Helen Laycock

is a Pushcart-nominated poet, recipient of the David St. John Thomas Award, nominee for the Dai Fry Award and recent winner of Black Bough Poetry’s Chapbook contest. Her poetry collections include ‘FRAME’, ‘BREATHE’, RAPTURE’, ‘13’, and most recently ‘ELEMENTAL’. ‘FRAME’ has featured as Book of the Month at the East Ridge Review and a forthcoming collection will be published by Black Bough.

Her writing has appeared at Reflex Fiction, the Ekphrastic Review, the Cabinet of Heed, Visual Verse, Onslaught Press, Folkheart Press, Prattlefog and Gravelrap, The Wombwell Rainbow, Poetry Roundabout, Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis, Paragraph Planet, Serious Flash Fiction, Flash Flood, The Best of CafeLit, The Beach Hut, Popshot, Lucent Dreaming, Full Moon and Foxglove, The Caterpillar, The Dirigible Balloon, Literary Revelations, Black Bough, The Storms Journal, Broken Spine Arts, Fevers of the Mind and will imminently appear at The Winged Moon.

Helen also writes children’s fiction and short stories for adults.

You can buy Elemental here: https://amzn.eu/d/7serHdU

The Interview

Q:1. How did you decide on the order of the poems in your book?

First of all, thank you, Paul, for inviting me to The Wombwell Interview to talk about my collection ‘ELEMENTAL’.

As the title suggests, the theme of the poetry is ‘The Elements’ – Air, Fire, Earth and Water.

I don’t know if there is generally a favoured order in naming these, but whenever I organise anything, be it written pieces, storage, or even shopping lists, I try to find some sort of logic. In the case of the themes in the book, I used spatial positioning as my logic, imagining Air in the highest position, coming down to Fire, grounding us with Earth, then taking us to the depths of Water. These make up the four main sections of the book.

As with all my collections, I introduce the change of themes with quotations which I feel allows breathing space and prepares the reader for a shift of focus.

‘Air’ opens with three poems about birds, from a dead bird to a caged bird to a free bird, so again, there is gradual change between their states which I think works better than poems so different that they jar against each other.

I then begin to draw attention to an increase of height with a poem about an aeroplane, which we imagine at around 30 000 feet. There is also reference to death in this piece (a true story, by the way!) which, perhaps, transcends physical measurement of height if we imagine the heavenward rising of souls.

The poetry that follows focuses on what is happening in the atmosphere and space.

With nowhere else to go, this completes the section on ‘Air’.

‘Fire’ has the fewest poems, each of which is independent of the others since they all consider fire in their own way. It encompasses light as a metaphor, the physical and mythical power of the volcano (one I wrote after visiting Mt. Teide), the damage wreaked and repercussions of recklessly starting a fire, and the sun as a maternal energy.

Originally, this collection was going to be entirely water-based, but I changed it to The Elements, just because I wanted to include a favourite poem of mine, ‘Hare’, which nestles in the middle of the ‘Earth’ section.

The organisation here begins with trees and forest, widening to include a greater view of the world before spotlighting living things in the wider sense – animals, then people. ‘Scaffolding’ wraps up this section, a poem which is set below the ground in the graveyard, so taking us right back to level ground before we dive into…

‘Water’, the final section, which ebbs from the tiny stream to the lake to the sea. I have a couple of favourite poems in this section, both about whales, each of which has such an interesting backstory. Finally, I bring it back to the swimming pool and people.

There is one last poem in the collection which I feel encompasses all the themes, so it stands alone as a final piece.

Q:2.How important is form in Elemental?

Without form, I believe, poetry is only doing half the job. It’s never just about words, is it? The space is so important as a playground for them, and even the placing of a word, or words, along a line can make for a more dynamic piece.

I had a great comment from Matthew MC Smith, editor of Black Bough, in relation to my poem ‘Stunned’ (the opening poem of the collection) when he hosted Top Tweet Tuesday a few weeks ago.

He said,

‘This is the real-happening stopped in sequence in words. Wham!

Some of the precision of this recalls the exactitude of *Wallace Stevens.

That’s a compliment for anyone.’

*Wallace Stevens won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1955. Significantly, he experimented with form and imagery in Modernist poetry. An interesting quote attributed to him is that modern poetry ‘has to be living’, and I think that clinches it. I love the form of his poem ‘Six Significant Landscapes’ where many lines consist of just two words, but how they shine when given that platform!

The word ‘STOP!’ is surrounded by white space in ‘Stunned’ which empowers it and gives it physical capacity within the poem.

Another example as to how form can earn its keep as a poetic device is in the poem ‘Whale Fall’. It is constructed to slowly pull the reader down to the bottom of the ocean along with the whale. The word ‘falling’ is repeated on consecutive lines to reproduce real life experience.

‘Sky Stir’ relies on sparsity of description as it endeavours to capture that frisson in the atmosphere just before a storm, the type that makes arm hair stand on end! I wanted the poem to suggest rather than tell the reader how to feel, so there are snatches of description.

The spaces are designed to reproduce the tension of anticipation.

Having a single word on a line draws attention to it, but also endows it with weight. Often, it is an important turning point in the poem. In ‘Conflagration’, for example, the scene that we witness is of youths starting a fire which quickly gets out of control. Once they are aware of the scope of their exploits, they ‘flee’. This word stands alone. It is the first major action in the poem, and the last we see of the group until we are told of their consciences in the aftermath. When a word hangs like that, we are invited to contemplate what might have subsequently happened. For a moment, we follow the boys until they vanish from sight…

There is a wonderful freedom to experimenting with form, and also not having to comply with the constriction of rhyme. In the poems ‘Hare’ and ‘Watergasp’, I was able to create a sense of movement by creating diagonal lines of text, which was exciting, and in ‘Abduct…Adopt… Relinquish… Abandon…’ where the sea is seen as a captor of sorts, a kind of wave.

I will tweak a poem over and over until I feel the form echoes as much of the content as it possibly can. It’s a brilliantly creative and fulfilling endeavour for me!

Q:3. What is the purpose of the quotes at the beginning of the book, and throughout?

Including quotes is something I have done with all my poetry collections, with the exception of ‘13’, so I would say it’s a bit like having a brand, or something which links the books in some way.

There are several reasons for this.

Unlike a short story collection, I think a poetry collection has visual aesthetics. When you flick through, you see shape. I once bought a book , aptly entitled ‘Wonderbook’ by Jeff Vandermeer, purely because of the pleasure of flicking through and seeing something unexpected inside. I like the idea of sprinkling pages of poetry with a different condiment which catches the eye.

Secondly, they add the dimension of approaching the subject using prose, albeit quite poetic. It’s a glimpse at the subject from a different, or shared, perspective. The opening quotation on the title page is from Frederick Douglass, one which I selected as a kind of general introduction to the book as it conveyed the power and the thrill of the elements:

‘It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.’

This intensity is what stirs poetry.

One more quotation follows this, before the contents page, as I felt it summed up how crucial the elements are to our wellbeing:

‘To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by an evening walk or an evening saunter…to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring – these are some of the rewards of  a simple life.’

~John Burroughs

I think this is what poetry aims to capture… the wonder in everything that surrounds us.

The quotations make a much more pleasing change of shift than a set of ellipses, or a blank page, so for each section, I have chosen one which gives a sense of anticipation as to what is about to follow. They also provide breathers, or stopping places, before the change of focus.

I particularly like the quotation by James Gates Percival which precedes ‘AIR’, as it alludes to both air and poetry; it would also have served the ‘WATER’ section well:

‘The world is full of poetry. The air is living with its spirit; and the waves dance to the music of its melodies, and sparkle in its brightness.’

I like how succinct Tom Robbins’ quotation is which introduces the ‘FIRE’ section –

‘Three of four elements are shared by all creatures, but fire was a gift to humans alone.’

but I was also drawn to the human aspect which runs through the poems in this section, particularly in how the gift of making fire is abused in the poem ‘Conflagration’.

‘EARTH’ begins with eleven simple words from Khalil Gibran, ‘Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet…’ . Such a wonderfully condensed statement which closely links humankind with the world and reinforces the concept of a symbiotic relationship. Love gives love.

The final quotation which introduces ‘WATER’ gives a sense of the mystery and scope of this amazing liquid which covers most of our planet. Underwater exploration is dangerous, yet enthralling. Another world exists beneath our feet. As Loren Eiseley points out: ‘If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.’

Q:4. How do you use the five human senses in ELEMENTAL?

I would like to say that all poets use all the senses, whatever the theme of a poem, but I don’t actually think that’s true. If they do, undoubtedly, it’s not in equal measures. Often the concentration is on probably just two, but don’t quote me on that!

My later writing has certainly been influenced by imagism (shoutout again to Matthew MC Smith), which I think tends to lean towards the visual aspect of metaphor.

As a poet, I feel like an observer, and, while that does immediately suggest ‘seeing’, if we give more thought to it, observation actually includes taking in as much as possible via any sense available.

How the senses influence my writing, however, is not a conscious acknowledgement of mine, so, to answer this question, I shall need to revisit the poems and come back to you…

Some time later…

The results are in!

SIGHT

As I suspected, visual detail takes the centre stage of every poem. Finding metaphor for what we see is probably the easiest pursuit. There is so much on hand to compare and contrast, whether it be by characteristics of shape, colour, material, etc.

SOUND

Sound is peppered throughout the poetry of ELEMENTAL, but, interestingly, I notice how much the lack of it is alluded to:

‘I cannot sing’, ‘shushed’, ‘The birds swallow/their last crotchet’, ‘silence teeters’, ‘the hawthorn sings/a silent spiderspin melody’, and the fox in ‘Winter Flame’ ‘pads silent on blunted ground’.

In fact, ‘Snow Song’ relies entirely on a lack of sound:

‘A duet

of snowfall

and silence.

The dawn sighs

into wakefulness.

Today,

colour is

too loud.’

There are degrees of sound, however. In considering walking through the forest upon coloured debris, in ‘On Binary Comment’, I write,

‘If leaves were bells,

our feet would make music’

Music is mentioned a few times:

The ‘music in the rafters’ in ‘Scaffolding’ has ‘long slipped through the cracks’ and the fish are described as the ‘cadence/of this ethereal music’ in ‘A Raucous Gull Shrieks Goodbye’.

Birdsong is occasionally mentioned as a backdrop, but ‘What the Gull Knows’ is actually quite  a noisy poem! ‘He screams of lurching masts whining with wind-ache’ and we hear ‘sailors’ snatched shouts’.

Twice in the book we hear a ‘shot’.

TOUCH

I tried to capture that frisson, the electrifying goosebumps we feel before a storm, in ‘Sky Stir’:

‘the pewter sky is

so

low

that it tingles my hair roots.

I feel it.’

There is gentle touching throughout the collection:

‘It is still warm/still soft’, about the dead bird in the opening poem. Other examples include: ‘tap the brittle shell’, ‘weightless fruit/ripe/in my palm’ and ‘cupping the stutter/of flame’, for example, but there’s also an element of unintentional brutality in ‘Collateral’, where, in talking about wildflowers, I write:

‘I must snap

the tender spines

of those on the periphery’

TASTE

The sea is described as ‘a pendulous pulse of over-seasoned stew’ in one poem, the implication being that the ingredients are the victims of shipwreck.

Taste is used, too, as a way of implying colour, as in ‘On Binary Comment’, where ‘sun syrup and rosewater’ describe the colour of painted treetops, for instance.

The poem ‘Foraging’ details the ingestion of psilocybin, the hallucinatory constituent of magic mushrooms, where a strange being ‘draped in leaf and mothwing’ ‘extracts soft tongues’ and ‘slips them/between my lips’.

‘Whale Fall’ perhaps dwells the most on the act of eating, herself becoming a banquet as she dies.

SMELL

Smell gets little airtime, although it is prevalent in ‘Man in the Woods’:

‘the pliant earth

which exudes a dank bouquet’

Other than the reference to ‘dirty breath’ in The Waking of the Dragon, there is little other acknowledgement of smell.

What an interesting exercise!

Q:5. Human impact on the natural world seems integral to the collection. How significant was this in putting it together?

When I wrote the poems, each one evolved separately without connection to any of the others, I thought… but when I decided on the ‘elements’ theme, these all seemed to fit. Unlike my collection FRAME, the focus of which is entirely ‘people’, the poems in ELEMENTAL don’t give them centre stage, although in several of the poems their presence is implied.

There are definitely poems which shine the light on human beings as perpetrators, such as ‘Jailbird’ where a caged bird is denied the freedom nature intended.

‘Stunned’ is an example of how we inhabit the place where nature could thrive. We build in its backyard, and, therefore, are in some way responsible for birds crashing into our windows, as happens in the poem.

We hear a ‘shot’ in ‘Hare’; it’s not aimed at the hare who, incidentally, escapes the danger of a human with a gun, but we can’t help wondering what was being shot at… undoubtedly an animal enjoying its habitat.

I mentioned, too, in an earlier response, the poem ‘Conflagration’. Humans are curious, perhaps moreso before adulthood, and this poem serves as an example of how they don’t always consider the outcome of their actions. They literally are playing with fire here, the consequences of which are devastating.

A poem which I found emotional to write was ‘Communion’. For as long as I have lived in my house, there has been a huge pine tree behind the boundary of my garden. One day, I heard a chainsaw and I looked out to see a man hanging from it. Horrified, I watched chunks of it fall out of my sight until there was nothing left.

I used one of the pieces of artwork – ‘Bent Cypress’ – from Karen Pierce Gonzalez, a wonderful artist, to write the poem ‘The Sadness of the Tree Spirit’. In the poem, are the lines:

‘as the forest thins

and thins…’

which we must attribute to man, and, significantly, because there is nowhere left for them to nest, just open space, the poem ends with the lines:

‘and the sound of

distant birdsong

is probably just

the wind’

The poem which perhaps demonstrates most what we do, and are doing, to our planet, is ‘Erasure’, the title of which implies both disappearance and forgiveness. Whatever we do to our planet, it

‘pledges a clean sheet:

no grudges

over and over again,

it gives us everything,

and is all

all

we have

beneath our feet.’

There are also poems included in this collection where nature has the upper hand, as in ‘Upright/Downfall’ which suggests a drowning has occurred, and again in ‘Abduct…Adopt…Relinquish…Abandon’ where the ocean gobbles up then spits out a human being. ‘The Waking of the Dragon’, too, shows the power harnessed by our planet, and the utter carnage it can unleash on humankind.

Q:6. How did you want to use white space in your book?

All poets acknowledge that the words are not the only constituent of a poem. It has shape and form, and a whole array of poetic devices which help squeeze out the intention and meaning.

A poem needs space to breathe… Lines that span a page edge to edge can come across as claustrophobic. This approach is not typical of the way I write poetry. I tend to clip my lines as though they are feathers, preventing escape or untoward roaming.

What can be effective is not only breaking lines for emphasis, but also leaving space between lines. These prolong the journey through the poem and provide a metaphorical bench for respite or contemplation.

I like very short poems to occupy the centre of the page, to be framed like a miniature work of art. I actually circled the untitled poem beginning ‘Muskmelon Moon’ to give it presence, whereas ‘Moon in Cloud’ quietly hovers on the page.

I don’t favour centring over left-side placing; the poem dictates that to me as I’m writing.

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

I hope that readers will

• take away a new experience of poetry, perhaps discovering language and metaphor never before encountered;
• feel an urge to revisit some, or all, of the poems, and perhaps remember a favourite in time to come;
• deepen their desire for poetry, and immerse themselves in the wealth of fabulous contemporary poetry that is out there;
• return to, and follow, my work and perhaps read what I have written on other themes.

Thank you so much for this opportunity, Paul. I have thoroughly enjoyed analysing the subconscious decisions in putting together this collection. The academic exercise gave my brain an excellent workout!

Here is a link to an earlier interview with Helen:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/09/27/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-helen-laycock/