Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international haveagreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do

Chris Hardy

Tell me about your latest collection, and about definite recent and upcoming publications in magazines and online.

My fourth collection, ‘Sunshine at the end of the world ’ *, was published in 2017 by Indigo Dreams. http://www.indigodreams.co.uk/chris-hardy/4593968553 http://www.poetrypf.co.uk/chrishardypage.shtml

The title is also the title of a poem in the collection, not the best poem, in my view, but the title is the sort of phrase I like: it makes you wonder what it might mean, and prompts images of many things, but it also stops you thinking – like a koan. And without thinking you know, sense, what it means.

“The acute poems of this wonderfully named fourth collection are always clear, sometimes rueful. They cherish their ghosts. Past and present are summoned by memorable lines with strength and tenderness.” Alison Brackenbury

“Bird nesting in mailbox. Rat scrabbling in cavity wall. Spring uncoiling and a welcoming harbour. A guitarist as well as a poet Chris Hardy consistently hits the right note, never hits a false note.” Roger McGough

“These poems explore Time, from the tender appreciation of new life, through all its vicissitudes, to death: Time alters, enhances, destroys. They deserve to be read slowly, to appreciate the many and varied nuances which lead to the comprehension of the Now.” Patricia Oxley, Editor: Acumen Literary Journal

“Staggeringly beautiful, poetry as art form. Sam Smith, The Journal 53, January 2018. There is a breadth to this collection that crosses oceans. It reinforces his reputation as a poet in his own right.” Greg Freeman, Write Out Loud

“Chris writes vivid, expository poetry having the heft of short stories, often heavy with portent and mystery. Each of these poems is a story as beautifully muscular and slippery as an eel.” Peter Kennedy, London Grip, December 2017.

“Sunshine at the end of the world’ is tender and affecting and feels like an elegy, a beautiful and accepting celebration of what was, what is and what is to be – a poet writing at the peak of his powers. It is a collection of humanity, compassion and wisdom.” Dino O’Mahoney, Ink Sweat & Tears, January 2018.

I have won prizes in several competitions including the National Poetry Prize and been published over the years in many magazines, anthologies and poetry websites – Acumen, Agenda, Algebra of Owls, Atrium, Brittle Star, Corbelstone Press, The Dark Horse, Dreamcatcher, Frogmore Papers, Fenland Reed, High Window, Huffington Post, Ink Sweat and Tears, the Compass, the Interpreter’s House, London Grip, the Moth, the North, Obsessed With Pipework, Orbis, Picaroon, Planet, Poetry Review, the Rialto, South, South Bank Poetry, Stand, Tears in the Fence, Under the Radar and others.Within the last few years poems have appeared at the Blue Nib, Confingo *, Confluence *, Lampeter Review *, Poetry Salzburg Review *, Riggwelter, Soft Cartel, Presence *, South * and Stand*. Poems are due out soon in Blue Nib, South Bank Poetry, Picarooon and Orbis – maybe elsewhere, I’m waiting to hear back from editors and also the judges of various competitions.

The Interview 

(Some of these questions and consequently my answers overlap)

1. What inspired you to write poetry and who introduced you to poetry?

I started writing at school, influenced and inspired by Keats, Coleridge, Owen, Shakespeare and Blake. We did these and other authors for our ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels so I suppose the exam curriculum introduced me to poetry – we also had a couple of good English teachers one of whom, Mr Coltman, was a 2^nd world war veteran and a poet. Publishing started when I came across poetry magazines in London, where I was living. I submitted poems to them and began to get published: Stand, Poetry Review and Slow Dancer were amongst the first to take my poems.

2. How aware were you of the dominating presence of older poets?

I’ve never felt overawed or dominated by poets from the past. I respect and admire their work, their efforts, if not always their characters and lives. ‘Older poets’ and their works don’t dominate, they encourage. Here are some books, authors, tales, I admire and which have affected me and my writing at various times:The King James Bible and Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer; Greek, Egyptian, Middle Eastern and Indian myth; the Greek Anthology; some, not all, Shakespeare (eg Hamlet, Othello); Coleridge (eg Frost At Midnight); Keats (especially the sonnets); Shelley; Fitzgerald’s ‘Omar Khayyam’; Thomas Hardy; Owen; Rosenberg; Sassoon; Edward Thomas; Frost; Snyder; Ginsberg; Ferlinghetti; Corso; Robert Duncan; eecummings; William Carlos Williams; Lowell; TS Eliot; Pound, (mainly ‘Cathay’); Berryman; Larkin; Plath; Hughes; Bishop; Carol Ann Duffy and recently, Charlotte Mew, Jack Gilbert, Billy Collins, Philip Levine, the Bloodaxe anthologies, Cavafy, DH Lawrence, Raymond Carver ..I have also been influenced, in their attitude to life, subject matter and style, by novelists such as Tolstoy, Emily Bronte, Faulkner, Hemingway, Conrad: they write from their own experience, which connects their work directly to reality. They firstly create a physical world from imagery and through and from this arises any underlying meaning: fact is far stranger than fiction and, once fiction is made from fact, fiction cannot lie.Another important thing is that I am a musician, a guitar player. I write songs but have never found this comes easily, nor can I easily set my own poems to music, though in my work with LiTTLe MACHiNe I, with the other two members of the group, have set many famous poems by well known authors to music. I have been greatly affected and guided by many great song writers, who I regard as poets – I don’t think there is any point or value in distinguishing between songs and poems, they both use words, and many poems accepted in the canon are also songs eg ballads. And of course Homer, Sappho etc chanted, sang, performed their work, to music. The blues musicians of the 20^th C and the songwriters who learned from them and invented Rock & Roll, Rhythm & Blues, Rock etc are great artists and I am definitely influenced by them in my writing: Son House, Blind Boy Fuller, Robert Johnson, Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters, Big Bill Broonzy, Bert Jansch, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Chuck Berry, Jim Morrison, Lowell George and many others.

3. What is your daily writing routine?

George Herbert: ‘I once more smell the dew and rain and relish versing’:I wait for a signal that switches on my attention so I know there’s a poem there. Sometimes I’m working on a few poems at a time, or there’s nothing new but I’ll be revising, or there’s nothing. I have learned not to worry – though I do. When I am undistracted and in the right mood I can allow words to surface without examining, or deleting. Heaney wrote about writing, ‘In the corner of a lecture’ – when your mind is focused, on something or nothing, the imagination sends messages to the surface. I like discovering what the poem reveals, seeing what I didn’t know I knew. I feel cheerful when there’s a poem in a drawer, waiting to be attended to.Michael Longley said, ‘Better silence than forgeries .. I wait for poems’, which sums up my attitude to all this. So no, I do not write every day, but I am ready to write – I try to remember to have a notebook on me at all times. I have written poems on beaches, in front of the TV, on ferries and buses .. all I need is some paper and a pencil or pen. I do not type until I have re-written by hand several times. I use a manuscript book for drafting, sometimes I compose straight into it. I have kept quite a few of these as they are a sort of mine or quarry – there is stuff in there that I might be able to use – fragments, abandoned poems and also many notes, quotes, pictures. I stop writing when I have nothing else to write down.One important rule, that I have to remind myself of, is that, once I start I must not stop to correct, re-consider, censor .. that is fatal as if there is anything there it might find its way out buried in a load of verbiage and imagery that can be pared away later. Another helpful way of finding what a poem is about is getting someone else to read it – they may see what the poem is trying to reveal, or is really about, and suggest ways of bringing this out, making the poem in fact. On the whole I do not agree with the often expressed notion that a poem is ‘never finished’: I read poems written years ago and, while noticing that I might not have phrased or structured it like that now I do not wish to re-write it .. it is better to start afresh. I have written many poems that took hours to get right, then found that what I have left is not worth doing anything with. I will leave it, and possibly make use of any images, phrases, lines in a future poem.

4. What motivates you to write?

I write lyric poetry, by which I mean pieces of writing in a verse form that do not extend much beyond 4 or 5 pages, most of my poems are less than 40 lines long. I write like this because that is what my imagination creates – I sometimes intend to put together something longer but this rarely happens, mainly because it is ‘put together’ – is artificial. Over many years I have come to rely on my imagination finding the material it needs in my experiences and making something new from that. What is produced is then shaped by me into a verse form – stanzas, lines, punctuation etc – that seems to emerge from the poem. Often the first few lines set the form. I do not sit down thinking I must write a poem and this is the topic, nor do I attend writing classes where topics are set. Again, to me, all this produces is artificial, manufactured, poetry. I trust my imagination to make something, using words, from my knowledge and life: the poem, if it is a poem, will reveal what I was aware of but did not ‘see’ or ‘know’ before. Of course this leads to periods of anxiety when nothing appears, sometimes for months, but I have to remind myself then that this does not matter. What does matter is that whatever is written is necessary (to me) and ‘authentic’. 

5. What is your work ethic?

When poets write they resemble improvising musicians and footballers – making it up without thinking. But musicians and footballers practise intensely so that, when they have to, they can perform freely. They practise physically and try to master the practical elements of their art. They operate within constraints (eg in music – the instrument, the notes available and their skill). Is there an equivalent for poets? How do poets practise using words so they are there when needed, without (too much) thought? By reading, listening, talking and discussing. Then, diligently wait, and do all you can to be ready: ‘Intensity of mood is the one necessary condition in the poet’ (Edward Thomas).As Coleridge said there is, ‘A well of the unconscious into which everything drops and the act of creation is lowering the bucket and pulling up images and words that have hopefully undergone metamorphosis’. This indicates that you must allow, trust, the imagination to make from its material – what you have stored from memory, thought, feeling, reading, experience etc – the phrasing and imagery of the poem: metaphor, yoking images together to reveal ideas, truths, feelings, understandings, knowledge that you did not know were there.I do not ‘practise’ writing poems as I practise guitar, every day for at least 1 – 2 hours. I have to be patient and calm and wait for the moment, which is also a mood – when I become aware that anything and everything in the ordinary world is of interest and has a mystery: it is inexplicably strange that we are here, like this. Then it takes a prompt: a word, an image, a memory, a line of verse, a phrase.
Nick Laird: ‘Since the poet more often than not sits down to write about nothing, the content, subject matter, of the poem, rises to meet the words from below volition .. It is not a wholly intended process and requires trust’. What this all means is – you need to try to somehow get into the right place physically but especially mentally and emotionally, and then wait. My work ethic is to watch out, try to make space and time for when poems might arise – be alert, awake, wherever you are. This is what Buddhists call mindfulness – (I did an MA in Buddhism and Hinduism). ‘Anything, however small, may make a poem. Nothing, however great, is certain to’ (Edward Thomas).I practice guitar if possible every day. This is because an instrument is a physical device that you need to keep physically acquainted with: your hands need to be kept strong, relaxed, with hard finger tips. I don’t have a ‘writing’ work ethic – I do not sit down and make myself write. That would be against what I feel and believe about my poetry. However I do read poetry, looking for new names and going back through earlier favourites – I have just read two Cavafy collections.   

6. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

The appeal of poems I respond to is their unveiling of truth and mystery. Poetry that is clear and intense, that seems necessary to the poet. I’m not interested in poems that are puzzles, that don’t deliver. ‘The Waste Land’s’ linked images and apparently disconnected sections are constructed to make you experience the concerns that drove Eliot to write, without having to pause and think. The meaning in the poem is in the emotion it creates in the reader, who must simply read the carefully chosen and arranged words and ‘see’ what they describe and suggest. I prefer ‘Ode to the West Wind’ to many of Shakespeare’s sonnets, much of Donne, and all of Prynne.I have noticed I have evolved a style I tend to begin with that, after editing, becomes the style I end with. I fight this at times, try to use words differently, to change and break up what has become a habitual tone – for example the use of half rhyme, regular stanzas, a ‘smooth’ clear feel etc. But in the end I don’t like what these attempts produce. The same goes for subject matter: I want to write about everyday actual things, (Seeing the world anew. The wonder and strangeness of ordinary life .. Newton said something like, ‘All I have done is stand on the pebbles and look out over the ocean’ to which Yeats remonstrated, ‘Never mind the ocean, what about the pebbles!?’) but these have to have significance of some sort to prompt the writing and then always turn out to relate to underlying, broader meanings and issues that I constantly return to – life, death, the planet and Universe, memory, family .. the perennial mysteries that prompt all religions and much art. 

7. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

Sharon Olds, Carol Ann Duffy, Roger McGough, Brian Patten, Gillian Clarke, Katrina Naomi, Hannah Lowe, Jo Bell, David Constantine, Gary Snyder, Arun Kolatkar .. Why I like them is explained in the other answers: they are interesting and have something to say – content is as, if not more, important than form and style, don’t try to make the reader think they’re stupid because they cannot understand the poem, don’t try to be obscure, cheerfully address important everyday things like work, sex, birth, death , purpose, meaning, us and our fellow creatures on this tiny blue speck, use words elegantly and beautifully, are not afraid or scornful of expressing feeling ..

9. Why do you write?

I began decades ago as I thought poets seemed to live interesting, dramatic lives and I was greatly affected by some of what they wrote, especially Shakespeare, some of the Elizabethans like Wyatt, and the Romantics. I had friends with similar inclinations and we used to write together. This continued at Kent University where I read English and American Literature. There were several undergraduate poets there, we knew each other and established a short-lived magazine called, ‘The Lost Works Of Neville Chamberlain’. Some of the staff, like Michael Grant, were poets who encouraged and supported us, commenting positively on our poems which was very charitable of them considering how dreadful they were. They invited impressive, powerful personalities such as Auden and Graves to give lectures, judge poetry competitions, and attend seminars. Eventually I discovered the satisfaction of managing to write and finish poems that expressed things that were important to me and also seemed well shaped, elegant, self-sufficient.

10. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”>

Keeping going when inspiration is absent, there is nothing to say and no one wants to publish poems you think are interesting and well constructed enough to find an audience. Even if you win a prize in the National Poetry Competition, or get a poem in the Forward Anthology or into a ‘prestigious’ magazine nothing will probably change in your life – it takes luck, contacts and of course the right poem to make money and a name .. most poets in any case do not want to earn a living as poets. This would mean writing to order like a journalist or forcing the pace as novelists do – poetry should be written in the corners of your life and you need to live, not write, to write it. Far too many poets work in Universities and especially on ‘creative writing’ courses: this means that their only experiences, from which the poems must come, are of writing and talking about writing, (and the poetry that is about poetry is the most pointless, self-regarding and unenlightening of all).To me the ideal poet’s life would be that lived by Gary Snyder, who worked in the forests of North America, or William Carlos Williams’s life as a GP, or Byron and Shelley living on debt, family, friends and fame. Arnold, Wallace Stevens, Yeats, TS Eliot, Ted Hughes, Larkin, all worked in the world and wrote – as if life, work and poetry were connected rooms.I have had the privilege in LiTTLe MACHiNe of working with, and observing, Carol Ann Duffy and Roger McGough over several years. Both of them have spent much of their lives making a living from writing poetry. They have diligently promoted poetry by going into schools, and encouraging the aspiring poets who constantly approach them. They work hard all the time, travelling about the world, meeting the demands of agents, publishers, and deadlines, go on stage on their own and for an hour or more make a large audience really listen, and move and amuse them, just with words. And they always carry a pen and notebook ..        

11. Tell me about the writing projects you’re involved in at the moment.

There used to be far more print outlets, and, it seemed, far fewer poets too. Online publications are able to accept large numbers of poems and they have multiplied. But who actually sits down and scrolls through a free, online magazine? Poetry seems popular and available but this maybe an illusion create by self-promotion on social media. As far as its impact on national culture, on TV, in the press etc, it is barely visible: very little Arts Council funding compared to theatre and opera, publishing concentrates on novels, non-fiction and biography, and poetry has nothing like the power, presence or impact of the music industry. I have a theory that most poets over the past 50 years would prefer to have been in rock bands – creative, known, busy, earning. But once you have accepted you are a poet then nothing beats finding a poem, finishing it and seeing it leave and go off into the world on its own. There’s no money or fame in it, but when something really needs saying, commemorating or celebrating, the public, and the State, turn to poetry – funerals, weddings, remembering Wars, standing up to violence. It is understood as being, like music, uniquely able to express profound feelings and ideas, and measure up to such moments.  In my customary fashion I have been working on several poems after a quiet period. I do not find the UK, especially London, in the Summer, conducive to writing. Winter is much better, though travelling between May and September in Greece or Italy helps. The mirror in our sitting room has been there for years. Mirrors have strange qualities. One of these new poems began with a question and a memory: why did we buy this ‘Overmantle’, as it is called? The familiar sensation of a still, attentive mood, prompted by realising this glass had stared back at us staring at it, made me grab a pencil. After a few days and several drafts there was a sort of sonnet. The last verse came from realising suddenly that the back of the box was hidden to me but not to the mirror, which had been observing the carvings there for decades, just as we had been looking into this suspended eye, this lake in the room. And writing the last lines about Shakti, the goddess who protects and is also a partner, I saw how my imagination was linking the deity on the box to my wife and her purchase many years ago. The poem taught me something I had not known I already knew. 

THIRD EYE

We bought a mirror to fill the space
above the mantelpiece, from where it has
remarked on our appearance ever since.

A pool of light protects the wall
by holding and returning light,
expands the room as if we’d moved next door
and at night doubles its portion of the dark.

On the shelf stands a teak box
with a cracked lid, all you could afford
for my birthday when we’d just met.

The mirror knows the carving on its back
better than us.
Shakti, her panthers and peacocks dance
hidden in the glass.

FIN

Chris Hardy
London, October 2018.
www.littlemachine.com

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews 

Kerry Priest

The Interview

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

The Interview

Jemma Borg’s first collection, The illuminated world (Eyewear, 2014), won the inaugural Fledgling Award and included a poem highly commended in the Forward Prize. Recent publications include The Poetry Review, Oxford Poetry and Magma. She won the Ginkgo Prize for Ecopoetry in 2018, and the RSPB/Rialto Nature and Place Competition in 2017.
http://www.jemmaborg.co.ukwww.lyrikline

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews 

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.
The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

The Interview 

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.
The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

 Wombwell Rainbow Interviews 

Rebecca Gethin

Rebecca Gethin’s first novel, Liar Dice, which was published in 2011. Her frst poetry collection, River is the Plural of Rain, was published by Oversteps Books in 2009. Her second novel was What the Horses Heard and her second poetry collection, A Handful of Water. She has worked as a creative writing tutor in a prison and currently works as a freelance creative writing tutor and writer.

The Interview 

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.
The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Bina Sakar

Bina Sarkar Ellias wears multiple hats, as a poet, fiction writer, curator, graphic designer,  editor and publisher. She recently curated the Migration Project for the Pune Biennale 2017, integrating works of artists, poets, filmmakers and photographers. She is founder, editor  and publisher of International Gallerie, an award-winning arts and ideas publication since 21 years.  Gallerie encourages critical understanding and appreciation of cultural diversity through the arts. Her book of poems “FUSE” has been taught at Towson University, Maryland, USA and selected poems have been translated into Urdu, Chinese, Arabic and French. Her forthcoming book “WHEN SEEING IS BELIEVING” has just been launched. She has given talks at various global venues and has received a Fellowship from the Asia Leadership Fellow Program 2007,  Japan, towards the project Unity in Diversity, the Times Group Yami Women Achievers’ Award, 2008, India, and the FICCI/FLO Award, 2013, India, for excellence in her work.
OTHER DETAILS
She has edited, Fifty Years of Contemporary Indian Art, 1997, for the Mohile Parikh Centre for Visual Arts, Mumbai, 1997. She has designed artist Jehangir Sabavala’s catalogue for  the 2002 show in Mumbai, Delhi and New  York, artist Rekha Rodwittiya’s catalogue, 2003, and recently her book in 2007, for shows in New York, Crossing Generations: diverge, the fortieth anniversary catalogue for Gallery Chemould, Mumbai, 2004, and a book on  artist Tyeb Mehta, Svaraj  by Ramchandra Gandhi. She has designed, edited and published an art  book, Chinthala Jagdish: Unmasked, 2004,  and The Curious World of Chinthala Jagdish, 2008; a book of poems, Rain, for Indian poet Sudeep Sen, 2005, Ayesha Taleyarkhan’s book of photographs, Bombay Mumbai, 2005, American photographer, edited and designed Leena Kejriwal’s book of photography, Calcutta: Repossessing the City, Waswo X. Waswo’s book, India Poems: The Photographs, and his recent catalogue, A Studio in Rajasthan, 2008, and artist Surendran Nair’s book, Itinerant Mythologies, 2008.

The Interview

1. What inspired you to write poetry?

Imagination; the magic of words in poetry and story books, lured me into scribbling my thoughts on random scraps of paper when I was perhaps nine or ten. And from teenage on, the novels of Gorky and Dostoevsky, the genius of Shakespeare, the philosophies of thinkers like Marx and Russell, and later Orwell, Thoreau, James Joyce , Sartre and Kafka, Camus, and Edward Said.  But the limerick and sonnet, the haiku and tangka, the ghazal, the acrostic and elegy, all have their inimitable characteristics that continue to delight.

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

As a child at school, books of poetry with simple rhymes enchanted me and later, poets like Tagore, Kipling, Wordsworth, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Tennyson and Whitman. It soon evolved to the irreplaceable Ginsberg, Kerouac, Sylvia Plath, Wisława Szymborska, Ramanujan, Walcott, and others.

3. How aware were you of the dominating presence of older poets?

I’ve been in admiration and appreciation of them since a long time. The deftness of thought, language and cadence lingered in all the quiet moments one had in-between preoccupations. The older poets have a distinct vocabulary but contemporary poets are marching forward with their own charged style, in hundreds. Perhaps today, one is more aware of the numbers because of the net and social media.
4. What is your daily writing routine?

One becomes a slave of routine as there are multiple practices I am immersed in. That of editor-designer-publisher of the bi-annual arts and ideas journal International Gallerie; a fiction writer and art curator interspersed with travels that entice me to varied regions, people and cultures. However, my poetry writings emerge mostly in the punctuations of these activities; in transit at airports, during a tea break, between destinations, often in the middle of the night…

5. What motivates you to write?

Life. People I encounter, places I visit, socio-political issues, nature; everything that speaks to me.

6. What is your work ethic?

Work is Worship… beneath its didactic surface, this proverb really connotes energy for me. Work is my life, work is love and passion, work for me, means a constant delight in learning, sharing the learning, disseminating unity in diversity, condemning wars, violence and injustice, speaking peace through the voice of words. Work is an instrument of healing.

7. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

Many of the writers still resonate; like Shakespeare’s universally enduring characters, Orwell’s 1984 which is an all-time classic, increasingly relevant today.

8. Why do you write?

Writing is a compulsion. It happens without announcing itself.

9. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

I would say you do not “become” a writer. A writer has words flowing in his or her veins. The words get honed and chiselled through experience, and love for words.

10. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

I have just launched “When Seeing Is Believing”, a book of poems that respond to the beauty and power of art and images. My poems are an ongoing process. As new poems emerge they will find themselves in books. A book of short stories is also unfolding. As is a novel and my ongoing preoccupation with “International Gallerie”, the global arts and ideas print journal that I’ve been editing and publishing since 21 years. Every project is unlimited joy! Do visit: http://www.gallerie.net

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.
The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Julian Stannard

is a poet and a university teacher. He obtained his PhD. from UEA and is now a Reader in English and Creative writing at the University of Winchester, where for five years he was the programme leader for the MA in Creative and Critical writing. He writes critical studies – his most recent book was about the work of Basil Bunting   (http://writersandtheirwork.co.uk/index.php/author/authors-s-u/201-stannard-julian) – as well as reviews, essays, and poetry. His most recent collection is What were you thinking? (http://www.cbeditions.com/stannard.html)(CB Editions, 2016). His work appears variously in TLS, Poetry, Manhattan Review, Poetry Review, Poetry London, Spectator, Guardian, Telegraph, The Honest Ulsterman, The Forward Book of Poetry (2017) and Nuova Corrente (Italy). An essay on the poetry of Leonard Cohen appears in Spirituality and Desire in Leonard Cohen’s Songs and Poems (Cambridge Scholars, 2017.) He is at present writing a study of British and American poetry entitled Anglo-American Conversations in Poetry: 1910-2015 (Peter Lang).
He has read at various literary festivals, including the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, as well as literary venues in the UK, mainland Europe and the USA – including London, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Paris, Rome, Prague, Genoa, Munich, New York and Boston. He teaches for the Poetry School (London) and is often invited to organise and lead workshops in a freelance capacity. He is both a Hawthornden and Bogliasco Fellow and has been a visiting Erasmus scholar at Charles University Prague and the University of Warsaw. Presently he is an External Examiner for the MA in Creative Writing at Birmingham City University and has been nominated for both Forward and Pushcart Prizes for his poetry. From 1984 to 2005 he lived for long periods in Italy, where he taught English and American Literature at the University of Genoa. He has written poetry about that mysterious port city and is now working on a bilingual publication of his Genoese poems for Il Canneto Publishers ( Genoa).

http://www.julianstannard.com/about/

The Interview

1. What inspired you  to write poetry?

As a young kid I was sent to a boarding school near Sheffield. I had been living in Malaysia  up until that moment  so boarding school  felt like an unexpected  and unwanted incarceration; it could be  nightmarish at times, and it was always  extremely cold! Reading –  as is so often the case, I think,   was  a way of coping generally  and English  was more or less the only thing I was  reasonably good at .
At ‘A level’  we studied  the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins  who, it turned out, had actually taught at the school in the  19th century,  and  we also studied The Waste Land  which seemed to resonate across the years. Something in my head said   ‘Holy shit, I think I like this!’

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

Our A level English Lit teacher was an irascible drunken left-wing Scotsman who was nevertheless on occasion  quite brilliant. He didn’t discourage drinking; in fact, he probably saw it as part of our wider education (an extra-curriculum activity), so we would trek across the damp hills looking for accommodating Public Houses.  In the 1970s no one seemed to bother that much about the legal dimension.  A barmaid would say ‘I suppose you’re going to say you’re eighteen?’ and we would say ‘Yes’ in the deepest voices  we could muster.  The beer flowed and in  our state of  inebriation  we would sometimes   talk about  poetry, and  even begin  to write it, in  our heads at least.  At the ages of sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, drinking and writing poetry  and  smoking hash were somehow inter-related and it felt better than most of the other things you were expected to do.
The English teacher had a record of Eliot reading The Waste Land which, as it most  likely seemed the easiest option, he   would  play quite often, invariably nodding off before  we got to What the Thunder Said. We knew much of it off by heart.
At University, in 1983,  I met Fleur Adcock , who came to give a reading and I realised in an instant that  poetry could be conversational,  colloquial and utterly contemporary. For me this was a real breakthrough!

3. How aware were you of the dominating presence of older poets?

In those days it  was still mostly all about older poets, but less so after meeting Fleur.  At University I read  a lot of medieval poets, including Chaucer, who were in turn  indebted to classical poets.   Later when I moved to Italy in the 1980s I learnt that every school child  could cite something  from Dante’s Divine Comedy. And I learnt that Liguria and Genoa, the city  which for a decade or so  became my home , had a rich literary history.   Which included the presence of Byron, Shelley, Dickens, Lawrence, Charles Tomlinson,  Hemingway, WB Yeats, Ezra Pound, Max Beerbohm, Basil Bunting , Camillo Sbarbaro, Eugenio Montale, Giorgio Caproni, Dino Campana.
This year, much to my delight,  the Italian publishers Canneto has published my book Sottoripa (2018), which is  a bilingual  publication of my poems about Genoa, translated by Massimo Bacigalupo.
http://www.cannetoeditore.it/libri/arte-e-grafica/sottoripa-poesie-genovesi-di-julian-stannard/
In 2013 the title poem had been  made into a short film by Guglielmo Trupia  which was nominated  at the Rain Dance Film Festival

But it was also in that period –  the 1980s – I got hold of a copy of Michael Hofmann’s Acrimony  –  an outstanding  collection by such a youthful poet  – Again  it  was a case of reading old and new voices  – and then finding  one’s own voice.

4. What is your daily writing routine?

I begin new poems with a mixture of hope and fear and excitement.  Because  I spend a lot of time teaching in  a university which also means  marking, and all that other bureaucratic stuff and then, when possible,  enjoying some recovery time,  I don’t always have a consistent writing routine but I take the opportunities when they arise  – on the train maybe, or weekends or during holiday  time. I spend a lot of time working on drafts or reading new poetry. I like listening to music, especially Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis,  Charlie Parker et al. This helps me write or re-write or just relax.
When  my younger son was living  with me I would  listen to  a lot of  Rap – whether I wanted to or not – and when it comes to   the Notorious B.I.G , I have acquired a coating of  expertise!
And  sometimes I send poems to friends to see what they think.

5. What motivates you to write?

A response of a kind.  The general weirdness of stuff I think – overheard conversations, things I‘ve read, billboards, train announcements (endless!), anger, desolation, joy, memories. I think we’re living in particularly challenging times; the political climate is worrying, more food banks, more homelessness, more poverty, fear of losing one’s job. The wider international situation too.  I have always been a loyal supporter of the Labour Party so that in itself brings  highs  and lows, rather like watching  your football team play brilliantly for much of the game yet somehow  throw it away  right at the end. Brexit fills me with immense sadness.
6. What is your work ethic?
Teaching  often  consumes swathes of my life, it’s  draining , but because I also teach creative writing  I can, from time to time, get inspired by student  work which is wonderful too. It’s a delight to come across real talent and help nurture it.  I like to read  a lot of contemporary poetry and new fiction  generally. I am asked to review quite frequently which is a discipline in itself, a kind of homework, and a way of keeping up to date. Travelling often produces new poetry. Notwithstanding work pressures I manage to write a fair amount; and if a poem demands  to be written I  usually find the time to answer those demands! It’s a lot more enjoyable than writing some anodyne document or funding bid.
7. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?
Their influence never really goes away, even if you spend a lot of time with newer or different  voices. I think  those ‘early’ poets helped fashion a way of thinking  about poetry  – and it’s  always a great pleasure to return to their  writing, whether it be those earlier generation such as the modernists  –  Eliot ,Pound, William Carlos Williams, DH Lawrence  – or  poets such as Frank O’Hara or Robert Creeley,  and/ or Lowell, Berryman  and co. Not to mention those older contemporary poets, especially if they are still producing new work: poets such as Fleur Adcock, Christopher  Reid, Hugo Williams, Maurice Riordan , Selima Hill, Michael Hofmann-  to name a few.

8. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

There are so many! There’ s a kind of resurgence in the world of  poetry I feel. I could roll out  a list off the top of my head but I am surely  leaving people  out; but the list would surely include Caroline Bird, George Szirtes, Kathryn Maris, Andrew Macmillan, Declan Ryan, Emily Berry, Tim Cumming,  André Naffis-Sahely,  Claudia Rankine, Sharon  Olds, Annie Freud, Ishion Hutchinson, Luke Kennard, Richard Skinner,  and some pieces  from  Bobby Parker  and Ocean Vuong too. I would also want  to acknowledge the dark genius  of Frederick Seidel, the intimations of mortality still coming from the pen of Clive James. And I take my hat off to my former student and colleague Antosh Wojcik who’s making   quite a name for himself as a performance poet.
And why? Variously and varyingly  there is so much  energy  here, a lot of drive, and risk- taking,  and moments of candour (Lowell said ‘ why not say what happened’?)  and plenty of ludic mischief  too and experiment  with form;  in effect some lively conversations between poetry and prose, including  prose poetry, and other media too, including social media.  Some of the poets above work across genres: variously novelists, translators, essayists,  reviewers,  editors, teachers, events’ organisers  and  publishers . Difficult not to mention Charles Boyle, ex-poet, and now writer of prose under various names and the founder of CB Editions. The blogging of Katy Evans-Bush  –  fine poet – has been  significant and the gregarious Bethany Pope, poet and novelist, is now writing more or less daily reports from China.   I look forward to reading her next book.

9. Why do you write?

After forty years or so of doing it  –  oh  my God ! – it’s become a habit, a way of thinking and even a way of  living. Sometimes reportage, sometimes invention, I guess it’s a way of dealing  with some deep, not always unpleasant,  itch  – which in turn probably answers to  all  sorts of Freudian-like  neuroses…
Writing, at times, is totally satisfying and, in a practical sense, quite easy to do. I don’t need a studio or a theatre or complicated props.  Just the page itself, I guess, which  is a kind of stage.
10. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”
I’d say Read, read and read yet more  and try thing out. Experiment, take risks, be thick-skinned,  and try and get  plenty of sleep!

11. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

My last  English collection came out in 2016 –  What were  you thinking? (CB Editions http://www.cbeditions.com/stannard.html) ;
so  I’m grappling  with the creation of a new MS – several pieces of which  have been published in  magazines. Any new collection  has , at least for me , a rather  aleatory dynamic –  feeling  my way forwards, as it  were, letting  poems butt their way in, or conversely slide away …
I’m also writing a book called Transatlantic Conversations – which is about the relationships, harmonious or otherwise,  between British and American  poetry; this is for the publisher Peter Lang.
As well as the above ,I’m  also working with  the novelist and artist Roma Tearne on a collaborative  project  called  Heat Wave  – It’s s a sort of dialogue between  poems of mine and Roma’s  fantastic  paintings . Not an ekphrastic venture I hasten to add. More a dark night of the soul with some gleeful moments too! A kind of synaesthetic fugue….
It’s coming out next year thanks to Green Bottle Press. We’re planning  several readings /events so watch this space!