Kevin Barry’s first novel, City of Bohane, won the Impac Dublin literary award. He is also the author of two short story collections. His new novel, Beatlebone, has been shortlisted for the Goldsmiths prize. It is an imagining of John Lennon’s fraught journey to an island he owns in Ireland, his battles with creative block, primal scream therapy, and his new album, the eponymous Beatlebone.

Why did you write about John Lennon?

My initial spark of inspiration is always place. I go cycling around where I live in County Sligo, and when I passed Clew Bay I remembered that John Lennon owned one of the islands there in the 70s when it was the end of the hippie trail and there were communes everywhere. This gave me a vague idea for this novel: John is looking for his island and can’t find it. Once I had the voice it came alive. I gave John a sidekick, Cornelius the driver, who became the book’s engine. I realised then that I was writing an old-fashioned novel: Don Quixote – John is on a quest and tilting at windmills, looking at life’s questions.

It’s “old-fashioned” but also daringly inventive…

That’s the perimeter of the story but I want to go as wild as I can within my stories. For me it’s not about maintaining control on the page – it’s about losing control and sometimes that’s uncomfortable for people.

“It’s about going to the dark places and using what you find there,” says John. Is that what you do in your writing?

For sure. Beatlebone is a portrait of an artist, to use the Joycean term. It’s about how you make something creatively – whether it’s a record or novel. There’s that great quotation “happiness writes white” – it doesn’t show up on the page; you have to go into your own dark materials and use that as an activating force. I think that so much of literature and music comes out of anxiety. Lennon was a very anxious person, as he’s portrayed in the book. I think many artists operate from this pit of worry and fretfulness. I certainly do. I’m a nervous maniac.

What was your research process?

I watched clips from interviews with John Lennon. I relistened to the music – I’ve always loved The White Album (a favourite track is I’m So Tired, as a fellow insomniac). Also, I lived in Liverpool for two years, which gave me confidence to try writing this. I’m interested in what happens when Irish traits move into northern cities, and in what made Liverpool the cradle for some of the century’s greatest pop culture.

Listen: I’m So Tired by the Beatles.

So much good literature comes out of Ireland. Do you identify with an Irish writing tradition?

I love the radical streak – Beckett and Joyce and Flann O’Brien were happy to go nuts on the page and be inventive. I also love Beckett’s letters because no matter how bleak you’re feeling, Sam is always feeling worse. There’s so much writing from this small, wet black rock at the edge of the Atlantic. I don’t think the fact that we get 300 days of rain is unconnected – it’s the ideal conditions for a nation of storytellers. You have to make stuff up or you’d go nuts.

The way we process stories is different now. But we still need narrative because our lives are messy Kevin Barry

Was storytelling part of your childhood?

In the 70s, when I was a kid, there were electricity strikes and the telly would go off so everybody would be around candlelight, yarn-spinning. We’re good at talk. But there are also all these silences; often what is not said is where you find your fiction.

Do you have a writing routine?

I go to my writing shed seven days a week. I have to write first thing in the morning while “still a little puddle in dream melt”, to use Don DeLillo’s phrase. Before you’re fully awake you’re not afraid to embarrass yourself; you just get it on the page. And crucially, the Wi-Fi doesn’t reach my shed.

Do you think the internet has an impact on novels?

I know for sure it affects the way I write – in very short paragraphs. The way we process stories is different now. But we still need narrative because our lives are messy – we need stories to give shape to them. And people still love to hear. The one thing that will stop us and slow us down is the human voice. I often write to be heard, to be read aloud.

You’re on a roll with prizes. How does it feel to be shortlisted for this week’s Goldsmiths prize?

I really like the Goldsmiths as it’s about innovation – and the novel has to be novel and constantly reinvent itself.

Beatlebone is published by Canongate (£12.99). Click here to order a copy for £10.39