What a Difference a Day Makes: How a teacher's question to Theo Dorgan set him up to be a writer

As a boy in fourth class in Cork’s North Monastery school in the 1960s, a teacher posed a question to Theo Dorgan. The poet tells Helen O’Callaghan how that question helped set him on course to be a writer.

Cork poet Theo Dorgan: "And I knew very simply that this is what it was going to be for me – an idea of ‘that’s that sorted’." Picture: David Keane.

I was in the Mon Primary, in fourth class.

The most civilised teacher I ever had, Donal Hurley, was teaching us. He was a Barrs man, unusual on Cork’s northside, but a great guy. He was sympathetic to the children. We were poor, and I knew boys who were poorer, and he never made them feel bad about it — a lot of the Christian Brothers did.