiful to have loved so deeply. How lucky you have been. Oh, boy, because a shin. Man, that's good. That's the good. See, that's what I'm saying. Like, this reads so well. I definitely I love the tone and that you mixed a lot of the cultural elements in without being alienating to people who aren't just familiar, but you have such a relatable story of just trying to find your way out. Escape is the word. I think you really captured it there. Escape is the word. Like trying to find that escape. Huromation lema anumgahomlen. I heard that with my whole soul. Well, I I appreciate that you were able to fit the interview in and the the crack your schedule. I know that your press release is just warming up and it's starting to spike out. I did want to make sure that folks knew how to find your book. Uh so again, that is Ern Groch. The Brach is spelled B-R-A-Fata-C-H. All the name ty uh the title all together, Erengebrach, E-R-I-N-G-O, B-R-A-Fada. That's the funny line over it if you don't speak Irish. C-H. And again, that is by Sean Og Moraco. Where would you prefer people pick up this book?

SPEAKER_01 20:22

They can pre-order it at the moment on um I think it's BogbodiesPress.com. Um on their way on Bogbodies website anyway. Um you can pre-order it there. We're launching it in Dublin on June the 6th. I don't know when this is going out, but um the launch is on June the 6th, regardless.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

In It'll be ahead of that. Rath Minds. I can't remember the name of the pub, but it's in Roth Minds. All the information is on my Instagram.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

Um yeah, dude. Oh yeah, Instagram. Um, so I'm Shaw and Shaneky on Instagram. Um, so people can catch me there and keep up to date with where to get the book and things like that. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

Oh hey, hey, Miloway Casaries for being here, man. We appreciate ya.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Um I really appreciate you taking the time, Sam. Slang of