After  a lifetime of scribbling on scraps of paper destined for the bin, poet Debbie Byrne went viral

Debbie Byrne says she always wrote, scribbled on bits of paper – she just never showed anyone. 

He school copybooks were filled with writing, but they were destined for the bin. 

“I would have scribbled to empty my head,” she says, blonde hair tied back, with her gold-ring-clad hands clasped in front of her. “But it was never for anyone to read.”

Byrne grew up in the Liberties. When she was young, she worked as a cleaner, a shop assistant, did community-employment (CE) schemes, and worked in catering as a silver service waitress, she says. 

Later, she trained as a psychotherapist. Sometimes, moved by a client's story, she would make it into rhyme. Again, though, the scribbled poems went in the bin. 

Most of her clients tend to come from working-class areas, she says. “I work with ordinary people who have extraordinary courage,” she says. 

Inspired by one client's story, she wrote a poem called "Every Woman". Her daughter, who was studying at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD), submitted the poem to a magazine about the Liberties, and Debbie read it at the launch. 

After that, Andrew McNeile, a trustee of the local St Catherine’s Church on Thomas Street, asked her where he could find her work, she says.

“I said on bits of paper thrown around the place,” says Byrne, smiling as she swung back and forth on a black office chair in a conference room in the Digital Hub on Tuesday, a bit further down Thomas Street. 

McNeile told her she was giving voice to things people don’t usually talk about. 

“He was really great for kickstarting me and giving me a push,” she says. So she started writing more and reading her poems out loud.

Last month, at 61 years young, two of Byrne’s poems started circulating widely on social media. "The two of them went viral back to back; it was nuts,” says Byrne, on Tuesday. 

She was asked to read her poem "Where Are All the Children Gone?" for Liveline on RTÉ Radio 1, she says. The poem challenges society to examine whether it is murdering childhood.

Then Richie Power, director of the Chats in the Flats series, asked her to record her poem "Some Other Mother’s Son", about drug-related intimidation. That has hit almost one million views, he says. The furthest reach on any of the work he has recorded.

In it, Byrne examines the terrifying experience of facing intimidation, but also acknowledges the humanity of the enforcer and empathises with his mother. “I Googled him today; he got sentenced to 10 year. I lit a candle for his mother and said a prayer.”

"Where Are All the Children Gone?"

On that recent Tuesday at the Digital Hub, Byrne remembered her childhood.

She was born in Pimlico. When she was one her family moved to Queen Street, tenements, she says. 

That was living in two rooms, no indoor toilet or running water, she says. “From what I can remember of it, I don’t have bad memories,” she says. “There was a sense of community. My mam knew everyone; she was from there.”

The family moved back to the Liberties when she was six. The Queen Street tenements were set to be knocked down, and they got a flat in Chamber Street. That complex is also no longer there, she says. 

Later, her parents got a house in the Tenters, where she lived until she got married and moved to Crumlin. 

Later that Tuesday, walking down Thomas Street, she says she misses the area she grew up and would still like to move back. 

Growing up in the Liberties the whole area was their playground, she recalls. “You were out in the morning,” she says, “you were out till you had to go in.”

She remembers her childhood as a time of freedom. “Robbing orchards, climbing trees, spitting on grazed knees,” she writes in "Where Are All the Children Gone?".

A day at the beach. “Perriwinkles, penny arcades if you caught a crab your day was made.”

Byrne laments what she sees as the death of childhood to materialism. “Days of innocence have been withdrawn.”

Learning how you feel

Byrne says she enjoyed working as a silver service waitress and that she was good at.

She didn’t set out to become a psychotherapist any more than she set out to become a poet. 

It came about almost by accident because her sister Jenny, who was addicted to heroin, applied for the residential drug rehab programme in the Rutland Centre.

Debbie went with her to the interview and at it the therapist asked Debbie how she was feeling. “I couldn’t answer,” she says. “I broke down in tears. I didn’t know how I was.”

She could talk about how her sister was doing, she says, she could talk about how her mother and father were but she didn’t know her own feelings, she says. 

Jenny was accepted to the programme, on the basis that a family member would attend an aftercare programme for concerned persons – that is family or friends of a person who is in addiction. 

Byrne attended the programme for two years and then became a volunteer facilitator on it, she says. For five years she facilitated the group working alongside a qualified psychotherapist. 

Then the psychotherapist suggested she go and get trained to be a therapist. At first she wasn’t convinced. “I am not going back to school, are you fucking mad?” she says, laughing. 

Today she works as a psychotherapist, supervises other therapists, and is also a holotropic breathwork facilitator, she says.  

“I always say Jenny was the messenger. She taught us so much. We all went into looking at our own behaviour, our own issues,” she says. 

Going viral at 61

Byrne never expected to become “Facebook famous” at 61. “It's gas, I don’t like front-of-house,” she says. “Keep the head down.”

At the Liberties Festival in the summer, she read four of her poems. 

Before that, the festival posted her reading "Where Are All the Children Gone?" on Facebook, which was shared by the Ringsend and Irishtown Youth Service, she says.

It took off from there with people sharing it and has now got more than one million views, she says. 

When RTÉ Radio 1 Liveline programme had her on, staff dug up archive footage of Dublin in the past to accompany the poem. 

Power, who directs Chats in the Flats – an online series celebrating spoken word and stories from council flat complexes in the inner-city – says that around seven different people sent him a recording of Debbie reading her poetry. 

“You need to get her on,” he says they told him. When he heard her. “I was amazed.”

Within weeks he bumped into her twice at different local events, he says. The he heard her read "Some Other Mother’s Son". “Oh my God that is the one,” says Power. “I’d love for you to do that one.”

They recorded it, and it took off. “It's the biggest one we have posted in terms of numbers and reach. It is almost at a million views,” he says. “Even her delivery and everything.”

Her delivery is strong, she could also be on stage, Power says.

Byrne says that "Some Other Mother’s Son" is rooted in her experiences, but there is some artistic licence used too.  

She lives in Crumlin and filmed the scene from the front door of her mother’s flat, she says. 

The poem is about a mother who faces drug-related intimidation when a dealer comes knocking, forcing her to pay for her son’s drug debt. Byrne says she was surprised by the number of people who contacted her to thank her for highlighting the issue. 

“I’m really surprised at the impact that one had on people,” she says. Even from people in recovery commenting about regret for what they put their own mothers through, she says.

Byrne says drug-related intimidation affects all communities, but is more obvious in working-class areas. “Addiction, it doesn’t have a class system,” she says. “Nobody sets out to be an addict.”

No one goes to the Gardaí when faced with that knock on the door, she says. That is not an option. 

Has the problem worsened in recent years? “I think it has, but you don’t hear about it,” says Byrne.

Mother Down-to-Earth

Byrne says that since her sudden success she has started writing more poems.

Some are funny, like one that tackles aging, called "Old and Bold". “Can I touch my toes? I’m not able. How’s my mental health? I’m stable. And with a little help up and down I can still dance on a table.”

She doesn’t write in flowery language, she says. It's the simplicity of the words and structure that appeal to people.

Like a woman who approached her after she read "Every Woman". “I don’t like fuckin poetry and I don’t cry. But see that poem,” she recalls the woman saying. 

One of her recent works, "Tell Them When I’m Gone", is inspired by the death of her brother Patrick, of motor neurone disease in November last year. 

“Life’s lesson is we’re all going to die. Once you realise that, you look at life through a different lens,” says Byrne. “You realise what is important and what is not.”

So, she says, she has decided to say yes to everything and see what happens. She is open to the idea of writing a book. 

Someone called her Mother Earth one time, she laughs. She doesn’t think that is right. 

“Mother Down-to-Earth,” she says. That fits. That's what the book would be called.