Can you please tell Ink Pantry about your role as Staffordshire Poet Laureate?
As you would imagine, it’s an honorary position but the county appoint a Laureate formally, after an application and interview process. The brief is essentially to promote poetry within the County by giving readings, running workshops, etc, with existing poetry groups, and where possible to find new poetry readers and establish new poetry groups. There are also some commissioned poems to be written. Beyond that I’m free to do as little or as much as time allows.
I have chosen to devote a lot of my energy to supporting libraries. All libraries in the county are currently developing a ‘poetry space’ which can serve as a platform for local groups and schools to exhibit their writing as well as raising the profile of poetry generally as an art form.
We are also putting together at the moment The Staffordshire Poetry Collection (contemporary poems written about where people live) which will be exhibited around the County.
You ran residential poetry courses for sixth formers in Staffordshire, working with Carol Ann Duffy, Adrian Henry, and Linda France. What advice would you give to writers who are trying out poetry for the first time? How do you inspire people?
I don’t think there is one single piece of advice you can give, and I know mine is far from original, but I think the most important thing for a ‘beginner’ is not to be too ambitious in the early stages. Each person should be free to write what the need to write about personally, and then write something which satisfies themselves first and foremost. If it works for them, that’s the most important thing. There should be a joy in writing so it’s important not to make it a test and try to satisfy other people.
I also advise people to write in the early stages about what they know, from personal experience, whether that’s their job, their love life, domestic details, whatever. In doing so they will begin to ask questions and examine their lives, which for me is the first stage in ‘finding your voice’. There will be plenty of time later for ambition, philosophy, learning how to write ‘better’ poetry.
In the early stages, form and serious crafting, the technical side, are the least important things.
I’m not sure that I do inspire people in any particular way. I do know that I try to take away the fear of failure when writing poetry – that question of ‘but is it any good?’ should be replaced with ‘but does it work?’ which I feel is a more important question. And I do stress the question of joy quite often, the importance of not losing it. And I guess (obvious though it is) that there will always be something positive to say about a piece of writing: we should recognize that sitting down to write something is in itself a positive and affirming act.
After that, I would say go and start buying poetry books and subscribe to well-established magazines, read lots and lots of poetry, both traditional and contemporary, to see how other people write – that’s the only way you will ever develop a sense of perspective about your ‘work’.
Can you tell us about your time as Poet in Residence at The Southwell Poetry Festival?
Southwell is a delightful poetry festival. It has both a seriousness of purpose and a sort of intimacy, which makes it a lovely experience. I gave a reading from my two poetry collections combined with discussion, but the best part was just spending time in the (library) venue and being available for anyone to pop in and chat about their work or poetry generally. I love that informal situation where people can just approach you and feel relaxed about it. I often think that’s where the real pleasure of being involved in the poetry scene lies.
What are you reading at the moment and what is your favourite novel?
At the moment I’m reading one of Bernard Cornwall’s historical novels, ‘Warriors of the Storm’, but essentially I’m a Trollope fan and shortly about to embark on a second reading of his complete works. I guess if I had to pick one favourite novel it would be ‘The Warden’ but it would be close call between that and E.M. Forster’s ‘A Room With a View’.
The warden is the sort of thoroughly moral and good character I feel we should all aspire to emulate. ‘A Room with a View’ is a novel with hidden depths that spoke to me personally on so many different levels when I first read it.
Have you a preferred form of poetry to employ, or does the form naturally evolve?
No, I don’t really have a preferred form of poetry. While it’s important to understand and develop the discipline of writing in traditional forms, (know the rules so that you can break them with impunity), personally I’m more interested in what a poem is saying, as long as it is said effectively. I find that when I read a poem I like, it usually stands up to some degree of critical analysis anyway.
In my own writing I always allow the poem to find its own form, but it is surprising how often I seem to edge towards the sonnet, usually the Petrarchan, and I do like to feel that most of my poems on the page stand up to a certain amount of critical analysis.
What is your creative space like?
I have a sort of small study filled with poetry books and a PC, but I often go out to write. I need a change of scenery, so I have 4 favourite coffee bars and hotel lounges – I like a comfy armchair when I’m pondering or reading.
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival. What have you performed there? What other literary/art events would you recommend?
I love the Edinburgh Fringe. Blackwell’s Bookshop run a series of literary evenings with invited guest readers, both novelists and poets, sharing the stage. I was lucky enough to be invited to read and have been invited back on two further occasions to read from my two poetry collections, ‘Singing Puccini at the Kitchen Sink’ and ‘Thought-Apples’. I’m told that’s exceptional as Blackwells do heavily promote Scottish writing, so I feel quite lucky and privileged.
I will pop along to Southwell and Buxton and Wenlock when I can, but there are three festivals I go to most years (as well as Edinburgh):
The Ledbury Poetry Festival
The Ilkley Literature Festival
The Birmingham Literature Festival
Can you tell us of one of the best days of your life?
Not really. I’ve been lucky enough to have had quite a few.
Have you invented any words yourself?!
I will occasionally come up with a portmanteau word or use an adjective as a verb, that sort of thing, but I’m not sure they really count. I think it’s more valuable to come up with an original image or conceit rather than a word.
Which poets do you like and why?
Thomas Hardy, for the beauty of his rhythms, his rhymes, and the strong emotional content of his poetry.
Thom Gunn and Philip Larkin because they show how successfully you can write about motor bikes, supermarkets, the nitty gritty of everyday life.
Mary Oliver for the depth of her feeling for the Natural World.
Billy Collins for his humour and accessible style, and his randomness.
What themes keep cropping up in your work? What do you care about the most?
I care most about people and the lives we all lead, so I tend to write from emotional impulse.
Themes which do crop up I guess are marriage and family and age, but science, maths, railways and history frequently break through and become the vehicle for a poem. These things are latent interests from childhood and schooldays, so they are lodged pretty deeply. I don’t actively seek them out when writing; they seem to force their way in and take over.
Can you please share with us a couple of your poems and walk us through the ideas behind them?
Here are two poems I have become fond of, partly because people often ask me to read them again if they have heard them before, so I guess they speak to people in a pleasing way.
Sonnet to a Bacon Sandwich
You, with a nappy gripped in one hand,
flung the plate over my head.
I remember how the white bread
took its own trajectory like a startled bird.
You yelled something about pulling and weight.
Me? I was at the table waiting to be fed.
Hadn’t I been working all day?
And wasn’t that the wife’s job anyway?
These days, at each anniversary we still
chew over that bacon sandwich,
our only serious row, and how
we both had to learn to cut off the rind,
to butter each other’s bread from time to time.
To listen for the spitting under the grill.
‘Sonnet to a Bacon Sandwich’ arose out of a real incident and is one of those poems in which a single conceit becomes the focus and provides unity, but also acts as a metaphor for what the poem is really saying. As I indicated earlier, the sonnet form arose out of the content – I certainly did not set out with the idea of writing a sonnet.
Waiting for Anna
This Moses basket fresh by the bed
is waiting,
like a promise, like a Truth
about to come true.
Not for a casting off among the reeds
but for a coming
home.
To open a door, to enter a room,
is always to begin again.
Already the basket’s empty space,
the very air inside it,
is sacred.
There is nothing more to say.
Silence has a voice.
Emptiness is eloquent.
‘Waiting for Anna’ is a deeply personal poem and I think I’m fond of it as an example of how a single moment, a small thing, can capture something much bigger. And in this case it illustrates, I’d like to think, how very often ‘less is more’.
What is next for you? What plans have you got?
I have another year as Staffordshire Poet Laureate, and I have no real poetry plans beyond that. I shall be quite happy just to continue writing for the pleasure of it. If people happen to enjoy what I write and invite me along to share it that’s a lovely bonus and I’m grateful. There are a lot of good poets out there.
