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.

Matthew M. C. Smith

is a Welsh poet from Swansea. He is published in Icefloe Press, Anti-Heroin Chic, Seventh Quarry, Wellington Street Review and Back Story. He is the editor of Black Bough poetry. Twitter: @MatthewMCSmith @BlackBoughpoems FB: MattMCSmith ‘BlackBoughpoetry’
‘Origin: 21 Poems’ is on Amazon KDP and is £7.00

1. When and why did you start writing?

I started writing quite intensely as a teenager in my attic bedroom. I had views over the Swansea valley (I miss the sunsets) and the hills around my community. I used to look up at Drummau Mountain, where there are farms, woodland and traces of Neolithic culture. I’ve written about this in a piece called ‘Teithio / Journeys’, for Icefloe Press. And at the edge of the city, there were some starry nights beyond the glow. I listened to The Doors on repeat and went through notebook after notebook writing aphoristic poems. I’m sure a lot of poets start with Jim Morrison – ‘ghosts crowd the young child’s fragile eggshell mind’.

Then there was a gap. I wrote bits and pieces in my 20s and 30s, but I had a lot of other things I was into, including academic writing while I did a PhD, a lot of fad hobbies after this and then work commitments and parenthood became all-consuming (but ultimately rewarding, of course). After almost 25 years, I had a couple of drawerfuls of poems, gathering dust.

2. What else were you influenced by in your early reading?

As I mention, The Doors and Jim Morrison were key influences on my writing and some of their lyrics from ‘The End’, ‘Celebration of the Lizard’ and ‘Moonlight Drive’ are chillingly elemental. This led to reading Dylan Thomas, Emily Dickinson, Arthur Rimbaud, the Symbolists, T.S. Eliot and R.S. Thomas. Later, a lot of post-war American and Welsh poets.

I remember reading ‘The Force that through the Green Fuse’ at the age of 15 and being struck by the pulsing rhythms and the vivid choice of words. How Dylan Thomas directly translated nature into language was striking and ingenious. I love some of Emily Dickinson’s work. Much of her work is the product of an isolated imagination, estranged from too many influences.

My first poet is R.S. Thomas – bleak, harsh, existential poetry. I love ‘Counterpoint’ and ‘No Truce with the Furies’. T.S. Eliot’s aphoristic, fragmented modernist poetry reminds me to look outside the self and I love the polyphony in his writing. Wallace Stevens has real style and wit and although I can’t write like him and don’t aspire to, I’d love to have written ‘Sunday Morning’. All the American poets I studied at Swansea Uni like the imagists, Gary Snyder, Ginsberg, Levertov, Rich – they’re poets I go back to.

I wrestle with my favourite. Sometimes the solemn, haunting ghost of Alun Lewis drifts into my mind and the austere, uncompromising voice of R.S. Thomas fades. Then Alun Lewis gets barged out of the way by the beery, brilliant, bardic, Dylan Thomas.

3. When did you first publish your poetry?

Everyone approaching 40 needs a mid-life crisis. At the age of 39, I came up with a bucket list, of which writing a poetry book was one. In my 20s and 30s, I lost interest in writing and had very little idea about literary presses, or submitting. I decided to spend a year collating a poetry collection and wanted a quick and easy self-publishing experience before my 40th birthday. I worked hard for 12 months, burning the midnight oil and went with Amazon KDP, self-publishing ‘Origin: 21 Poems’. This was a real catalyst to learn the craft, send other work off, go to open mic evenings, locally, and start a Twitter profile. It’s been a whirlwind experience in the past year 18 months as I’ve gone from being a guy at a desk with no clue and no real links with any poets, to now being involved in the poetry community locally and globally. It’s been nice to see good sales of my self-published book and a second edition of the collection, which is refined and tweaked. I was grateful to have the fresh and expert eyes of Kyla Houbolt, Ankh Spice and Laura Wainwright look over it.

4. You dedicated ‘Origin: 21 Poems’ to your father and two of your teachers, a friend, as well as your family.

Yes, my father died of cancer in 2012. I spent the last ten nights of his life in a fold-down bed next to him in a hospice. I have written about this in the poem ‘Dying King’, which is published with Anti-Heroin Chic. Like so many people, I find poetry a way to commemorate him and let his essence live on, despite being grief-stricken. I’ve written a lot of poems about him and I hope many would relate to the sense of loss and the attempt to make something of him – his soul – live on in words.

I also dedicated the book to Huw Pudner – an inspirational teacher at primary school. He helped me deal with having a stutter and gave his pupils an enriched education. He attends open mics now and likes my book, thankfully. He features in my Icefloe Press piece, which is about a school trip he led across Drummau mountain, where he opened up the local countryside to us despite the perils of aggressive farmers and dogs. Then there was Prof. M. Wynn Thomas of Swansea University; an expert on Welsh Writing, American poetry and Walt Whitman. An absolute guru and character. I did a PhD with him on Robert Graves and Wales, finishing in 2006. What a mind. No-one who meets Wynn forgets him.
I must mention my best friend, Michael. Although we only see each other a few times a year, due to distance, he always asks me how my poetry is and had enthusiasm for it when we were teenagers. He’s a talented writer himself and an Assistant Professor of Psychology. I’m proud of what he’s achieved since school. He’s reminded me many times over the years that I should write and I’m grateful for that.

My family always inspire me and I have written various poems about them although I’m quite private so I tend to avoid discussing them in any detail.

5. You mentioned stuttering. Does this still affect you and do you enjoy reading your work in public?

My father stammered and my maternal grandfather stammered. I had no chance. I started when I was 6 years old. The stammer and I waged a long war against each other and it’s been interesting. I’m fine most of the time and do poetry readings and tough jobs to challenge myself. In a strange way, I quite like the remnants of the stammer now. Like an old friend you can’t quite shake off but can ignore most of the time. Reading on the circuit is exciting but everyone gets a bit nervous. It makes me pause more and I’ve had a lot of compliments about how I read so performance has given me an exaggerated sense that I can do almost anything! I’ve kind of buried the stammer now but I think it gave me an interest in sound and language. I’ll write about it one day and exorcise a few more demons! Most people would have no idea I’ve had a speech problem.

6. How would you describe your poetry?

Hard question. I write about people, nature, transcendence, the power of myth, layers of time and cosmology. I love mysticism and attempting to use language to physically and mentally affect people. I’m also interested in shamanism and different ideas about the power of the imagination. Patrick Jones said my writing is like Seamus Heaney and Gillian Clarke. Prof. Daniel G Williams said Dylan Thomas, David Jones and Vernon Watkins. I’m taking those comparisons any day.

7. What are you working on?

I’m working on my second collection and have poems out to submission. Last year, I was writing cosmological poems but I’ve gone back into the earthly past now. I’m writing deep time poems inspired by Robert Macfarlane’s ‘Underland’ and doing my own research into ancient and neolithic cultures. I’ve done a bit of exploration of Gower, places around Wales and the West Country and this finds its way into my writing. I have irons in several fires, to use an irritating but apt metaphor, and am editing Black Bough poetry, my micropoetry journal, again soon. I’m looking forward to working with Jack Bedell, Ankh Spice and Laura Wainwright, as well as a mystery artist.

I’m also mentoring/ assisting several poets. Last year, I offered assistance with several poets in editing chapbooks – this was fun and a great learning experience.

8. What will you be working on in future?

My second and third collections, which have distinct themes. I have a lot of poems to choose from and need to put in a lot of shifts to edit, refine and collate. This will involve a lot of work but I’m hoping to complete my second one this year. I also want to experiment more with prose poetry as I’ve really enjoyed and been tested by this type of writing but I get a sense of freedom from it outside some of the constraints of poetry. I’d like to guest edit another writing publication as there are so many cool journals out there and continue to work with a range of artists and writers. I’m looking to record some of my work.

I should enter competitions more and increase my submissions. But it’s important to pace yourself and get your work out when it really has been worked over.

9. Black Bough is a really successful venture. What motivated you to start an online poetry publication?

On Twitter, I noticed a lot of poets complaining about rejections and frustrated about long waits to hear anything. I also noticed that it was hard to read people’s work without having to spend a lot of money on journals all the time so I started a free publication anyone can access and submit to. I’ve since learned that there are a lot of journals out there that are free. I had no concept of how popular it would be and the quality of work that would come in. I have worked with amazing people in the past year and getting Robert Macfarlane’s blessing to do an ‘Underland’-inspired poetry edition is as good as it gets.
There have been six editions of Black Bough and I have great memories of all the people I have worked with. In 2020, I’m looking forward to nominations of poets for ‘Best of the Net’ and the Pushcart Prize and I hope I can do this for at least a few years then I may go on to something else. I’m a restless person.

Thanks for this opportunity, Paul.

The Soft Fall of Midnight

I know the soft fall of midnight:
the film of dew on dark buds’ lips

a scent of lavender pressed underfoot
the celestial stream in the shallow brook

the pulsing throb of turning carp
in slick pool below willows’ dark

the fox’s tread and backward stare
the owl’s descent in the thicket’s air

hear the hush of shrouded hills
a quickening wind in star-filled fields

a curve of dawn in eastern light
drink the bitter wine of night

(first published in Other Terrain: Dec, 2019)

Dying King

I am with you. I am always with you.

You pulse with the click of the drive.
The dying king.

I press your paper-thin
shroud of skin, as thumbs curl

over balsa bones, ridges royal.
My eyes probe famine’s faultlines,

scan this lucent husk,
your twilight mask.

Under your arm,
now thin, translucent, I once slept,

sheltered from terrors in the night.
Now, I keep watch.

How did it come
to this?

Morphine dulls your silent ward. It keeps you
from fires in the fields,

from the sibilant hiss of the underworld,
the gaping maw of night.

We are skin, my dark
follows your dark.

*

Above tides, I feel winds of unconquerable spirit.
I stand at the edge, choking with loss.

(first published by Anti-Heroin Chic: ‘Grief issue’, Nov. 2019)

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.

Phoebe Wagner

is a poet and theatre-maker from London. She studied at Rose Bruford College on the European Theatre Arts course. She is part of Barbican Young Poets and Living House Theatre. Her debut pamphlet ‘The Body You’re In’ is out now with Bad Betty Press. Her work explores the fierceness of vulnerability and the politics in the personal.

Links:

www.phoebewagner.com

twitter.com/phoebewagnerr

The Interview

1. What inspired you to write poetry?

The first thing was that being a poet allowed me to notice things and explore them in this world where it didn’t have to all be linear or make sense. There was a power and ownership of my own voice that by writing it down I felt I was taking. I think that feeling of power also came from the process of performing – that these words were for the audience to take what they need from. I was going to poetry nights like BoxedIn and Chill Pill in London and came away emotional and feeling like I was finding community.

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

I was lucky enough to be in a workshop run by Deanna Rodger at college on performance poetry. I remember putting my name down thinking ‘What is that?’. She got us to explore the space and then from that put words on outlines of our bodies and then choose one of those words to write about. Before I read the GSCE AQA English anthology and felt like I didn’t understand it and therefore the whole of poetry. Deanna proved me wrong: in poetry I could feel what was around me and pull it apart and work it out in my writing.

I wrote my first poem about my Abuela (Spanish for Grandma) who was forgetting everything. I just remember the feeling of coming home to my Mum and having written that poem – it was like a focus and a cleansing and an excitement all at once. More than anything I think it was I knew I would write poems from then on. I would spend hours on Youtube watching Youtube videos of spoken word poets in the US and UK like Alyssia Harris from The Strivers Row, Kate Tempest, Raymond Antrobus, Dean Atta, Sean Mahoney and so many more. It allowed me to open a new part of my brain and my emotional capacity sat in front of those poets online and at gigs. I still well up hearing people perform and saying their own words on stage. There’s a power in that act of trying to articulate something that feels invisible. But then I always feel like I’m being re-introduced to poetry with every poet I encounter.

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

‘Thinking about it, starting out, I didn’t think many people in the world had decided to be poets.The GSCE AQA Anthology almost didn’t inspire me at all. It was when I started going to gigs that I saw the older poets that were gigging and realised they were paving the way. Poets like Selena Godden and Mr G who were part of the canon that I feel now has been hidden. The poets that were bringing poetry out of the elitist spaces into bars and clubs. The poets that were in the AQA Anthology were the old dead white people that had set the rules that the current poetry community were breaking. ‘

4. What is your daily writing routine?

As I work part time as a teaching assistant at a Special Educational Needs school I don’t get to write everyday because the work can be very emotionally and physically exhausting. You are still a writer even when you’re not writing because you need time to find more ink. I think it is important to have a practice or things to help you get started writing and to edit but to herald the time frame of ‘daily’ as a target to hit hasn’t always worked for me. It’s made me feel anxious where I don’t need to be. It plays into that capitalist idea that more things is better. Even when we discuss our favourite poets we won’t necessarily agree, so to even pinpoint what ‘better’ is not solid, but fluid.

I have done things like NaPoWriMo which has worked for me and may write multiple days in a row but this is not the marker of my artistry. I think what I focus on in my practice is to find ways to access what I am surrounded by and what is inside of me. I like to utilise the city spaces, I will write on the bus or tube to and from work and free write rather than try and craft something perfect on the first write. I will use forms of texts I write or talk to myself into my voice notes and use that to create a poem. Or call that thing you’re not

sure of its poetryness a poem. I think that is powerful, when you can say that is a poem. That is poetic and I don’t have to explain. I think writing doesn’t always happen when pen is hitting the paper and I work to redefine what writing is.

I like to use my body to find poems too – I find moving unlocks something in my brain that stops me from being an editor. Having come from a physical theatre training and loving practices like contact improvisation and yoga and done lots of dance as a kid, there’s a language of the body that works together with words that is part of poetics. Just watch a poet read or perform and there body is there making you feel something before they even open their mouth.

5. What motivates you to write?

People. Images. Memories. Feelings. Mainly people. All the same things as the others who write. It’s never from the same space and I think the search for the reason you wrote something is what motivates me to keep writing. That I will never fully figure it out but it will feel less messy even in its chaos.

6. What is your work ethic?

Still trying to work that out.

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

I’m not sure, but I know they leave feelings and they are my roots. They’ve nourished me but I’m not sure which branch it has helped grow.

I read the Harry Potter books when I was 4 up until I was 10, every night. I think those books had a huge impact on how I see the world but I can’t pinpoint how.

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

There are so many that make art and have inspired me I will be here for years but I can go by what I just finished reading. ‘Motherhood’ by Sheila Heti is structured by the flipping of coins to answer as yes and no to her questions and this becomes a structure and a conversation she has that leads her through the book. It explores how women grapple with the notion of having children, what it meant for our mothers, what it can mean for us and it questions why we live. Really philosophical but some passages had me crying and laughing and folding down pages and underlining.

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

Because it can happen anywhere at anytime and it is magical to turn the invisible or subjective into an object or an experience.

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

Write. Have you written words before? Have you said things before? Then you are one!  You do you. Do it how you want. Don’t do what people tell you to, just listen to them and see what sticks. Get frustrated at not knowing what to do or what you’re doing or how to do it. That is productive. Talk to people, tell them what you don’t understand and they might know something or say something that you’ll remember when you’re frustrated. Go for a walk. Look at the ceiling or the sky or the people or smell your kitchen. What do you see? HOW DO YOU FEEL?  Stop making sense. Ask questions about what you’re reading to other people.

Ask someone to read what you’ve written and tell you what questions they want to ask it. Find other writers and learn how they start writing.

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

In the process of trying to do a show somewhere, something devised and about fast fashion. It’s really early days.

I’m a Barbican Young Poet so am working on something for the anthology and showcase that will come our next year. Just generally applying for things but I am so proud of my pamphlet and am in wonder and how it’s living out there in the world.

12. What inspired you to write “The Body You’re In”?

I applied to Bad Betty Press’ anthology ’The Dizziness of Freedom’ in 2018 (an incredible anthology you must read. now.) and they approached me to say that I didn’t get into the anthology but asked if I wanted to publish a pamphlet. I then began looking over the work I was writing at the time and chose the work that was moving me. When I’m putting together a body of work I think that’s the inspiration I start with, looking at what I wanted to deepen. A lot of those poems looked at womanhood and identity. I was inspired throughout the process by people from working in an SEN school, to going on holiday with my Mum, getting therapy, a show I saw at the Edinburgh fringe, the problematic things people said about being bi, things people I barely knew said on Facebook, panic, feeling emotionally prodded and crammed into my own body sometimes. The poets that helped my edit ’The Body You’re In’ inspired me: Jake and Amy that run Bad Betty had a way of looking at my work where they pointed at what they believed in and that pushed me to follow my gut which I think guides more connected writing. Gabriel Akamo, a poet I really admire, helped me look at the poems I had from a distance, we thought about what I thought each poem was in a word. He inspired me by encouraging me to step back and look at my poems as broad strokes. Also reading inspired me. Some of my favourite writing at the time was ‘Odes’ by Sharon Olds, ‘Playtime’ by Andrew McMillan, ‘If They Come For Us’ by Fatimah Asghar, ‘Don’t Call Us Dead’ by Danez Smith, ’The Argonauts’ by Maggie Nelson, ’The Perseverance’ by Raymond Antrobus and ‘In These Days of Prohibition’ by Caroline Bird. Also the other authors being published through Bad Betty Press: Gboyega Odubanjo’s ‘While I Yet Live’ and Antonia Jade King’s ’She Too Is A Sailor’.

13. Why were “ ‘Odes’ by Sharon Olds, ‘Playtime’ by Andrew McMillan, ‘If They Come For Us’ by Fatimah Asghar, ‘Don’t Call Us Dead’ by Danez Smith, ’The Argonauts’ by Maggie Nelson, ’The Perseverance’ by Raymond Antrobus and ‘In These Days of Prohibition’ by Caroline Bird. Also the other authors being published through Bad Betty Press: Gboyega Odubanjo’s ‘While I Yet Live’ and Antonia Jade King’s ’She Too Is A Sailor’ “ some of your favourite writing at the time?

I think all of these books mainly because I was looking at form and all these books were really playful and radiated from their forms. Their writing felt harrowing and relevant and honest which kept me remembering and going back to poems. I think because I was also exploring gender and sexuality a lot in my writing these books became a fuel for my writing and helped me delve deeper. I think Gboyega and Antonia’s books were also an inspiration for showing me what publishing through Bad Betty can do. They were so brave and honest and their writing felt so razor sharp I couldn’t stop going back to their writing and thinking they have done this so now what can I do?

14. Why is it important to be playful with form?

When you play with form you push where it is and allow it to develop into something else. Also, taking form seriously can bog down what your intention is with a poem. Sometimes when I’ve been really set in where a poem is at at that moment it has stopped me from finding the play in it. There is always things to poke at. Being playful with something allows you to remove your ego. When you’re being precious with the rules you’ve set out when writing a poem – the words you’ve chosen, the lineation, the rhythm, it can sometimes lose its life. I think trying to really carefully listen to what the poem wants to do allows the playfulness to come. This might be a be a bit vague and I’m kind of sure and unsure about what I’ve said here.