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.

M.J. Arcangelini

was born 1952 in western Pennsylvania, grew up there & in Cleveland, Ohio. He’s resided up and down the west coast since 1973 and currently lives in west Sonoma County, CA. His work has been published in a lot of little magazines, both in paper and online (including The James White Review, RFD, BEAR Magazine, Whisky Island, Taproot, ArtCrimes, Ev’ryman, Splitw*sky, Jonathan, Callisto, Rusty Truck, The Ekphrastic Review, The Gasconade Review) and a dozen anthologies. He is the author of the full length poetry collection “With Fingers At The Tips Of My Words” from Beautiful Dreamer Press (2002) (http://www.beautifuldreamerpress.com/ ) and 2 chapbooks “Room Enough” (2016) and “Waiting for the Wind to Rise” (2018) both from NightBallet Press (http://nightballetpress.blogspot.com ). A third chapbook “Pawning My Sins” is set to be published in August 2019 by NightBallet Press and a full length collection is pending in 2019 from Stubborn Mule Press. Arcangelini maintains an occasional blog with memoirs and poems at https://joearky.wordpress.com/ In 2018 Arcangelini was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

The Interview

1. What inspired you to write poetry?

I started writing poetry at 11. It was the death of my paternal grandfather which inspired the first poem I wrote outside of school. Several months after my grandfather died, I woke up in the middle of the night, got pencil and paper from the desk next to the bed, and wrote a poem about him. I then fell back asleep. When I woke in the morning the pencil was jabbing me in the side and there was a poem in my bed. That was the first poem I ever wrote which was not written for a school assignment but instead came out all by itself. I’ve been writing ever since. I wish I still had that poem but it has been lost.

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

A nun in Catholic grade school when I was 10 or so. We were studying poetry so the nun would have been the one introducing me to it. I wrote a few for school assignments and got praise and good grades for them and thus was encouraged to continue.

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

Not as aware as I used to be, although at my age there aren’t as many living older poets as there once were. The Beats, especially Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, who I began reading in my mid-teens, continue to be a dominating presence for me through both their own work and as the progenitors, along with Bukowski, of the “outlaw” poets whose work I most enjoy today. d.a. levy and the poets who gathered around him in Cleveland in the 60s have long been part of my awareness. Of that group Tom Kryss, D.R. Wagner, and Kent Taylor are still with us and still producing inspiring work. Robinson Jeffers’ presence never seems distant, his work continues to influence and guide me as it has since I first discovered him in my late teens. Then there are Blake, Rimbaud, and of course Walt Whitman, whose call to the open road, both literal and metaphorical, preceded Kerouac’s by a century and continues to echo within my work and awareness to this day.

4. What is your daily writing routine?

Morning is the purest time for my writing, I get up early, anywhere from 4:30 to 6:00 AM. My time from then until I have to get ready for work is wholly my own and mostly dedicated to writing. On weekdays most of my energy goes to the job, where I do legal writing. In the evenings and on weekends I go back and forth between writing and doing other things like yardwork, meals, laundry, etc. And the writing itself alternates between poems, letters (I still write real letters to people), and memoirs. I am usually working on at least one of each at any given time, with 3-5 poems in process being pretty normal.

5. What motivates you to write?

The act of writing itself motivates me. I am not so much motivated as compelled to write. Perhaps there is an ego satisfaction at the core of it; thinking that what I have to say, to observe, to declaim, might have value to someone else. Pure egotism, as Whitman might have had it. Maybe it is greed. Diane Wakoski writes of “the greed of all poets / wanting the luxury of a life dedicated to writing words.” [Wakoski “Greed Part 2: Of Accord & Principal”] Perhaps I am simply greedy for self-indulgence. And Robinson Jeffers in “Apology for Bad Dreams” speaks of writing his poems as a way “to magic / Horror away from the house” by placing it instead within the safe confines of his work. I believe I do some of that myself, especially in the poems about madness, death, and suicide.

6. What is your work ethic?

I’m not sure what you’re looking for here. The hard work I often put in on my poems is its own reward when the poem finally settles into that space where I feel it is finished. Just as the poems which come easy, nearly whole from the start, are simply a gift borne out of the hard work put into previous poems that paved the way.

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

When I started writing poetry, and for quite some time, everything I wrote showed the influence of Edgar Allen Poe. Strong rhythms, rhymes – it just seemed like the way poetry was supposed to be written. I must’ve been exposed to other poets during those years in school but no other one influenced me as much as Poe until I ran into e.e. cummings. He was so completely the opposite of Poe that it threw me into a tailspin. As far as influencing me today, it is only in spirit that Poe and cummings continue their influence. I believe that very little remains in my current poems of their overt influence. After them I discovered the Beat poets, then Charles Bukowski, Arthur Rimbaud, William Blake, Robinson Jeffers, and d.a. levy all in my mid-teens and all of whom continue to influence me today in one way or another.

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

John Dorsey is someone I admire. He has managed to find a way to live as a fulltime poet/writer without compromising the integrity of his work. His poems are always well worth reading. I’ve long admired A.D. Winans, Neeli Cherkovski, and Andy Clausen who are also always worth reading and each provides a living touchstone with the Ginsberg/Bukowski generation. Then there are a whole group of poet/publishers for whom I not only admire their poetry but am in awe of their work as publishers and promoters of other people’s poetry. Among these are Dianne Borsenik, John Burroughs, and Jason Ryberg, but there are others as well.

9. Why do you write?

I’ve questioned why I write over the years but have never come up with a good answer, an enlightening explanation. I just do. It is what I do. Good or bad it is who I am. I don’t really write for publication, or very seldom, even though that recognition can be nice. I would write even if I never got published, and did for years. I don’t write for acclaim or awards. I can sometimes write to please a lover or a friend, but most often it is only to please myself.

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

Start writing. Either you is or you ain’t.

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

I’ve been polishing up a set of poems that came out of my open heart surgery in 2012 which I’m hoping to get published somewhere as a chapbook. I’m pulling together a full length manuscript for possible publication in 2019, and picking out poems to submit for a third chapbook to be published by NightBallet Press in August 2019. I don’t write groups of thematically linked poems nor conceive my poems with books in mind so there really are no grand projects in the works. The heart surgery poems came organically out of that experience; I did not set out to write a set of poems on a specific topic. My focus is generally much narrower, on each individual poem as it is being written with no thought as to how it might connect to any other.

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.

Grumpy Gorman

On his website Grumpy describes himself

“I am a Social Worker by day and an artist/writer by night. I use the written word in an attempt to make sense of the secret worlds and dysfunctional dynamics that lurk beneath the facades of our daily interactions. I am not sure how my writing styles are characterized, nor am I overly concerned about it. I am immensely enthusiastic about music and often connect better with songs than I do people. I also have an intense appreciation for quality wines and whiskies, frequently consuming them in excess. I like things that smell good and struggle to manage the symptoms of a life-long relationship with depression. So, why “grumpygorman”? Spend some time here and find out…”

https://handsinthegarden.wordpress.com/

The Interview

1. When and why did you begin to write poetry?

I began to write poetry when I was a child as an escape from the real world. It’s not much different than the fantasy play with toys. If I was engaged with something creative, things didn’t feel as bad. I would try my signature, and then put words together and it just kind of went on from there..

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

For me, poetry came in the form of song lyrics. I am very musically inclined though i have not had a lot of opportunity to create music. It was following lyrics along with songs that really got me into expressing myself through words. Many musician poets have influenced me, then later on I discovered online poets that resonated with me, and then I actually started exploring poetry from classic poets,  so it was kind of a backwards process.

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

I dropped out of high school and grew up in a fairly blue collar family. I was not exposed to a lot of literature until I went back to school as a mature student to get my Bachelor of Social Work. My favourite class in university was about children’s novels.  The professor’s name was Lovejoy, which added to the fun. I loved the classic children’s novels, the innocence, the wide-eyed’ness. I didn’t have much exposure to older poets, i must confess until much later.. i was not very aware of older poets…

4. What is your daily writing routine?

My daily writing routine trains me. I don’t train it. I get up, live, eat, do what I need to do and then  at about 2:00pm I light scented candles, dim the lighting, choose my writing music and then melt into my chair for a good portion of the evening lost in my mind, trying to cross wires, make sense of stars, pull strings, etc.

5. What motivates you to write?

emotion, humour, colours, sounds, smells, absurdities, unfairness… ego, my children, hopes     that my children will see how much their dad felt and cared about the world around him. They mean the world to me.. I don’t get to see them very much, so I write out my thoughts.. so that maybe someday they can sit down and read me. 🙂

6. What is your work ethic?

When I am passionate about something, I become immersed. I could paint or write for seven hours straight if I needed to. Things like eating, and peeing become annoying burdens.. when you spend so much time out there…it can be hard to pull yourself back back in. I enjoy the pursuit of knowledge, thoughts

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

When I was young, I read a lot of Roald Dahl, Shel Silverstein, nursery rhymes, Judy Blume, Lynn Johnstone. I think they helped shape how I viewed family, and relationships. I think a lot of the playfulness of my childhood influences appear in my poetry. It was a messy time, but a time ripe with so much feeling. I think reading the Herman and Far Side books, helped shape my strange sense of humour. I think that much of my writing today, is composed through the lens of 1990’s grunge rat. That’s pretty much what I am, just a bit wiser, more particular and slower thinking and moving

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

The writers I admire, are not likely to be the writers who will have their work in book shops, , not to say that mainstream poetry doesn’t have value, because it does, but most of the writers I like are relatively unknown (which is a shame) online poets. I really appreciate the work of Robert Okaji, Rory Matter, David Redpath, Jeanne Elizabeth, My Valiant Soul, Lou Rasmus and Braeden Michaels. I am sure that I am forgetting many.  One commonality between these writers is that they tell you about what’s going on in their minds by writing about the things outside of it. They are also authentic about their warts and write for writing’s sake. Some lyric writers that I enjoy are Matt Berninger of the National, Hayden Thorpe and Tom Armstrong of Wild Beasts, James Graham of Twilight Sad, Scott Hutchinson of Frightened Rabbit and John Talbot of Idles. I also admire many writers for the TV show, Shameless.  It’s brilliant humour and dialogue.

9. Why do you write?

Why don’t more people write?  I write because if I don’t i start to decay.  I become bitter, ugly and very unhappy. It’s how I manage to keep myself on the right tracks and my head in the right place.

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

You listen to your heart. You try to block out comparisons, expectations and outcomes and you just practice.  The beauty of writing is in the process, not the product. Don’t be afraid to take risks but more than anything, be authentic. The second you try to write someone else’s poem is the second you’ve ceased in your relevancy.

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

I am currently working on a project where I am writing poems to my paintings as an objective observer.  When I painted them I was in a certain headspace. I am curious to see what I have to say about them outside of their creation.  I know it’s very self-involved, but I think it will be worthwhile. I will continue to post poetry on my site and hopefully champion some less known online writers.  Sharing the writing of others is amazing.

 

 

 

 

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.

Oz Hardwick

 is a York-based writer, photographer and musician, who has been published extensively worldwide, and has read everywhere from Glastonbury Festival to New York, via countless back rooms of pubs. His most recent poetry collection is Learning to have Lost(IPSI, 2018). A keen collaborator with other artists, Oz has had work performed by classical musicians in UK concert halls, by flamenco musicians in Italian villas, and with experimental sound and film artists in an Australian cinema. By day he is Professor of English and Programme Leader for Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University. In his spare time, Oz is a respected music journalist. ‘The poetry is as good as it gets’ – HQ

https://ozhardwick.co.uk/

https://recentworkpress.com/product/learning-to-have-lost/

The Interview

1. When and why did you start writing poetry?

I really don’t know. I always liked rhymes and playing about with words, but I don’t know when I started writing them down. Also, I was fortunate in that my maternal grandparents lived with us, and my granddad was passionate about Robert Burns and the Lake poets, and could recite vast swathes of their work. He’d left school early and gone into agricultural work, so was a bit of an autodidact: loved poetry and wrote poetry (very much in the Romantic mode), as well as drawing and playing folk tunes – again self-taught – on the melodeon. And he was a huge influence on me, so I just grew up with the idea that poetry was a normal thing that happens in a working-class household.

The first poetry I remember responding to personally, though, was Brian Patten when I was maybe 11 or 12. I came across ‘A Small Dragon,’ ‘The Projectionist’s Nightmare,’ and so on, and it was in language I understood, and spoke of the world I recognised, both in the everyday and in that magical aura which shimmers just beneath the surface of that world. I still love his work, and he led me to Roger McGough, Pete Brown, Adrian Henri and so on. If I hadn’t been writing things down before, I most definitely did then. The final piece in the early picture was Robert Calvert, who was doing really interesting spoken science fiction poetry with Hawkwind, who I also discovered when I was 12, and have been a fan ever since – 45 years or so later, there are things about his approach that, though you may not see any similarity in my writing, I still see in my approach to certain projects.

A long answer, which just takes me up to starting writing poetry, but these were the things that set the wheels turning – part grandfather born in the last years of the 19th century, part future-focused space rock.

2. How aware are and were you of the dominating presence of older poets traditional and contemporary?

I had the usual 60s/70s school introductions to ‘The Greats’ from Chaucer to the First Wold War poets, but it was the ones I encountered more serendipitously that had a more profound effect. I remember a few of us bunking off games in the library, and a teacher finding us and deciding to tell us about the poetry he loved. It started with Coleridge, and then went on to the Metaphysicals, and it had such an impact because it wasn’t someone going through the motions but, rather (like my granddad), getting carried away with a passion. The other epiphany was Hopkins, to whom we were introduced by a teacher who couldn’t hide his distaste, which sort of contaminated my reading, but I remember taking out this book in one of my favourite places, leaning against a tree, overlooking the sea on a summer afternoon, and for some reason reading it aloud. Wham!

In my 30s, I went to York University as a mature student (English and Art History), by which time I had a real enthusiasm for early 20th-century poetry – imagism and surrealism in particular – and, much to my own surprise, became passionate about medieval literature. Three degrees later, the pattern and texture of medieval poetry is pretty much a constant thread through my own writing, whether I’m thinking about it or not – it’s just in the air I breathe, even though most of what I read is contemporary.

2.1.Why did you become passionate about medieval literature?

I think it was initially the music of the language. I’d had a very unrewarding run-in with Chaucer at school, where it was taught as line-by-line translation, and that had put me off completely. However, I went to see a performance of a couple of the York Mystery Plays in the original language, in a medieval church, and it sounded magnificent! That primed me for the compulsory medieval literature module, which up to then I’d been kind of dreading. I still think Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is one of the most wonderful things I’ve ever read – and, incidentally, that Simon Armitage’s version is the only modernisation that does it justice. That, along with the sheer stylistic diversity of Chaucer, the overwhelming complexity of Langland, the York Master’s robust dialogue, and on, and on … My interest in contemporary writing remains undiminished but, at the same time, immersing myself in medieval literature – and art (I live in York, so it’s everywhere) – has been incredibly enriching.

3. What is your daily writing routine?

I write every morning, pretty much first thing – generally while I’m having a coffee. I belong to an online group which grew out of a prose poetry project at the University of Canberra. It put writers in the form in touch with each other in a creative dialogue. I was involved for about the last 18 months of its official life, but after the project finished it seemed too good to let go, so a  number of us stayed in touch, swapping poems and responding to each other’s work. With most of the other writers being in different time zones, I generally wake up to something interesting in my inbox, which mixes with whatever’s on the radio, whatever’s still buzzing about from dreams, and so on, and I just write from these diverse, sometimes clashing, sources. My critical faculties come into play later, whenever I find the time, but I have this half hour or so each day during which I will write. And – with due apologies if this sounds arrogant – I have a pretty good hit rate on raw material that will develop into something worthwhile. This most definitely isn’t because I have a unique and wonderful talent, or that I’m ‘inspired’ (I’ve never knowingly been inspired in my life) but, rather, it’s because I have worked on writing and thought carefully about it on a daily basis for many years. I think I often give the impression of being a bit scatty, a little bit flippant even, perhaps, but beneath the slightly shambolic exterior, I’m actually very focused, very disciplined and quite possibly unhealthily driven.

4. Clashing sources motivates you to write?

Very much so. Often writers will talk about the blank page and how they respond to its challenge, but for me it’s much more akin to Michelangelo’s description of sculpting an angel, by seeing the angel inside the marble and carving everything extraneous away until the angel is set free. I don’t necessarily know what is inside the chaos of stimulation, but I have become quite adept at cutting everything away to get at what it actually is that I feel needs to be set free. So, for me, there’s never a blank page, just a huge – almost overwhelming – mass of stuff waiting for me to find the shape of my thoughts within it. Sometimes it takes the delicate application of the finest chisel, and sometimes it takes a pneumatic drill. Or maybe explosives. I think that’s possibly a metaphor that’s gone about as far as it can!

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

The very general answer is that they gave me the passion for what I do now. I’ll set my own parameters for ‘young,’ and go back to my mid teens for the most profoundly influential, and that was Richard Brautigan. I discovered him by chance in the library – an experience that the internet will never replace – when I came across ‘The Cleveland Wrecking Yard’ in an anthology. I was absolutely hooked, and picked up everything available – and, indeed, waited eagerly for his further books. Apart from the understated surrealism of the story, the language and structure of the paragraphs was closer to poetry than to prose. I wouldn’t hear the term ‘prose poetry’ until a lot later (well, not consciously, as Brian Patten has a self-professed prose poem in The Mersey Sound, but somehow that had sailed past me), but I recognised Brautigan’s work in these terms straight away. He wrote both poetry and prose, but I’m of the not uncommon opinion that his novels are way better poetry than his actual poems. I am a very different writer, but I think my prose poems share a similar aesthetic – and that’s an aesthetic that in my case was partly shaped by my love of his work. His In Watermelon Sugar is as good as it gets, as far as I’m concerned.

5.1. Why is the language and structure of Brautigan’s work closer to poetry?

Brautigan’s is a prose that foregrounds language over narrative development, and often uses simile and metaphor in ways that are intensely suggestive, yet do not fully cohere into a fixed image. To take a very simple – and quite typical – example: when native Americans ‘report like autumn’ to the army, for instance, it doesn’t service the narrative, and I can’t quite pin down how they are reporting, but I find it deeply satisfying at the level of language. Although distinctly different in all manner of respects, there’s a similarity here to, say, the discontinuous juxtapositions in Lyn Hejinian’s work. This quality is something that was even commented upon by his contemporaries: I don’t recall the exact words, but Michael McClure said something about Trout Fishing in America being a great poem. Of course, on a pure gut reaction level, the brevity of Brautigan’s chapters or short stories makes them look like poems: there’s a lot of white space around the ink which – and it’s something that Glyn Maxwell talks about in On Poetry – is a part of the reader’s encounter with text that we shouldn’t underestimate.

5.2 How do the medieval works influence your writing?

That, I think, is much more complex and subtle. A clear example would be my An Eschatological Bestiary (Dog Horn, 2013), which took the medieval bestiary form and, instead of combining biblical and doctrinal material, natural history, folklore and so on in order to attribute allegorical meaning to animals (I’m grossly oversimplifying here), I combined newspaper reports, overheard conversations, a lot of my own academic writing on medieval animal iconography, and other found sources, and employed a few chance procedures in order to engage very obliquely – there’s nothing didactic about it – with topics that concern me, such as dissociation from the natural world, miscommunication, and personal dissociation through mental illness. That makes it sound very dark indeed, but actually it’s a very playful work, which owes as much to Tristan Tzara and Max Ernst as it does to the great medieval Anonymous. At the other end of the scale, the poems in my collection The Ringmaster’s Apprentice (Valley Press, 2014) are sequenced in a way that owes a lot to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, though you wouldn’t know if I didn’t tell you, and probably still wouldn’t be any the wiser now that I have. It’s as much a pattern of thought as it is an ‘influence,’ I think.

6. Whom of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

That is very hard to say, as there are so many writers whose work I admire, and for different reasons. I find Claudia Rankine’s challenge to form, in concert with her work’s challenge to learned cultural perception, really exciting, particularly in view of the way it incorporates visual material in a dynamic dialogue. A profoundly different writer, who also incorporates visual material is Bella Li, who I only discovered a few months ago. She has an unashamed debt to the surrealists, but there is a pared-back, meditative quality to her writing that is like imagining Solaris as a haiku sequence – or something like that, anyway. Her books are wonderful. A complete contrast, but Simon Armitage is a poet who seems to be everywhere these days, and quite rightly so. As a prose poetry enthusiast, Seeing Stars is a particular favourite – subtly disruptive – and, as I said earlier, he’s the only person to have done a worthwhile job of making Sir Gawain and the Green Knight accessible to the modern reader while as much as possible retaining the texture of the original. And I don’t think many come close to Alice Oswald and Katrina Porteous when it comes to separating and articulating the archaeological layers of place. I could – and frequently do – go on, but I will just namecheck Agnes Lehoczky and Bob Beagrie, whose work constantly astounds me in its linguistic intensity. There are more …

7. Why do you write, as opposed to doing anything else?

Ah – I don’t! Way, way back when I left school, I went to Art College, where I studied photography, and I have kept up a keen interest and taken the pictures for the covers of most of my books, as well as a number of others (and a few albums, too). Each of the poems in my Eschatological Bestiary is accompanied by a collage, too – I’m really interested in the interaction between word and image. I also play a bit of music – at a rather basic level of competence – and whenever I can I put that into the mix. The current project is The Forgotten Works (the name’s a Brautigan reference), in which I read and play treated electric guitar and kaossilator, along with Amina Alyal – a poet with whom I collaborate on projects as often as possible – and a very versatile guitarist/keyboardist called Karl Baxter, who also does clever electronic stuff. We will at some point record an album, but the immediate plan is to work some lighting effects into performances, too. In my head, the effect we’re going for is a sort of Bells of Atlantis meets Bob Calvert and Gilli Smyth, but there’s more than enough creative waywardness amongst us for it to sound nothing like that. To get back to the question: I write because it’s what I do, and it bothers me if for some reason I can’t for a day or so, but as soon as I’m given the chance, I’ll be chucking it in the mixer with other artforms, often with other people.

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

I can only think of a very cliched response, though it has become a cliché by virtue of being true: read voraciously and write because you love it.

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

There are two big projects at present. First, with Anne Caldwell, I’m co-editing an anthology of contemporary prose poetry, which will be coming out with Valle Press in the summer. We’ve been working on it for some time, and are just finalising the manuscript. There will be a symposium to coincide with publication at Leeds Trinity University on 13th July, and all manner of excitements. To find out all about it, it’s best to just go to the website at https://prose-poetry.uk/events

As for myself, my chapbook of – who’d have thought it? – prose poems, The Lithium Codex has just won the Hedgehog Press Full Fat Collection competition, and Hedgehog will be publishing that in July, too.

While this is going on, I’m working on a new full collection, which should be out in the first half of 2020.

So, with all this, and a couple of editing projects, along with a couple of new writers I’m helping out, things are pretty busy. Oh, yes – and then there’s the day job …

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.

Cherry Potts

is author of The Dowry Blade, a lesbian epic fantasy, and 2 collections of short stories, Mosaic of Air and Tales Told Before Cockcrow. She has had many stories (and one poem!) published in anthologies, magazines and on line, and her work has been performed (sometimes by actors) in London, Leeds, Leicester, Oxford, Cumbria, Bath and Hong Kong.

Cherry edits short story/poetry anthologies including Award Winning Weird Lies for Arachne Press, which she owns. She runs the literature & music festival Solstice Shorts and is visiting lecturer in Creative Writing at City, University of London.

The Interview

1. What inspired you to write poetry/flash fiction?

I was a horribly precocious child, telling stories before I could write, then ‘writing’ them in pictograms on the giant blackboard that took up a wall in our house. Not having a written language was hugely frustrating and I took to reading like a drink in a desert. I wrote my first novel at 12, and churned out poetry that was perfectly correct in its meter and rhyming structures but about absolutely nothing. It kept me amused when I ran out of library books to read. I write almost no poetry now, and have only ever had one poem published, but I know the real thing when I see it, and I publish lots of poets. Flash fiction wise, notwithstanding a mammoth epic fantasy novel, my first love is short form fiction

2. Who introduced you to poetry/ flash fiction?

My parents. My mum is a writer, so it was almost expected that I read, and write something. My dad introduced me to folk music and blues which taught me a huge amount about both the patterns you can make (with or without music) and the tiny amount of words needed to tell a story powerfully. I didn’t know it was flash at the time of course. I think I realised that some of what I was writing had a name when I came across it on twitter.

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

Hardly at all. Maybe because I’m opinionated? Maybe because it wasn’t how I was taught? Maybe because I don’t know them? I’ve found things I like but never feel dominated by them, just delighted that I enjoyed it. I’m a bit of a sucker for metaphysics. I love John Donne and Shakespeare and I enjoy William Blake in small doses. I think it’s contrarianism in poetry that gets me interested, and it was reading Sylvia Plath as a teenager that woke me up to what could really happen in poetry – I started reading women almost exclusively, so my canon is very female! I don’t have much time for 19^th Century poets apart from Emily Dickinson (or music either actually), it’s all either really old or fairly modern. For example I have discovered the Trobiaritz poets (another music link) of 12^th-13^th Century Languedoc on one hand, and I am publishing poets writing right now.

4. What is your daily writing routine?

I wish I had one. I have just embarked on a fortnightly routine. A friend and I get together on Wednesday mornings and write really hard – sometimes in silence, sometimes trying things out on each other. And we both go to the same monthly writers group which is mostly talk and feedback. If I manage anything else in between it’s a proper cause for celebration. I like to write in bed – the desk is for admin. Although if an idea has got its teeth in me I’ll write anywhere anytime – I once wrote almost nonstop for 24 hours – on the train, in a work meeting, park bench… Editing other people is very good for me – I think so much more before I commit to a sentence or a line.

5. What motivates you to write?

Ideas. An idea will slap me on the forehead and keep shouting at me till I get it on paper/screen, and then the real pleasure is in deciding how to shape it.

6. What is your work ethic?

I am constitutionally unsuited to work, so it’s lucky I don’t think of writing as work. It’s a total pleasure.

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

I am wary of influence. Occasionally I discover I’ve been too influenced, I’m a bit of a style sponge. What did I take most from what I read? The joy of words. The power of structure. The urge to always tell a story no matter how obliquely. The right to be angry and say so.

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

Temptation to just list some of the writers I publish- (Jennifer A McGowan, Sarah James, Elinor Brooks, Jeremy Dixon, Cathy Bryant, Math Jones, Ness Owen, Jane Aldous, Emma Lee, Lisa Kelly, Michelle Penn, Laila Sumpton…) All mainly for wit, compassion and panache, but there are others!

Kate Foley: she has such a wicked wit, and can turn from laugh to anger to sorrow on a comma. (I set up Arachne in the hope I could convince her to let me publish some work. Yes! I did! Yes, I have: The Don’t Touch Garden and A Gift of Rivers)

Jay Bernard: spectacularly vivid poetry, and brilliant live too, had me on the edge of my seat at the Keats festival once. Jay, if you read this, I still want to publish you!

I loved Julia Bird’s Now You Can Look. It’s a mistress-piece of storytelling and style.

9. Why do you write, as opposed to doing anything else?

I do lots of somethings else, but all connected to writing, (publishing, editing, typesetting, teaching, singing…) which keeps my brain alert for material and honed for the job at hand. After I was made redundant for the second time in 5 years I thought ‘come on Cherry, what do you really want to do, because this isn’t working’. So I set up Arachne Press, which rather eats my time, but I enjoy it!

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

Read everything you can get your hands on in order to learn what captivates you and how to achieve it. Keep your ears and eyes open and engage with the world so that you find something you want to write about. Words are lovely in their own right, but they are there for a reason, to communicate. As soon as something excites you enough that you find it hard to think about anything else, start. Try. Try harder. Scream in frustration and throw things away. Start again. Share. Start again. Share. Start again. Continue.

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

My most recent publication was The Real McCoy in We/She Arachne’s Liars’ League women’s anthology last August. It’s about a real mermaid in a fairground side show. There’s a bit of a theme going there at the moment as I’m writing a novel(la) called The Bog Mermaid. The indecisive brackets are because it is very short, and might work shorter still. The first draft is almost finished. It might even be a novel(la) in flash – each section is well under 2000 words, and many are much shorter, and it’s deliberately quite disjointed, but makes up a whole story (two actually) by the time it’s threaded together. It’s about two families living in the same house fifty years apart 1926/76 and how the lives and decisions of the first family keep touching the later one.

And I’ve just had a Selkie themed story, Fish-fish, chosen to be read at Liars’ League London on February 12^th. I may stop writing about sea creatures and using them as metaphors sometime.

 

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.

Dave Pitt

is a Writer and Performance Poet.
Theatre and Performance

• Co-writer / co-director and co-performer of “Poets, Prattlers and Pandemonialists” – Shows in around the UK including a run at The Edinburgh Fringe in August 2017.
• Co-MC of Poetry Slams in Wolverhampton, Shrewsbury and Audlem.
• Co-MC of Yes we Cant poetry night in Walsall.
• There is None Who Does Good (Writer) – Production by Arena Theatre (December 2017)
• Bert (Writer) – Productions by Arena Theatre (February 2016) and Holly Bush Arts Group (August 2016 & March 2017)
• Self Contained Rhythmic Narratives (Writer and Performer) – Produced by Arena Theatre.
• Smoking Cessation Project (Writer) – An Invisible Theatre piece written and devised in conjunction with Gazebo Theatre. September / October 2015 & September / October 2016
• Curator and MC of Eclectic Poetry Pagoda – June 2017.
• Winner of Wolverhampton Story Slam – Oct 2016
• Winner of Wolf Pack award for 14/48 Wolverhampton. June 2015
• Umpumi – Shortlisted for funding award. 2010.
• Adaptation of The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury – Co-Director / Adaptation. 2005.
• Hundreds of gigs across the country.
• Co-Founder of the successful Anarchy Comedy Club which ran in Willenhall between 2012 and 2015.

Publications

• Poetry is Jazz. This is Punk Rock. Poetry Collection.
• Starting Out in Stand-Up or Why Stand-Up Comedy Saved my Life and Why it Could Save Yours published in 2013. Peaked at No. 3 in the Amazon charts. and is currently rated 4.6 / 5.0.
• Short Stories published in a variety of publications and websites.
• Articles published on platforms such as Giggle Beats, WV11.co.uk, Worcestershire Film Festival and by GMB Trade Union.

Mentoring and Workshops

• • Workshops on the performance aspect of performance poetry.

  • Improving the writing and communication skills of young people via Talent Match. A voluntary engagement programme which acts as a platform to increase optimism, motivation and confidence.

Film

• Writer of “You Must Go On”. Neverwhere Media Productions.
• Writer / Director of “Visitor” shown at festivals across the country. Sound as a Pound Films.
• Writer / Director of drama pieces in “Battered Britain” a documentary shown on Channel 4. Evans Woolfe Productions.

The Interview

1.       When and why did you start writing poetry?

I’ve always written because it’s always felt like a form of expression I can do and enjoy. I dabbled for years. And it was literally dabbling. I mainly wrote screenplays and short films but also acted, directed and generally got involved in creative things.

My school was terrible and seemed to suck creativity out of us. I think part of the reason I continued being creative was it felt like being creative was rebelling against my school. However, I hated poetry because I was just exposed to dead white guys who I couldn’t relate to. The closest I got to poetry was song lyrics and hip hop. And I remember fastidiously pouring over song lyrics, pulling out hidden meanings. And back in the day I remember seeing people like Craig Charles or John Cooper Clarke occasionally appear on TV and thinking, “That’s cool.” But in those pre-Internet days it just seemed other worldly.

On a creative level, deep down, I wanted to do stand up comedy but I didn’t have the nerve. I became disillusioned with film making because I was spending so much energy just trying to get people into a room to make a film that by the time I managed it I was knackered.

So I started out by doing storytelling because it just needed me and it was just a way to try to build up the nerve to do stand up. Eventually, in 2010, I did stand up. I tottered along for a while but it dawned on me that stand-up had run it’s course when I had a good gig and walked off stage thinking, “Meh”. The audience laughed in all the right spots, I’d got praise for the set but I had walked off stage thinking, “Meh.”

I had also explored my mental health in stand up and was trying to write new material. The trouble was I felt I was always chasing the joke. And I didn’t want to. All this combined made me quit stand up. I just wasn’t getting anything out of it anymore. The piece I was working on became a play, “Bert” and I started doing story telling again.

At these gigs I’d see some poets perform. I remember seeing Emma Purshouse years before when I was doing storytelling and just thinking, “Wow. She’s good.” But it was so good it felt like it was a million miles away from where I could ever be.

Then, one night, in a fit of anger at some perceived injustice on my drive to Birmingham, I wrote a poem right before I went on stage to do some storytelling. I have no idea why. I delivered it and it went well.

Within 6 months I was doing 10 minute poetry sets. Then it all kind of exploded.

Poetry felt like it brought everything together. I could tell stories, I could perform, I could make people laugh but I could also make them think.

Strewth I wrote a bit there, didn’t I? Does this count towards my daily word count?

2. When you fully entered the poetry scene how aware are and were you of the dominating presence of older poets traditional and contemporary?

I wasn’t. This must sound awful to someone who has spent their lives reading, writing and performing poetry but it’s true. I wasn’t completely ignorant. I could tell you about Owen, Poe, Shakespeare and more modern poets like John Cooper Clarke, Scroobius Pip and Ian McMillan but I was by no means an expert in any of them and I’m still not.

I started a uni course and we had a poetry module there but it was all old dead Greek guys. I enjoyed it a lot but the language was so removed from what I was writing that I didn’t give it a second thought. In fact, I think I drew more theatrically from it than poetically.

One of the great things about being in Poets, Prattlers and Pandemonialists with Emma Purshouse and Steve Pottinger is it helps me fill these gaps. Emma in particular has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of poetry. She will very often recommend poets and collections for me to try and she’s never wrong.

But in a way I think the ignorance helped me in those early few months of writing and performing poetry. As I said I have mental health problems. I’m also working class and suffer from imposter syndrome and a lack of self esteem. These are horrid thing to combine with an innate knowledge of a subject. You have a lack of belief in your own voice so try to copy others. If I’d come into poetry knowing a load about poets I’d have tried to be them. The ignorance meant I had to be myself.

What then happened as I got more knowledge (and I’m still very much a beginner in poets and poetic forms) I tried to imitate others. Again, having Emma and Steve around helped so much because they’re smart enough to knock that stuff out of me without belittling me. I remember a stand up comedian once saying to me, “When there is a brilliant stand up comedian it ruins the circuit for the next 15 years because everyone tries to be that comic.” And he was right. I remember so many comedians (myself included) trying to be Stewart Lee.

The best advice I can give anyone is don’t try to be someone else. They’re better at it than you are. But you are the best you this planet has.

I wish someone had said that to me 30 years ago and I scream it into the face of any new creative I meet. BE YOU!!!!

3. What is your daily writing routine?

I have a full time job which I have to do to pay the bills. As a consequence that takes my focus. This can sometimes mean I work and then when I get home I’m too tired to write. That’s frustrating but I have to accept it.

If I have energy I will do “something” each day. What that is depends what’s going on. I have a strong work ethic but I’m aware I can burn myself out. I need to schedule breathing room and a bit of me time. A lesson I’m only really starting to learn now.

Even tight deadlines can benefit from a bit of breathing room. It’s important to me that I’m not just day job, writing, day job, writing.

I have a little box room at home and my wife is also a creative (painting, drawing, sculpture). This means we’re not in competition with each other but both understand the hoovering hasn’t got to be done EVERY day. We give each other space to be creative.

So most nights I will disappear for some time into my little den and something creative happens in there. It might just be a few notes and a few laps on Gran Turismo on the PS4. Or it could be a few thousand words. It’s very much a “vibe” thing. I will write poetry, plays or fiction. Depending what idea is floating around, or what I’ve been put on a deadline to do, depends on the focus. Sometimes projects will be started and left for months others will pour out almost fully formed.

But I also think part of the writing process is reading and observing. I always make sure I read something every day. Even if it’s a page of a novel in bed and a news article or three. And I’ve always got my eyes open for something. And it always tends to be the little details you spot which you can use more than the big stuff.

4. What motivates you to write?
When I have the energy you mean? I have to do it. Some writers say writing is like giving birth. I don’t think that at all. I feel most of my writing is about discovering a Bot Fly Lava under your skin. You’re too scared to do anything about it for a while but then you can hear the maggots crawling around and eating you from the inside out so you have to get a knife and stab your own neck and rip the grubs out.
It’s cheesy to say it’s cathartic but it is. Of course you’ll feel better when you’ve got rid of a parasite. When I have a week like just where I’ve had to work so hard at work that I’ve been too tired to write I get tetchy and down.
I use my writing to explore ideas. I have lots of conversations written which is basically the two viewpoints in my head arguing the toss.
But sometimes I’m forced to write. Doing 52 last year forced a poem a week out of me. But even then, I dug deep and ripped maggots from under my skin.
I suppose you could say, “I hate written. I adore having written.”

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

Like a lot of kids who read back then there was a lot of horror. Stephen King, Shaun Hutson, James Herbert that sort of thing. It seemed a bit risky and adult. Ironically I’ve never really written a horror and when I have touched on the genre it’s been more influenced by movies than books.

I also remember reading “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” about a million times. This gave me a sense of wonder and magic. A feel for world’s other than this one. That still influences me now.

Weirdly I think a big influence was a book called Empty World by John Christopher. I’ve no doubt if I were to read it now I’d hate it but back then, as a kid, it really appealed. It was about a kid who survives a plague which wipes out most of humanity. He meets the odd survivor along the way but the thing I remember most is the ending. The character has a big fight with someone else and he has a chance to walk away but he brings the person back into his life. It was a weird ending which to this day I never understood but it kept me thinking. I still write endings now which leave things in the air. Sometimes the questions are more important than the answers. Empty World taught me that.

6. Whom of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

Cormac McCarthy just blows me away. I maintain he’s the greatest living writer. Yes it’s dark but the language is beautiful. The problem is it’s so good I tend to spend a hour or two thinking, “I just can’t write. I’m useless.”

I also love Alan Moore. I got into comics quite late and Moore was my way in. His writing is superb and full of subtext but I’m also new to the medium so I find I’m learning something new about writing and comics everytime I read a book of his.

But it’s not just literature. I adore Josie Long’s work both as a comedian and screen writer. Her work is full of empathy and helps remind you there is good in everyone but it never feels twee. People think writing comedy is a throw away exercise but if you think that, try it. It’s one of the hardest things to do and doing it as a woman is even harder. The industry is so set up against anyone not white and male it’s unbelievable. Long’s work shatters the glass ceiling and makes me laugh like a drain.

And you know what… she’s going to kill me if she reads this but Emma Purshouse. I’ve held her on a pedestal for years and now I’m working alongside her. I still have to pinch myself. Her writing is unbelievably good and a completely unique voice. I can feel her dragging me along and I’m a better writer, poet and performer because I’m swimming in her wake.

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

If you want to make a living out of try to ensure one of your parents is a writer.

It’s cynical but we’re not living in a meritocracy. We live in a world powered by nepotism. When millions of people want to be writers, when agents and publishers are getting thousands of manuscripts and when you can stumble into any coffee shop and find the nearest Apple Mac and find a novel in the works then how do you lift yourself above the noise? People who know others in the industry will always get to the front of the queue.

It’s not impossible but it’s a lot more difficult if you don’t have someone who can give you the nudge in the right direction.

But it’s not just about making a living out of it. If you want to write then… write. If you want to perform… perform. There is enough opportunities for people to do that but making money is a lot tougher.

To give yourself the best chance you have to write and read a lot. And find people you can share work with. It makes you a better writer to produce a lot and get good constructive feedback.

8. Tell me about the writing projects your involved in at the moment.

I wrote a one man show last year and I’m performing it for the first time in April. The thing is the script was always a placeholder. It’s about the power of stories and therefore filled with stories. They now have to jump off the page and out my mouth. And while this sounds weird, this jump from page to performance is a rewrite. That is taking up a lot of time.

Last year me, Emma and Steve did 52 which involved us writing a poem a week all year. We did it and enjoyed it so this year we’re doing it again. But this time, we’re writing our own prompts as well.

The three of us are about to go on our yearly writing retreat. It’s definitely not a holiday and pure coincidence it happens at the same time as the Six Nations and the Wolves Newcastle game. We’re more than likely going to write a new show there. But I’m also scrabbling though notebooks finding old ideas which I’ve forgotten about. I know something will come out while I’m there.