Reading in Leicester

Last night, I was at the University of Leicester, reading to a forum of post-graduate creative writing students. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening - the reading went well, and the three papers presented by students were extremely thought-provoking.

The first, by Michelle Fossey, was an extract from a novel in progress which is centred on one subject I'm fascinated by (religious cults) while analysing another (the clarity and transparency, or lack of it, of language). She also mentioned something that intrigues me - the tension that arises when conducting a solitary, private activity - writing - in an academic, supervised environment. Of course, that says something about my own writing methods and/or expectations, as there's no reason why writing should be solitary or private, but it set me thinking.

Gail Knight (I think I've got the name right) read an extract from her children's novella - as one of the other guests pointed out, even though it wasn't the sort of thing I'd expected to appeal to me, I found myself wanting to know what happened next, which I'd guess is what any writer of fiction wants more than anything.

Finally, Gwynne Harries read a number of his own poems as part of a look at the poetry of identity, and specfically dual identity (he's an English-speaking Welshman). My own mother's Welsh, so it's something I'm very interested in, and Gwynne also set me off looking into some of the traditional Welsh verse forms he touched on (I've tried the odd englyn in the past, but there's a lot more to discover), plus Rolfe Humphries, a relatively neglected literary figure these days.

Heartfelt thanks go to Rory Waterman (a very fine poet, and the man behind the excellent New Walk magazine) for his kindness in inviting me, and for the splendid curry at Kayal.

Decisions, decisions...

So, do I do a poem a day in April for National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo)? I'm wavering, but I'm beginning to think it might be the kick up the arse I need at the moment.

Inspiration

I was thinking, over the weekend, about the way reading poetry works upon the unconscious mind, and then feeds into your own writing. If you're trying to write poetry, than reading as much of it as possible can only be a good thing, as far as I'm concerned - the wider the range of influences you get exposed to the better.

Having said that, I've long been wary of trying to write too soon after reading poetry that I like a lot, because bitter experience tells me that the result is often a series of third-rate imitations of the writer in question. Far better to digest the other poet's work slowly, very slowly, and fully absorb the literary nutrients therein.

Sometimes, though, reading something that's just shout-out-loud brilliant does have an immediately inspirational effect, and the only thing to do is to get the notebook/beermat/laptop out and write. It happened to me last week. I'd been rather stuck on several (largely unconnected) poems for weeks, months even, and couldn't find a way to move forward with them at all.

Then, after reading a particular poet's latest book, I had a blinding-flash revelation of where I wanted to go. I was very dubious at first, but went with it, and have been checking and rechecking ever since that what I came up with wasn't a pathetic retread of their work. I'm pretty sure it's not (although that's not to say it's any good) - in fact, I think it's stylistically a very long way from what I was reading.

So how does this happen? I tend to think that it's simply that reading a great poem reminds you that such things are possible - spend to long looking at your own failures, or even just your own almost-poems, and you start to forget what a real poem is. All of which is a way of saying again that the more poetry you read, the better, because the more likely you are to come across something astonishing, or inspirational.

Some current reading

I've been reading a lot over the past couple of weeks. Here's most of it:

Selected Poems - Cesar Vallejo (Shearsman)
Collected Shorter Poems Vol.2 - John Matthias (Shearsman)
Days and Nights In W12 - Jack Robinson (who, it turns out, is actually Charles Boyle, the man behind CB Editions, who publish this)
Early Train - Jonathan Davidson (Smith Doorstop)
God's Machynlleth - Michael W Thomas (Flarestack)
Port Winston Mulberry - Michael W Thomas (Littlejohn and Bray)

Aly Stoneman - Lost Lands (Crystal Clear Creators)
Jessica Mayhew - Someone Else's Photograph (Crystal Clear Creators)
Charles Lauder Jr - Bleeds (Crystal Clear Creators)
Roy Marshall - Gopagilla (Crystal Clear Creators)
Silent Spring Revisited - Conor Jameson (pre-publication proof)

A conversation with Mark Howard Jones

 

It’s a fortunate day when you find out your boss shares your regard for the weird fiction of HP Lovecraft. Back in the late 1990s, that’s what happened to me when I was working at the Western Mail and Echo in Cardiff.

Mark Howard Jones, who was my chief sub-editor, has since become a full-time writer, with his most recent book, Songs From Spider Street coming highly recommended by no less an authority than Ray Bradbury. I talked to him about his work…

I wanted to start by asking how you go about getting short stories, and especially ‘genre’ short stories (we'll get on to my problems with that label later) published? From the outside, I get the impression that there are even fewer outlets for short stories than for poems.

Getting short stories into print is inevitably an uphill struggle because Britain is such a small place with so few magazines that publish fiction. The outlets that do exist often seem to favour their friends so, if you haven't fallen down in a drunken heap with the editor at some stage, it's highly unlikely you'll be published by them.

But persistence and the discovery of the odd discerning editor are the keys to publication, I think. I'm getting more and more work published in America, where there are a greater number of outlets of course.

Incidentally, I don't see myself as writing ‘genre’ stories. I think genres are useful only to publishers, booksellers and librarians, to be honest. But if you steer clear of using different genre ideas in your writing (for whatever reason) it’s like only ever cooking with one or two ingredients; you won’t starve...you’ll just wish you had.

I agree about that term ‘genre’, or at least the way it’s used to try to separate so-called literary fiction from everything else. I can remember the first time I ever read a piece of writing and enjoyed it for the quality of the writing itself – it was a short story by Ray Bradbury, in the Readers’ Digest, when I was about 11. It was only years later that I realised he tended to get sidelined by critics as a sci-fi writer. Does that sort of separation in fiction still go on as much as it appears from the outside?

I think it does but the edges are finally beginning to blur, thankfully. I’ve been published in ‘genre’ magazines and anthologies simply because they were willing to publish my work. But there are other facets of my work that they wouldn’t have touched with a bargepole.

While I admit I admire writers such as Machen, Lovecraft, Dino Buzzati, Ballard, and Bradbury, I've also absorbed a lot of influences from surrealism, magic realism, expression and other literary movements.

And 'literary fiction' (an absurd label!) has now fallen into its own trap and become a genre itself, of course.

So can you recommend some good eclectic, open-minded mags and webzines for writers and readers? Short stories seem to be skimming even lower under the radar than poems, these days.

Haha. That's asking me to cut my throat really, isn't it? Rather than play favourites I'll tell you which magazines I enjoy personally at the moment.

In this country I always try and read Dream Catcher, Midnight Street, Estronomicon, Sein und Werden, Triquorum (though I think that might sadly be dead now), 3 AM, Black Static, Theaker's Fiction Quarterly, Polluto and Wordland. My favorites across the Atlantic are Weird Tales (still going after all these years!), Medulla Review, Weird Fiction Review, Bare Bone, The Dream People, and Night Train.

There are probably a lot more I should be reading but until they add another two hours to each day, I’ll stick with the ones I’ve listed.

Following on from that answer of yours, I’d like to ask more about writing processes. How do you work, typically? I’m very conscious of the fact that, although I try not to have any little rituals or anything that I follow, I nearly always end up writing in the same place, at the same time, etc.

I don’t have any method or rituals. Other than scribbling things down on pieces of paper that are too small.

I can’t sit in front of a blank page and I’m a little suspicious of those writers who claim to write every single day; if they really did write as much as they say they do, then they’d have around 9 novels by the end of the year!

No, I just write where and when I need to. I generally let things ferment in the back of my brain until they’re ready to be written. Having said that, I’ve noticed that I do respond well to deadlines. Maybe that’s my journalistic background coming out.

And what about revision? I find that I leave poems longer and longer before going back to them these days, but is that easy to do with short stories? I’d be terrified that the longer I left it the harder I’d find it to pick up the threads...

Generally, I try to do any revision within a few days. But the longest period I’ve left between writing (most of) a story and revising it is five years. The story ended up being very different to the one I began writing and has proved to be one of the most popular in my collection Songs From Spider Street. So maybe that should tell me something.

It wouldn’t be practical to leave all my revision that long, of course. I’m slow enough finishing stories as it is and, unless I discover the secret of immortality, one collection every 50 years just isn't practical.

What about that moment of inspiration? Do you scribble ideas down on the backs of beer mats, or do you trust them to stay with you?

I owe everything to small bits of paper torn off the edges of forms, letters, magazines and so on, which I place on my chair so that I won’t miss them the next time I sit at my computer to write.

But I do carry ideas and the shapes of stories in my head for a long time – sometimes a year or two – before I get around to actually writing them down. I seem to have a good memory for that sort of thing but often forget to put on my shoes before leaving the house.

And if it doesn’t sound too obvious, where do you get your ideas from? Obviously influences come into that a bit, but there’s a lot in your stories that has no obvious point of origin.

That's difficult to say. And I'll take your second comment as a compliment, by the way!

I seem to have lost a lot of people in my life, so I write about that, one way or another. I just write what I feel needs to be written. It’s not about stories (although there’s always a story there because people need to be engaged and entertained) but it is about things that can’t always be spoken of directly – things that are only seen out of the corner of the mind’s eye. If I can capture some of those things on the page, I’m happy.

What about those influences? Have you been compared to any writers in particular? (I don’t think I’ve ever met a writer who doesn’t like being compared to others at least sometimes).

Yes, I’ve been compared to quite a few other writers, though I take that all with a pinch of salt, to be honest.

One story of mine that people mention a lot is The Ice Horse. Most of that was written in the same room in Portmeirion where Noel Coward wrote Blithe Spirit, so maybe I was channelling him when I wrote it. Though nobody’s ever compared me to him – yet!

I wondered too about how you first started writing? I think I started writing poetry by writing lyrics for bands that didn’t exist, but writing prose fiction seems to me to demand a more deliberate and definite starting point.

Well I was often ill as a child so I spent a lot of time on my own, reading. I loved science fiction in particular. You could say my ABC was Aldiss, Ballard and Clarke.

At the age of 9 I decided I wanted to be a writer. So I tried and tried until finally, at about the age of 39, I succeeded in putting something on paper that had a beginning, middle and end that made some sort of sense. Learning the actual mechanics of writing was simply trial and error, you could say.

Incidentally, I agree with Jim Thompson who said there are many ways to write a story but only one plot – things are not as they seem.

I thought that one of the strengths of Songs From Spider Street was that you have some great opening sentences, opening paragraphs, often – “I’ve been blackmailing myself for years”, “There he is again; the twin that I’m not one half of”, for example. Are lines like that ever the kindling point of the whole story? I’ve had poems grow out of opening lines like that, but I’m also always very conscious that you can get a bit too enamoured of a particular line, as a writer. Is it the same with short story writing?

Sometimes it works that way. But I often add the first line of a story when I’m halfway through writing it, or even once I’ve finished the rest of it. I don’t think either of those examples were the starting point of the stories, in fact.

And, yes, I’ve come up with a ‘good line’ that I simply had to change later because it no longer fitted the story. To be honest, it’s often more to do with mental images with me – only later do I ‘translate’ those images into words. I went to art college straight after school, so I’ve always found the visual arts quite inspiring.

The second of those openers you quoted makes no sense at all, of course. But that was in fitting with the narrator’s mental state.

Another great strength, I thought, was that there’s a very European feel to a lot of the book – the likes of Kafka seem as much an influence on it as the American influences that seem to dominate a lot of fiction of this sort. Would that be fair?

It’s really good to hear someone pick up on that. A lot of editors I’ve dealt with seem to have only read literature by British or American authors. And then, only relatively recent ones.

I’ve read a lot of European authors, thanks initially to the wonderful library in the town where I grew up (the librarian was the poet Harri Webb). I suppose that’s bound to leak out in my writing. Two particular favorites of mine are De Maupassant and Dino Buzatti, though there are many, many more inspiring authors from Europe.

Farther afield, I’ve found Borges, Bioy Casares and Mishima to be among my favourites.

A couple of questions about particular favourite stories, firstly Heart Is Where The Home Is. I think this was probably the standout story for me – could you tell me a bit about its genesis?

That was written to some guidelines issued by a magazine. They gave you a title – A Steampunk Orange – and wanted your take on that.

In 1923 the Swiss architect Le Corbusier came up with the slogan ‘A house is a machine for living in’. I decided to take him literally. The mechanical girl has appeared in lots of places, of course, but most memorably for me in ETA Hoffmann’s 1816 tale The Sandman. In fact, that may have been where she cropped up first.

So, the idea for the story simply came out of the collision of those two ideas.

And then The Condition. I love the little prose poem-like passages that bookend it, and I like how much is compressed into that story. That economic, taut style is there in a lot of your writing – do you hone it back to that, or is it how it’s written in the first place?

That’s just how it comes out. In fact, I’ve sometimes had complaints from editors that my stuff is too short.

I’ve always admired and read writers who can say a lot with very little. Angela Carter’s stories were an early influence and later I discovered Alice Munro, who can say more in one story than most other authors do in five novels.

I also love the work of VS Pritchett. And I think I learned something from Richard Brautigan’s brilliant Revenge Of The Lawn - his one paragraph story The Scarlatti Tilt is a masterclass in storytelling brevity!

Finally, the structure of the whole book is great. Again I like the way the Spider Street stories bookend it, but I also like the fact that there are lots of threads running from story to story without the themes becoming too overpowering. Was the book conceived that way, or was it more a case of it coalescing around some of the key stories.

No it didn’t spring to life fully formed, I’m afraid, though I did think carefully about the sequence of the stories (which are drawn from a period of about five or six years). It can be read as a portmanteau novel by starting at Page One and working straight through it, or you can ignore the ‘bookend’ stories and just dip into it as a short story collection.

I’ve been told by several people that if you adopt the former approach it has a lot more power. Stupidly, I’ve not learned that lesson and my next book will be a collection of stories with just the covers to hold them together.

The Condition, by Steve Upham

States of Independence 2012

This Saturday (March 17th) will see the annual States of Independence publishing fair at De Montfort University in Leicester.

There's a full programme of readings, seminars, lectures and other events, and most importantly of all a long list of small presses will be present - there's no better chance to sample and buy their books, or to put faces to names you've previously only known in print.

I'll leave you to make up your own minds about the highlights of the schedule, but there's enough there to keep me busy all day, and I'll be reporting on it all next week.

Entry is free, and the fair runs from 10.30am to 4.30pm. Hope to see you there.

Riverlands

Last April, I joined poet Jo Bell, storyteller Jo Blake Cave and visual artist Jo Dacombe, for a dawn chorus walk along the River Nene at Wadenhoe in Northamptonshire, following in the footsteps of nature writer BB.

It was a thoroughly inspirational (early) morning, and since then Jo Bell has kept me in touch with how the whole Three Jos In A Boat project has been progressing.

The result of it all is Riverlands – a journey on the Nene, and the national premiere is being staged at All Saints Church, Thorpe Road, Aldwincle, NN14 3EA, on Saturday, April 21, and Sunday, April 22, 2012, from 7.30pm. The hour-long performance promises atmosphere, mesmerising stories, humour and humanity - I'm looking forward to it already.

The evening will also see the first availability of Alwalton-Wollaston, a visual response to the journey on the Nene by Jo Dacombe and Kate Dyer. A limited edtion will be for sale at the performances.

Tickets are £10, or £8 for senior citizens, students and the unemployed, and include a £2 donation to The Churches Conservation Trust. If the event is not sold out, tickets will be available on the door.

For further information, you can contact Rosalind Stoddart, tel: 01536 370 108, email: ros@rosalindstoddart.co.uk; website: www.rosalindstoddart.co.uk

Back from the bush

I've just got back from a trip to South Africa for Bird Watching magazine - I hesitate to call it work, because it's really a privilege to get to see far-flung parts of the world and then write about them. It would have been hugely enjoyable anyway, given the wealth of birdlife we saw, but big bonuses were loads of mammals (including a very close range Leopard), and great travelling companions (of whom more in a later post). We were expertly guided, too, by Leon Marais of Lawsons Safaris, who patiently and unfailingly picked out target bird after target bird.

We flew into Jo'burg then straight back out to Nelspruit, and after a stop at the Blyde River Canyon headed into the Kruger National Park for three days. We then flew out from Nelspruit to Durban, drove up the KwaZulu-Natal coast for stops at Eshowe and St Lucia, before heading back to Jo'burg and home.

Over the next few weeks I'll post some of the highlights of the trip in a chronological fashion, but for now, here's a few of the star birds (all from the Kruger). They were all digibinned using a Nikon Coolpix S300 and Swarovski 8.5x42 ELs - it's all a bit hit or miss, but some came out pretty well.

At the top of this post is a White-crowned Lapwing - just look at those extraordinary spurs on its wings.

This is a Martial Eagle - we got about as close to it as I've ever been to any eagle.

And this is one of the hundreds of Carmine Bee-eaters we saw in the Kruger. Not that I got tired of them - I think Bee-eaters might be becoming my favourite bird family of all.

Southern Ground Hornbill is one of those birds that needs to be seen to be believed - we came across a little group feeding in a scrubby corner of the park.

And finally, a little group of Water Dikkops (or Thick-knees, as they're now properly called) - these were a familiar sight, but I always like seeing anything from the Stone-curlew family.

Anyway, more over the next few weeks...

Crystal Clear Creators

I mentioned the launch of Crystal Clear Creators first six poetry pamphlets last week - you can find out more about them here. I've read enough by three of the poets involved - Roy Marshall, Aly Stoneman and Charles Lauder Jr - to be looking forward to their chapbooks a lot, but it'll be good to read some new voices too. Oh, and the covers look terrific.

Cultural Exchanges 2012

Someone tweeted yesterday about the programme for De Montfort University's annual Cultural Exchanges festival. I'll admit I'd forgotten all about it, but booking has only just opened for most of the events, I think, so there's still plenty of time.

I'm going to get along to the reading by Alan Halsey and Geraldine Monk on March 1, and I'd also like to be at the Crystal Clear Creators reading the following day. That might depend on work, though, and it also clashes with the launch of Milorad Krystanovich's posthumous collection in Birmingham. But the Crystal Clear event features a lot of fine poets - Jessica Mayhew, Andrew 'Mulletproof' Graves, Roy Marshall, Hannah Stevens, Charles Lauder Jr and Aly Stoneman - and it's also free (as is the Halsey/Monk event). Decisions, decisions.

Finally, I just noticed that on February 28, the festival also features Hugh McIlvanney in conversation. This one's £4, but that's a pittance to see the best British sportswriter since the Second World War (at the very least). 

Is there a point to reviewing poetry?

Interesting blog post here, by Helena Nelson, about poetry reviews. Given poetry's current low profile, both in society as a whole and the arts world, I find it hard not to subscribe to the "any publicity is good publicity" school of thought. But I also enjoy reading reviews as pieces of writing in themselves, and as Nell says, reviewing is a skill that could do with some nurturing.

Interesting, too, that she gets far fewer female than male volunteers to review for Sphinx - drop Nell a line at nell@happenstancepress.com if you'd like to try to redress that imbalance.

Introducing Lizzy Dening...

I previously knew Nasty Little Press solely through having reviewed one of their chapbooks - Martin Figura's Boring The Arse Off Young People - for Sphinx. But they also publish ultra-compact pamphlets to give readers a taste of their poets, or to introduce new writers.

Now, Lizzy Dening, the young poet who's the subject of Nasty Little Intro #2, isn't, strictly speaking, a new writer where I'm concerned. I've heard her read in Cambridge, and also come across her poems in magazines. I won't try to review the pamphlet as such, because I'd probably end up giving too much away, and at £2 there's really no reason not to try it for yourself, but all five poems are taut, quietly surprising, and hugely promising.

Nasty Little Press describe it, and their other mini-selections, as the perfect accompaniment to a train journey, or a long, hot bath. I won't argue with that.

What's new?

It's always nice to welcome a new literary magazine or webzine on to the scene, especially when it's one based in the Midlands (sorry, let my regionalism get the better of me there). Jane Holland's behind Epicentre Magazine, and I like the fact that she's planning to run it with rolling updates, rather than on an issue-by-issue basis. As she points out, that's what Stride has been doing for years, and doing very well - it's certainly the webzine that I read most regularly.

 If you look down my sidebar, you'll also see a button that links to the excellent Talking Naturally website. Charlie Moores is the man behind it, and the podcasts and 'Conference Calls' in particular are highly recommended.

Poetry Bites revisited

I’ve been away in Cardiff for the last three days, so I’ve got a bit behind with what I intended to blog. I caught up with some old friends, I ate a lot, I drank too much, and I did a lot of good birding around Kenfig NNR, Newport Wetlands, Ogmore and Southerndown. The latter two were places we went to on holiday every year when I was a kid (my grandparents lived in Bridgend), so I’ve got a big soft spot for them. I’ll return to them later in the week – they figure in a post about pub signs I've been meaning to write for a while.

But while I remember, I want to talk about last Tuesday’s Poetry Bites, at the Kitchen Garden Café in King’s Heath. Let’s start by saying it’s a great venue – intimate and easy to project to when you’re reading, but not at all cramped. The food’s very nice, too – chips just like my mum used to make.

Most importantly, there was a large and very attentive audience – what more can you ask for as a poet? I read two 15-minute slots, mainly from hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica, but including a few older and newer poems too. I sold quite a few books, and I sat back and enjoyed some really excellent open mic slots, including one young man who delivered a long poem entirely from memory at breakneck speed. Normally, that's not a good thing, but this absolutely demanded such a delivery, and very impressive it was.

I haven't got the dates to hand at the moment (more info is available here), but the March guest will be Ira Lightman, followed by Clare Best in May, both really fine poets. It was actually as quick and easy to get to from Coalville as central Nottingham, so I'll certainly get alongf to future events.

A toast...

Tonight is, of course, Burns Night, and while I have no Scottish ancestry that I'm aware of, I'm all for anything that involves the national celebration of a poet, along with the eating of haggis (you can keep the neeps) and the drinking of a single malt or two.

Following on from the big night this year, there's an event taking place in Dumfries this Friday and Saturday, from 7.30pm-11pm, called First Foot @ The Stove. It includes an international art project, conceived and curated by Hugh Bryden and David Borthwick, called Windows On Burns Night. A whole host of poets wrote a piece of their work onto clear plastic, to be displayed on windows around the town. There are more details on it here.

My own poem, Prayer, appears at The Globe. I doubt if I'll be able to get up to Dumfries anytime soon, but I'm proud to have been involved in this project.

Funnily enough, at Monday night's Shindig in Leicester, Burns made a wholly unscheduled appearance. I've talked before about how little themes seem to emerge at each reading, and in the first half of Monday's, mice kept cropping up, especially in John Lucas's fine spot. He read at least as many poems by other people as his own, but it worked extremely well. Jane Commane of Nine Arches Press then challenged someone to read Burns' To A Mouse in the second half. I assumed that the gauntlet would remain on the ground, but Nick Leach took it up magnificently, reading the poem absolutely superbly.

The rest of the night saw great readings from Helen Calcutt and Jessica Mayhew (sadly, Phil Brown couldn't make it), and the usual excellent mix of open mic slots, including a couple of collborations.

Last night, I was reading at Poetry Bites, of which much more later in the week. In the meantime, I'm going to be having a quiet night of it, with a book or two and a large glass of Caol Ila. Here's to Rabbie...

Andy Brown at Peony Moon

I really enjoyed reading the new work by Andy Brown posted at Michelle McGrane's superlative Peony Moon - the poems are from his new Salt collection, The Fool and the Physician.

He's one of those poets who seems effortlessly able to write out of a number of different traditions and 'schools', and while I suppose you can't always trust blurbs, in this case you should! Luke Kennard, John Burnside and Lee Harwood all have good things to say about him, and I'm not going to argue with a triumvirate like that.

Anyway, Andy's Fall of the Rebel Angels: Poems 1996-2006 is a book I go back to a lot, so I look forward to reading the new collection.

Poetry Bites - tonight!

I'm reading at the Kitchen Garden Cafe, on York Road, King's Heath, Birmingham, tonight (Tuesday) from 7.30pm. There are more details here, and open mic slots are available to sign up for on the door. Come along if you're in the area.

Leicester Shindig! returns

Crystal Clear Creators and Nine Arches Press are staging their latest Shindig! open mic reading at The Western, Western Road, Leicester, next Monday from 7.30pm. As usual it's free and open to all, and you can sign up for open mic slots at the door.

Featured poets are Jessica Mayhew, John Lucas, Phil Brown and Helen Calcutt.

Jessica Mayhew is 22, and is part way through her degree at the University of Northampton, where she is studying English Literature and Creative Writing. A pamphlet, Someone Else's Photograph, will be published by Crystal Clear Creators in March 2012.

Phil Brown teaches English in Sutton and has been regularly writing poetry for about 10 years. In 2009 he was shortlisted for the Crashaw Prize and won the Eric Gregory Award in 2010. His debut collection, Il Avilit, has just been published by Nine Arches Press. He is the Poetry Editor for the online magazine and chapbook publisher, Silkworms Ink.

John Lucas’s most recent book is Next Year Will Be Better: A Memoir of England in the 1950s. He runs Shoestring Press.

Helen Calcutt was born in 1988 and grew up in the West Midlands, with familial roots in South West Wales. Her first pamphlet collection is forthcoming next year with Perdika. She works as a visiting writer for, among others, Creative Alliance, Writing West Midlands, and The Young People’s Writing Squads. She was awarded an Arvon writing Grant in

September 2011.

Looks a great line-up as usual - I'm looking forward to getting hold of Phil Brown's collection.

Ink, Sweat and Tears

I have a new poem, Chirimoya, published at Ink, Sweat & Tears (you may have to scroll down a little). It's a great webzine - there are new poems, reviews, etc appearing there all the time, so keep an eye on it.

An interview with Isobel Dixon

I met Isobel Dixon at the London launch of Sidekick Books wonderful Birdbook I last summer - her Upupa Epops (you're all such keen birders that you don't need me to tell you what species that's the scientific name of, do you?) is one of the volume's highlights, for me, and a good taster for the superb collection in which it appears, The Tempest Prognosticator. 

She was born in Umtata, South Africa, and came to Scotland to study in 1993. She works in London as a literary agent, representing a range of clients, including many prominent South African writers. Her work is included in publications like The Paris Review, The Guardian, Penguin’s Poems for Love, The Forward Book of Poetry and The Best of British Poetry 2011. Her first collection Weather Eye won South Africa’s Sanlam and Olive Schreiner Prizes. Her second collection A Fold in the Map was published in the UK by Salt and in South Africa by Jacana, and The Tempest Prognosticator, is published in the UK by Salt and in South Africa by Random House’s Umuzi imprint. It’s been described as “a virtuoso collection” by J M Coetzee and an “ingenious carousel of a book” by David Morley.

One of the things I enjoyed most about this collection was the vividly African flavour of many of the poems, both in subject matter and in the language used. How often do you get back to South Africa, and do you find that an essential spark to your creativity?

I’m glad you can feel Africa in it, even though there’s a wider ranger of themes and settings than in the more overtly homesick and family-focused A Fold in the Map. There’s a lot more London, Yorkshire, England in The Tempest Prognosticator, partly reflecting how long I’ve lived and worked on this island. But South Africa remains essential to my life and writing. I go back twice a year, for publishing work and to see family and friends, and just to be at home in the Karoo for a while. My mother still lives in the house where I and my sisters grew up, and this old house and my home town Graaff-Reinet remain crucial places for me.  I was thinking of it as I wrote as a harbour or dry dock and the phrase ‘refreshment station’ keeps popping into my mind – what the Dutch East India Company called the settlement at the Cape, a place for sailors to pick up fresh water and fruit and vegetables on their long sea journeys. A way to prevent emotional scurvy, perhaps…!

Strangely, I don’t write a lot when I’m back in the Cape (both Western and Eastern), because there is so much else to pack into the days, but I do take a lot of notes, jotting down ideas all the time. The long drives between towns, through my country’s glorious landscapes, are also fruitful thinking times, and some poems invariably emerge after I leave, sometimes even on the return flight. Aeroplanes and trains seem to be essential to my writing too…A virtue of frequent necessity perhaps. 

Just a word, too, about your writing processes. The Tempest Prognosticator holds together very well as a themed collection, but was equally enjoyable to dip in and out of. Was it a case of writing ‘occasional’ poems that started to cohere around a central point?

Some of the poems in The Tempest Prognosticator have travelled a long way, several pre-dating my previous collection A Fold in the Map.

In both A Fold in the Map and The Tempest Prognosticator I have some poems that were first published in my South African debut collection Weather Eye, which is no longer in print, though you can find the odd copy on the web. Weather Eye was never widely distributed outside South Africa and while it was a very important book for me, as all first books are to their creators, I wanted to give some of those early poems a new life in a new context. When I came to put together the manuscript for my second collection  I realised that there were narrative family poems like Plenty and the title poem Weather Eye which fitted well into the divided shape of  what became my first UK publication A Fold in the Map – where the first half mainly looks back to childhood and my country of birth, often from the vantage point of the UK; and where the second half traces my father’s illness and death, that terrible journey we made together as a family, coping with the process of loss. While I was writing constantly, out of my own need, when my father first became seriously ill, I had no intention of publishing the resulting poems, not till later when my mother and sisters had read them, and they’d grown to form some narrative arc of their own. But I didn’t want a collection that was just about grief, I wanted to show some of the fullness too, more of the light, and so the two halves took shape together.

So there were many poems I’d already written by the time A Fold in the Map was published that just weren’t right for the form and tone of that collection, and I knew I would use them in another very different collection later. Poems like Vision, the opening poem of The Tempest Prognosticator, which appeared in The Wolf  in 2004, or Days of Miracle and Wonder which was in The Paris Review the same year.

The poems of The Tempest Prognosticator are poems that spring from many interlinked concerns and fascinations – like the South African natural scientist and poet Eugene Marais, whose writing inspired Toktokkie and The Inopportune Baboon, and perhaps some more work to come. There are poems that spring from love of travel, art, film, and a fascination with aspects of the quirkiness of life and human inventiveness, as in the title poem, about a Victorian device which used leeches to predict storms. Maybe because I grew up in an extremely dry part of the world where everyone is a sky-watcher and rain-measurer, I am also a little obsessed with ideas of the weather…

So the new collection jettisons family in favour of animals – but that’s not to say I’ve switched my concerns completely, the collection is just a different beast for a different season. I am slowly writing a series of poems about my mother too, but that’s for some time ahead. 

There’s a veritable bestiary in there, too. I liked the balance struck between exact description of animals, birds, even insects, and their metaphorical use. Is that something that’s always been a part of your poetry?

I was once asked at a reading if I wrote so much about animals and insects because I don’t like people… But I think (hope) the human is very present in even the most creaturely of The Tempest Prognosticator poems.

But yes, nature, the creatures, have always been a part of the writing. Again because it’s all always been, completely naturally, part of my life. We ran quite wild as kids, in wide open but safe spaces, far from the city. A big garden at the back of our own house, a small town in a horsehoe of (mostly dry) river, surrounded by the Karoo plains and mountains. Every holiday spent on my uncle’s farm, involved in the daily work. Two of my sisters live on a farm, one of my sisters is a painter who does a lot of Karoo landscapes, and we all love walking, the African outdoors, the wildlife. The eldest and youngest have just been on a tent safari holiday in Botswana together and I’m feeling very envious (though I like to keep a whole lot further away from the crocs and hippos than my adventurous heroine, Mary Kingsley of Beetle, Fish & Fetish, did…). I think the first rambling free verse poem I wrote as a kid was about the Karoo and drought…And the natural world is just so rich and present, a realm of endless fascination, and the more you learn, as well as observe personally, the more amazing it all seems. Much as I love London, I often need to get away from the relentlessly urban, both in reality and in imagination.

So the idea of a tapestry made of spider silk, as in Silking the Spider, was irresistible, or the confluence of nature and art, the making and remaking of Damien Hirst’s pickled shark in Requiem. It’s why I love Eugene Marais’s writing in The Soul of the Ape and The Soul of the White Ant, groundbreaking work and writing from a tragic life. It’s why I was drawn to Mary Kingsley’s brilliant and witty observations of the West African jungle, which I plundered for Beetle, Fish & Fetish, or Robert Byron’s odd, funny and moving anecdote about an over-affectionate wild boar in The Road to Oxiana, which I recast in The Poor Wild Boar Who Went Too Far. These last two poems were both written as part of a commission for The Travel Bookshop (now sadly closed) in 2010.

Which links to to your ‘occasional poems’ question earlier. For this, as with several of the themed group projects that led to poems in the collection (like the Pink Floyd and English Counties nights), I was involved in initiating and organising the event. So along with Simon Barraclough and Richard Price, I spent several happy hours in the Travel Bookshop, with more fantastic source material than I could mine in a year. Other poems also came from commissions for books or events: Mountain War Time for Roddy Lumsden’s 50 States event, and Upupa Epops and A Parliament of Gulls, written for Kirsten Irving and Jon Stone’s lovely Birdbook I, a chance I’ll admit I seized on with gull-like greed. I’d never set up or take up a commission that didn’t chime with something I wanted to write, but I do like the creative pressure that comes from writing to a certain theme, and of course, a deadline.

A final note on ‘the bestiary’ is that for the South African launch of The Tempest Prognosticator my sister Janet organised an art exhibition in her gallery, ArtKaroo, in Oudtshoorn, where two South African artists, Leanette Botha and Susqya Williams, produced visual interpretations of some of the poems.  It was fascinating to see their vision of the creatures –  the boars, zebras, lizards, baboons, orang-utans, camels, toktokkies, ostriches and more taking vigorous and colourful shape off the page. You can see a selection here.

Following on from that, is your first collection, Weather Eye, still available anywhere?

Only here and there on the web and from second hand dealers – as mentioned before, there are Weather Eye traces in A Fold in the Map and The Tempest Prognosticator, though there are poems that are published solely in the debut book. I only have a few copies left myself.

Other highlights for me were some absolutely exquisite short poems – A Mess Of Vinegar, Only Adapt, Paradox and valentine among them. I occasionally suspect that such shorter pieces get a bit undervalued in contemporary British poetry – do you think that’s the case?

Thank you, that’s wonderful to hear. I’m a fan of the short poem myself – not just the subtlety of the haiku, but also short sharp shocks of poems. Emily Dickinson’s brilliance in her spare dashed lines, Les Murray’s Poems the Size of Photographs, and so many more.

There’s talk of a return of greater appreciation for the short story, the essay, the novella, perhaps because we are not so restricted by the bound format and read our texts in so many ways these days, including the web and Kindles and Kobos, and all the devices still being developed and named. Maybe it’s that way with the short poem too – though it’s never been out of favour with readers, I believe, despite not being seen as substantial enough to win poetry prizes when up against longer work, and not published as much in journals. It’s great to see Magma launch their new short poem prize, for poems of up to 10 lines. Penguin’s Poems for Love anthology, edited by Laura Barber, includes a very short two-liner poem of mine, truce (not yet in a collection). Perhaps love (and hate) poems, in the tradition of Catullus’s Odi et Amo are perfect for that short, sharp, shock treatment…

Finally, I wonder how your day job as a literary agent affects your poetry, if at all?

I’m lucky to have a completely absorbing passion for my professional life, a job where no two days, or books, or authors, are alike. It is pretty full-on though, and work and private life aren’t very boundaried. The poetry weaves its way between this, in early mornings, late nights, weekends between manuscript reading. I’m never without a notebook and various pens (nothing worse than being on an overnight flight when your only pen’s just erupted.) My own writer clients are a great example in their focus, dedication and hard work.

Commissions and joint projects do help to keep the poetry from being completely swamped by my job. The rigour of a deadline’s very useful here. So I’m working on a production for this year’s centenary of the sinking of the Titanic, along with poets Chris McCabe and Simon Barraclough, musician and composer Oliver Barrett, and film-maker Jack Wake-Walker. I will be following that with an art and poetry project with Scottish artist Douglas Robertson. More weather, and more creatures, in view with those two…. 

To buy The Tempest Prognosticator, click here.

Three poems from The Tempest Prognosticator

Upupa Epops

Scarce passage migrant regular enough to skim the south

of this glib outcrop with your pied and pinkish now-and-then

but still, erratic flitter on the wing, old vaudevillean,

knowing that you’ll cause a flutter on the wires.

A prophet less respected in those backyard days

you poked about our frazzled lawn, a dandy priest.

Familiarity and all the blah it breeds.

Who knew, so dapper in your black-barred

cinnamon-cum-chestnut raiment, you’d turn out to be,

back home, a smelly nester of the first degree?

The sins fine feathers and a rather natty crest can hide.

Oop-oop-oops, indeed.

Your Giant St Helena Ancestor went dodo,

long before Napoleon and the Giant Earwig did.

But still you pop up here and there, to stride and plunge

that beaky scythe, delving the underworld for breakfast –

spiders easy over, ant lions sunny side up,

a take-out gogga, kriek or two to feed the brood.

You foul your hidden clutch of milky-blue. Tree-caved,

surviving critters shit at probing eyes, and hiss like snakes.

Only Adapt

Observe the sand gazelle

who with a shrinking heart

survives the drought –

an admirable desert art,

this making small, a skill

that we who doubt

the seasonal largesse

must learn as well.

Paradox

There’s no telling what

will make the heart leap, frog-

like, landing with a soggy plop.

Love startles, makes a mockery

of us, and yet we lie awake

at night and croak and croak for it.

Poetry Bites

I'm reading at Poetry Bites, at the Kitchen Garden Cafe, King's Heath, Birmingham, on January 24th, starting at 7.30pm. There are more details at this Facebook page - hope to see you there.

Meanwhile, Polyolbion will be swinging back into action on Monday with an interview with Isobel Dixon, plus poems from her excellent Salt collection The Tempest Prognosticator.

Up for grabs

Fancy being the Poet Laureate of Stamford? There's details here of a competition with that as the prize. It's a wonderfully historic town, and of course has a poetic pedigree, with John Clare having grown up and lived a mile or two down the road at Helpston, so it could be very interesting.

An interview with Simon Barraclough

I'm enjoying trying to come up with some Best of 2011 lists, with the usual agonising decisions about what to leave out and what to include. One collection that will definitely make the poetry list, though, and which I would imagine will figure on many a list by lit journos, bloggers and readers, is Neptune Blue, by Simon Barraclough. I talked to him about it, and poetry in general...

Neptune Blue struck me as being a product of the polar opposite of ‘second collection syndrome’ – it’s absolutely jam-packed with ideas and diverse sources of inspiration. Is that a result of being a very active poet, in terms of doing readings, writing for commissions, organising events, etc?

That’s nice to hear. ‘Second collection syndrome’ sounds ominous. I think there’s truth in what you say: the more involved and engaged I am with events, commissions and other writers the more stimulated I’m likely to be and possibly the more likely I am to come into contact with new ideas or themes. But I’m also quite lucky in that I always seem to have several ideas on the go at once and many projects I’m always trying to find time for. This may not last forever but for now the ideas, subjects and sequences continue to vie for attention.

Following on from what you were saying about having a lot of ideas going on simultaneously, I was wondering about how the book came together (or your first collection, for that matter). Is it a case of identifying what you feel are going to be pretty central poems early on, and then letting the rest of the collection coalesce around them, or is it a more strictly planned process?

The growth of a collection is quite mysterious I think: maybe a bit like how a planet or solar system is formed. There’s a certain amount of matter, dust and poetic gas floating around and then it cools and shrinks and gravity begins to heat all the particles up again. After Los Alamos Mon Amour I got quite a lot of commissions and published 17 of them in the mini-book Bonjour Tetris, which gave me a small core of new poems to work around. So I took 6 or 7 of those for whatever the next book would be and before I knew it I'd started two sequences around the same time: the planet poems and the ___________ Heart poems. The planets was something I realised I’d always wanted to do in response to my love of Holst’s planet suite and the Hearts came out of an odd little dream in which my heart had been replaced by a starfish. It was a very vivid, tactile dream: quite disturbing, and it kicked off a whole chain of odd little poems about Hearts. Finding a title for the book came down to a tussle between the hearts and planets but Neptune Blue won out as I just liked its simple music and Neptune is probably my favourite of the planet poems.

So that was 9 planets (I retain Pluto with a mild touch of irony), 11 Hearts, plus the 7 from Tetris, making up about half of a new book. I then blended in other poems I thought were good enough and loosely related to some of the themes I’d already written and then, as happened towards the end of Los Alamos, I had a bit of a writing spurt that produced around 6 new poems I thought would fit in well. I also wanted one closer to cap off the collection and that came in the form of Sol, my poem written from the point of view of the Sun, looking back from her perspective on all the planets I’d written about earlier.

That final poem has propelled me down another path and since Neptune Blue came out, I’ve written about 20 Sunspot poems and have a crazy plan to write 121 of them. This is to do with the 11-year sunspot cycle. Bit nerdy, but I like to have these buried structures when I write.

I like the astronomical analogy, and I think you've answered my next question, too, about the Heart and Planet poems. You've touched, too, upon the ‘buried structures’ you use in writing sequences or putting together a collection. Within individual poems, form seems to work very much in the same way for you – would that be fair?

I’ve always enjoyed using and reading form but I think I use it less often these days. At least, I don’t think I adhere to a strict form throughout that many single poems unless the subject really demands it. I tend to use form and formal patterns as a kind of underlying skeleton but I’m quite happy to break its rules for certain passages of a poem if the rhythm, rhetoric, line break, appearance on the page demand it.

I think in that respect the new book is freer than Los Alamos was and changes gears more readily within a single poem. It’s an odd analogy but I like to think of the songs of Frank Black and how tracks like I Heard Ramona Sing seem to have two or three intros and then sudden shifts of structure in the verses. In Neptune Blue, I think the poems Earth and SoBe It have a little of this quality I’m grasping at. But I’m maybe not my best reader and may be well off the mark. And then the shorter Heart poems, I’m thinking mainly of Tapestry Heart, seem almost formless. Is there something in this? What do you think?

I think that’s exactly right! I tend to find myself drawing musical analogies a lot when I’m reading poetry, and Frank Black and the Pixies sprang to mind more than once during Neptune Blue. And of course those dynamic shifts create a certain zoom-in, zoom-out effect in places, which works well with the astronomical themes. It brings me back to your writing processes again – do you have any particular rituals, or ideal conditions? I almost always find myself writing in the evening, even if I’ve had a completely clear day.

I really don’t think I have any rituals. I tend to write at my desk at home, looking out over London (I’m on the 10th floor and am treated to spectacular skies and sunsets almost every day), although I can write in cafes and at airports when I need to. So I suppose the place I write is fairly constant. I can write at any time of day. I love the idea of writing through the night but I’m usually too tired to be effective if it’s really late.

I make notes in longhand but I can only write poems on my computer these days. At some point in the last 10 years my imagination became more comfortable with a keyboard than a pen. It doesn’t help that my handwriting looks quite nice but is 80% illegible to me. Most ideas now go straight into a long .txt file, which gets saved and copied here and there in case I lose my laptop. I used to like writing in pencil because it felt freer and more flexible than pen and now I find the format-less text file is the pencil to Word’s pen, if that makes sense. I don’t write every day and I have no set hours but I do think about writing almost all the time (I imagine that’s the case with you and most poets too)?

I read something about James Joyce when I was a teenager that really affected me. I used to fuss about stationery: the right pen and notebook and so on but then I read how Joyce would write on anything with anything: crayons, bits of torn up paper, whatever was available, and from then on I dropped all notions of ‘the right tools’ or ‘the right ambience’.

Yes, I think I’ve gradually gone towards the same sort of system – Notepad to Word with some occasional scribblings by hand. Ever since I learned shorthand in my mid-20s, though, my handwriting’s been so appalling that I can rarely read it back properly. I identify with what you say about thinking about writing all the time. How does that fit in with your day job(s)? I’m conscious of being very lucky in having a job that involves a lot of time on my own, and in which I’m writing anyway (so I can hammer away at the keyboard writing a poem or notes for one while people think I’m typing up a report).

Well for the last seven years I’ve worked either freelance or part-time, so I have quite a lot of time and space for writing. Doesn’t mean I use the time well, of course, but I do my best. Writing is too solitary an activity, so I like to mix it up with events and collaborations as much as I can. Even when I’m working though, I often have one of those text files open where I can ‘jot’ down ideas and scraps of poetry when they hit.

Going back to Neptune Blue, the Heart poems were a highlight for me, I think partly because they manage to be both extremely playful, and at times, extremely dark. Is that opposition, or balance, something you consciously strive for?

Well, I’m always happy when people think that I’ve achieved that kind of balance. It’s clearly important to me to combine the light and the dark, the painful and the comical. I have an entirely savoury tooth when it comes to food and I think it’s safe to say I have the same when it comes to literature. Samuel Beckett has always been a touchstone for me but it’s his laugh-out-loud moments (often provoked by comic hyperbole, such as when Mrs. Rooney in All That Fall struggles to get into a car and declaims: “Christ what a planet!”) that I love every bit as much as the ditches of despair.

Perhaps I’m also reacting to the cliché that ‘poetry is all hearts and flowers’. Even if that were the case, who’s to say those flowers and hearts can’t be twisted, painful, funny, fascinating, surprising? I’m not saying mine are, but one tries. And what is more complex, more sunny and yet more benighted than the poor old human heart?

Absolutely. I think another reason they work is the way they blur the lyric "I" so well – you’re never sure as a reader whether you’re dealing with a multiplicity of hearts, and voices, or the many different facets of one. And I guess that goes hand in hand with the light and dark. Would that be fair?

I think so. When I wrote them I wasn’t sure about those things either. The ‘characters’ of the hearts in question grew out of the imagery and language and developed along their own paths, somehow. They seemed to have their own, speedy, particle-momentum. I think that’s why they’re quite short. There’s a bit of me in each of them but a large proportion of each feels alien to me too. That’s it: they’re alien hearts.

Your Italophilia is a thread that keeps resurfacing in the collection, too. Can you tell me a bit about how that developed (I speak as someone rapidly developing Hispanophilia)?

Ah, enjoy your new philia. I’ve had mine for many years now and I think I can trace it as far back as hearing Rossini in the cot. Something like that, to be dangerously (and probably mendaciously) romantic. Funny you mention this, as I tend to think it’s less obvious in Neptune than it is in Los Alamos but I could be wrong. It amuses me that, being such an Italophile, so many French words and French references creep into the poems and into my titles. 

I started studying Italian seriously about six years ago after years and years of procrastinating and buying books like Italian in your Lunchtime or Italian Without Italian and all the other quick-fixes that never work. So I hired a private tutor to come to my home twice a week for about 14 months and since then I’ve taken courses, hired a second tutor occasionally, and tend to study a little every day. And I mainly go to Italy when I travel. 

I remember going to Venice in 2003 and only knowing about five words of Italian and being really frustrated and angry with myself. I vowed then I wouldn’t return until I’d put some work in and so my next trip was to Turin in 2005 after three months of quite intense study. It’s inevitable that it should creep into my writing, I suppose, and it’s only going to get worse as I’m preparing to do some translating this year. I just love the country and the people, the climate, the food and the culture but I’m not starry eyed about it. I’m aware of the darker aspects of Italy and I hear plenty about them from my Italian friends, believe me. In a funny way, I think the ‘worse’ Italy becomes, the more friends it needs. Maybe that goes for all countries, all people.

And of course Italian is a wonderfully musical language and being able to read old and new poets, while still difficult at times, is a joy and perhaps helps me with my writing? Not sure. 

Ah, you’ve pre-empted my next question – I was going to ask if you had the urge to translate. Which poets are you going to be working on?

Through a series of happy coincidences I came to befriend the novelist and poet Giuliano Dego and was surprised that his epic historical-satirical poem La Storia in Rima hasn’t been translated into English yet. We’ve agreed that I will make a start on Canto I (there are 10 in total) and, with some input from him, we’ll see how I get on.

It presents many challenges of course, primarily because it’s written in ottava rima (Giuliano has published a fine translation of Canto I of Don Juan and is a huge fan of Byron) and there just aren’t as many rhymes available in English as there are in Italian. But we’re agreed that the new version must have its own English poetry and not follow the original too slavishly. I’ve got so much on that I think the process will be a slow one. But probably all the better for that. Italy is the country of the slow food movement after all...

Your last answer tied in with something I’ve been thinking about a lot this week – how long I take to (a) write a poem, and (b) revise it and send it out to a mag. I’ve been making a conscious effort to be much slower in this, with the result that new poems seem to be arriving ‘complete’ (but not ‘finished’). The danger, I suppose, is that it might stifle any embryonic poems that really demand to be spontaneous, and of the moment. Any thoughts on this?

While the translating is incredibly slow, I find I’m writing new material quite quickly. For that reason I’m just letting it flow for now and I’m going to go back and revise it all carefully later. I think I’m going to have a whole focused book to work on, which is unusual and should be an interesting experience in terms of shaping, organising and setting up currents and patterns within it. So I think I’m being spontaneous with a view to being more methodical later. Best of both worlds? Having my cake and editing it? Then again, a couple of the Heart poems in Neptune must have taken minutes to write, while SoBe It was started 11 years ago...each poem has its own needs I suppose.

Other than the translations, do you have any pet projects, any books within you that you desperately want to write? I’ve been surprised (though probably shouldn't have been) by how many poets have.

Oh, well this Sun book has become one of them for me and my research is taking my mind on a rich and varied journey. I’ve always wanted to write a long poetic account of the loss of the USS Indianapolis in 1945 and even went as far as applying for a grant to support research but wasn’t lucky that time around. I’ve tinkered with a book along the lines of How Laurel and Hardy Can Change Your Life and there’s another much cherished prose project I’m not even going to mention! Superstition.

I’ll ask the same thing that I asked Mark Burnhope recently – which one thing would you do to enthuse schoolkids about poetry (it can be as little as exposing them to a particular poem)?

That’s a good question. Over the last few years I’ve tried all kinds of techniques to get schoolchildren excited about reading and writing poetry. I don’t think one poem or method has been uniquely successful but I do find that some kind of interactive, ludic approach works well. By which I mean things like composing poems according to randomly generated or brainstormed ‘rules’ for each line; physically chopping up a sonnet into 14 lines and asking groups to try and reconstitute the poem ‘correctly’ (many fruitful discussions about form and meaning arise from the ‘incorrect’ versions produced); working with short syllabic forms, such as haiku or Fibonaccis. 

I once presented a class with Giles Goodland’s excellent poem ‘The Bees’ and after reading it together a few times I asked everyone to circle bits of the language that ‘disturbed’ them in some way, be it through pleasure, confusion, rhythm, imagery, nonsensical moments or any other reason, and we ended up having a fascinating discussion about what the poem was doing and how. It was great to hear one kid shoot down a complex metaphor as meaningless only to be challenged by another who had grasped why the metaphor was in fact perfect.

Reading one’s own work and answering questions about how and why you wrote such and such a line can work well too. It helps to demystify the writing process and bring it into the realm of the possible for the students. But for any of this to work, if I had my way, I would issue a wholesale ban on sing-song rhythmic, rhyming poetry in TV adverts. They’re everywhere at the moment and they’re the equivalent of high-fat, high-salt, processed, fast food to my mind. I’ve seen so many good ideas in class ruined by the tyranny of sing-song rhyme and the absurdities of syntax and sense it frequently produces. And I’m not against rhyme at all, when used well. Or a bit of fast food once in a while. But sometimes it feels that this is the only kind of ‘poetry’ that exists outside of educational institutions.

When I was a schoolboy, it was a couple of poems by Hughes and Auden that blew me away. And all it took was to be presented with the work and given time to read, re-read and think about it. Sometimes you just need to present a great poem to a class. One, some, and maybe all will get it.

I like that idea of getting them to reconstruct poems, but I think you also touch on an even more important point about being given the time to read, re-read and think. So I wonder if you think that poetry’s compact nature, the fact that it can be slotted into the gaps in everyday life, is its secret weapon in the battle to grab attention?

Hmm, that would seem logical wouldn’t it? Although a good lyric poem is a bit like the Tardis. It’s much bigger inside than it looks and you can squeeze through its door never to be seen again as you wander its corridors and chambers. People often claim they have no time to read (poetry, or at all) and I routinely say that it takes a minute or two to read a poem. But it’s not about the real time of reading, it’s the time the mind, the ears, the breath take to savour and explore it fully.

And that’s just lyric poetry; once you’re onto Paradise Lost or The Changing Light at Sandover you can’t appeal to brevity or quick digestibility any more. The thing is to recalibrate life so we all have a little more time and space to read and think. Sounds idealistic. Probably is. Having said all that, dwelling on a Dream Song over lunch is a good start. Eighteen lines, one hour: not a bad ratio.

To buy Neptune Blue, click here.

Three poems from Neptune Blue


SoBe It

If I fall in love, and I think I will,
I may have to leave Miami first.

Who wuz it now wiv whom I wuz in wuv?

All those charter boats, art deco sunsets
and waitresses I tried to hit upon
in Biscayne des-per-a-tion
cling to the windshield of my Flydrive mind.

Crawling through your tome, Bret Easton,
trying to pretend the week apart to make up both our minds
had not made up her mind the very second she suggested it.
You dick.
Angler of occluded hopes, those sunburnt optimisms.
Block them, factor 451.

Are you going out in those shorts in this cold?
I've got a fishing trip. Have read my Benchley and my Junger,
got the hunger for a day's sea breeze,
some finny kills, the macho tackle,
accessories, success stories. I get no bites.

But the skipper and a baby blue shark
connect; on deck the Lindy Hop of death.
Swiss army knife of evolution, trying
all his blades, his tools, his gizmos,
carving esses in the air, winding down.

That mournful mouth. Turn your frown upside down.
The hatch to the hold's yanked open and our shark,
still twitching's kicked on down, takes the longest time
to drown.


Earth

God's gobstopper:
first mouthed to be last swallowed,
blue-green baubled gobsmacker.

Without the lunar counterweight,
the grave embrace's tidal tug,
we'd pop our dislocated poles
and shudder like a shook snow globe
and every shook snow globe on Earth
would synchronise and stormy flakes
would regulate themselves and lovely chaos
might abate. And then where would we be?

Somewhere someone's daughter asks,
'If the world is round, why is a frozen lake flat?'

This is the planet of daughters and sons,
the noisy neighbour, noise polluter,
party thrower, troublemaker,
incubator, hibernator, estivator, terminator.

Such sights. Where to start? Where will it all end?
Deep in the belly of the old star mother?
The blown red placenta, the giving one's all.


Neptune

You're so                                   blue
you probably think that Jarman's Blue
is about you.

You're the source of all blue,
of Edwin Morgan's 'Little Blue Blue',
inexhaustiblue,

bluemungous, ur-blue.
Earth blue held up to you
is muck ball brown and grass stain green,

our oceans but a drop,
a dust of moth,
a mote of you.