Q:1. How did you decide on what poems to send?

I have been fascinated by wildness and domesticity all my writing life. How we create a sense of wildness in relandscaping industrial areas, how we make it palatable, d8sconnected from the sense of danger.

Also, how we can challenge expectations by reversing the way we sense things. It was the one chosen by Alan, who honoured and humbled me by requesting I contribute.

Q:2. What poetic form did it take, and why?

Imagistic free verse. Intrigued by Matthew and The Black Bough who revived an emphasis on memorable images. Those that after hearing or reading surprise and delight us so much we take them home with us, ignited once more.

Q:3. How did you use the whiteness of the page in your poem?

To give the reader pause to give the reader space to breathe air into the words to let the poem breathe to punctuate the spoken word

Q:4. How did you decide on the title of your poem?

I used the first few words at the beginning so the title flows into the poem. I used the colloquial “sup a well earned” to give an air of relaxation, of restfulness, of pause, of end of the working dayness, hopefully dislocated by “a pint of soil”.

Q:5. Imagery, or narrative. Which was more important to you in writing the poem?

It is imagistic and instructional. It tells the reader what to do, but the instruction is nonsensical from a normative point of view. Soil should be a liquid. It reverses expectation. Hopefully, engages the imagination. If my own words do not continually surprise me, then they won’t the reader. It could be apocalyptic, the earth swallowing us, as we have swallowed it. It could be the death of us.

Q:6. What do you think of where your poem is placed in the collection?

Superbly placed between a walk in salt marshes and the dispersal of seeds. Between two broad landscapes of words used to expand our sensory range, our topographical sensual vocabulary.

Q:7. Once they have read your poem what do you hope the reader will leave with?

Hopefully, it will ignite the reader’s own creativity and enable them to sense the world differently, if only for the briefest of moments.

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