Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Holly Gattery
Guest: Conor Mc Donnell
Episode: "What We Know So Far Is..." (Wolsak & Wynn, 2025)
Date: March 13, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode features poet and physician Conor Mc Donnell discussing his new long poem, What We Know So Far Is... Holly Gattery hosts a wide-ranging conversation covering the poem’s genesis, themes of mediated information, the role of irreverence, personal and professional intersections, the process of poetic distillation, and Mc Donnell's mental health journey. The dialogue celebrates the complexity of modern life, the bombardment of news, and the difficult work of maintaining empathy amidst cultural and personal crises.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Origin and Structure of the Poem

• The Poet's Media Consumption and News Anxiety

  • Mc Donnell’s morning routine of scanning news headlines inspired the poem (“what we know so far is...”) and its titular refrain.
  • He laments the hollow, anxiety-inducing immediacy of news alerts:

    “What you know so far is essentially nothing... the whole world has accelerated to a point where a thing happens and a second later you're aware... but you're not aware of the context.” (04:58)

  • The project began as a suite of poems, eventually coalescing into a multi-part long poem with recurring motifs and formal variation.

• Weaponized Language and Memetics

  • The language of contemporary news coverage is compared to a mutating virus:

    "It’s like... the language that is being thrown at us is like a weaponized meme, something that's been in our genes since day one, and it keeps evolving to keep us further and further apart." (07:42)

  • The collection explores the paradox of hypercommunication and profound misunderstanding.

• Visual and Thematic Motifs

  • The book’s cover features a figure plummeting through air, symbolizing “someone falling through the history of language... we’ve never had so many communication devices, but increasingly, we’re not communicating at all.” (09:53)

Irreverence, Cheekiness, and Emotional Safety

• The Role of Humor and Safety in Difficult Subjects

  • Holly remarks on the poem’s “rippling irreverence” and “breathtaking, puckish cheek,” providing relief amid heavy themes (11:03).

    “That irreverence gave me room to breathe... When you're at a funeral and something absurd happens, it’s that laugh you can’t have.” — Holly (11:09)

  • Mc Donnell acknowledges his instincts for "cheekiness" as a professional coping mechanism and as a way of integrating his full self—physician, writer, comedian—into his work.

    "For years... I was going to work and leaving very important parts of me at home... One of my ways towards better mental health and wellness... was you can't go to an incredibly stressful job... and only bring part of yourself." (14:02)

• Cheek as Humanity and Coping Strategy

  • Humor is an essential element, not a forced style:

    "I don't intentionally sit down to be funny or cheeky, but I do sit down with the intent of... when a word combination... presents itself, I will twist the hell out of that..." (21:58)

• Memorable Moment

  • Mc Donnell recalls a moment at work:

    "There was this baby... name was Dante. It was an emergency surgery... he weighed 6.66 kilos. I said, can we not just round up and give this kid a fair chance? Dante, the Descent to hell—he weighs 6.66 kilos." (20:34)

Poetry Excerpts and Close Reading

• Section XXIV (“Twin Peaks in Under Two Minutes”)

  • Holly highlights a favorite passage, praising its density, layered meaning, and emotional effect:

    "If only we could all be little girls a while holding ends inside the clocks, but we are weeds instead, when we could have been timeless trees." (23:52, poem; discussed at 24:37)

  • The section draws deeply on Twin Peaks as a metaphor for cultural consumption, the destruction of innocence, and the observer’s role.
  • Mc Donnell details his obsessive process for creating it, distilling 60+ hours of televised narrative into a page and a half:

    "I watched all of the original series... then I was like, condense it, condense it, condense it..." (25:28)

• Performance of the Poem

  • Conor reads the section aloud, bringing the blend of menace, sorrow, and wryness to life (31:00–33:57).
  • Holly praises the directness of lines acknowledging gendered violence:

    “What we know for sure is no, you're safe. You're men. Next will be another woman, a blonde in high school using drugs and crying out for help..." (32:45, poem)

Empathy, Numbness, and the Ethics of Witnessing

• The Peril of Apathy

  • Both discuss the numbing effect of relentless news and the importance of resisting it:

    “Just because something doesn’t affect us directly doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care about it. Your whole collection is a pro—” — Holly (38:05)

  • Mc Donnell responds:

    “When I first sat down and read another story like that, like another school shooting, I wasn’t blase... But I was like, whoa... This is becoming normal. This is being normalized by myself. So that is a big reason I wrote this book.” (38:20)

• A Hymn to Reawakened Sensitivity

  • Holly: “This whole book felt like a hymn to a reawakening of ourselves from the apathy of the barrage of news...” (39:14)
  • Mc Donnell: “I cannot allow my cells to accept this as normal information.” (39:05)

• The Need for Pause

  • Mc Donnell reads "hinge" section 8 at Holly’s request:

    “What we know so far is we need a pause. Deep water Valdez, ported Beirut. So many generations unmade with a word...” (40:35, poem; full reading at 40:35–42:22)

The Craft: Distillation and Editing

• On Compression and Drafting

  • Mc Donnell describes a meticulous, notebook-driven drafting process, followed by ruthless editing:

    “I don’t work off the laptop. I work with notebook and pencil... It starts like play doh...The editing process... was probably about a year... tossing more and more stuff out... things that I thought I cannot be without this... I was just viciously taking a side to it and just throwing stuff over my shoulder.” (43:13–45:56)

  • The book’s motifs reappear but mutate, creating continuity and surprise.
  • The final shape arose partially through periods of deep distress, illustrating how art and illness can become inseparable.

• Mental Health and Writing

  • Mc Donnell opens up about writing during a period of untreated medication toxicity and acute grief, seeing traces of mental turmoil in the draft’s variations:

    “There are times when I was reading drafts... and I was in tears... I could see, I was like, you were so, so sick when you wrote this, and you had no idea. And most other people didn't have any idea as well...” (47:23)

Professional and Personal Identity—Physician & Mothering

• Integration of Roles

  • Mc Donnell reflects on the permeability between his identities, stating:

    “There’s more than one thing to me... Most importantly, I’m a husband. That is the most important job I have... I take care of children, but I’m not a parent. And how does that change the way I think about the future of the world?” (45:56)

• Mothering as Action, Not Gender

  • Holly responds:

    “I do not believe that mothering is confined to one sex or gender. I believe anyone can mother... I felt that in your book, a level of care... a caregiving constant.” (54:46)

What’s Next and Closing Reflections

• Response to Reception

  • Mc Donnell says he is intentionally pausing before pushing out new work:

    “For the first time in my life, I am not actively scratching... Instead, I put something out there and people started talking about it...” (56:56)

  • Manuscripts in progress: a “short novel,” experimental and collage-based, and a new poetry manuscript (“transitions filtered through... the Book of Revelations and... the imaginings of a person who has just purposefully overdosed”) (56:56–62:36)

• Admiration for Contemporary Peers

  • Both host and guest praise Jade Wallace’s book Anomia, including its genderless pronoun strategy and cultural impact (63:41–64:22).

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• On the flood of news:

  “It’s like you wake up in the morning and someone throws a pie in your face and goes, people are dead, you know?” — Mc Donnell (06:00)

• On irreverence and humanity:

  “I allow anything and everything to be on the table when I'm writing... I kill myself every day trying to do it anyway.” — Mc Donnell (17:54)

• On poetic process and mental health:

  “There are times when I was reading this... I could see weeks when I was writing, when I was in an unrecognized... toxicity. I could see it in my writing... That is the ravings of a madman.” — Mc Donnell (47:23)

• On artistic permission:

  “I am allowed to tackle things in whatever way I want, not feel that I need to compete with the current market... Instead just sit back and go, you know what? This is all pretty crazy. This is all really difficult. It's difficult for everyone—here is what we know so far.” (17:12)

• On empathy and news:

  “I cannot allow my cells to accept this as normal information.” — Mc Donnell (39:05)

• On gender, care, and poetry:

  “I am a firm believer in the act of mothering... anyone can mother and mothering is an act... I felt that in your book, a level of care for the would be reading this and I found that incredibly powerful as well.” — Holly (54:46)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:50 – Introduction and author bio
• 04:58 – Genesis of the long poem and critique of news media
• 11:03 – Humour, cheekiness, and handling heavy themes
• 14:02 – Integration of professional and personal self
• 23:52 – Close reading: section XXIV, Twin Peaks, and poetics of irreverence
• 31:00 – Performance of “Twin Peaks” section
• 38:05 – Empathy, the normalization of tragedy, and resisting numbness
• 40:35 – Reading of “hinge” section 8: “we need a pause”
• 43:13 – Distillation, drafting, and editing process
• 47:23 – Mental health and writing through illness and grief
• 54:46 – On caregiving, “mothering,” and the ethics of care
• 56:56 – Reception, slowing down, and new work
• 63:41 – Praise for Anomia, gender and genre
• 65:19 – Thanks and outro

Memorable Moments

• Workplace gallows humor:

  “Dante... emergency surgery... weighed 6.66 kilos. Can we not just round up and give this kid a fair chance?” (20:34)

• Meta-commentary on the writing process:

  “There are probably drafts of this book that sound like they were written by different people. And one of the things that actually came together near the end was allowing those different people to have their say.” (45:56)

Overall Tone & Take-Aways

The conversation is intimate, rich, and sometimes raw. Conor Mc Donnell’s openness about integrating pain, irreverence, and the full scope of lived experience into poetry provides both a path forward for artists and a compassionate lens for readers living in a media-saturated, anxious age. The episode ultimately affirms the power of slow, attentive engagement with language and the need for pause, empathy, and wholeness amidst modern tumult.