TBR [to be read], a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.
We don’t expect an elevator pitch from a poet, but can you tell us about your work in 2-3 sentences?
Pound, Hope Mirrlees and Eliot and later
modernists were writing in response to mass-production and the rise in literacy
and psychoanalysis. From the 60s until now, the big subjects have been
advertising and the environment. Now that great subject is ourselves. Congruent
with that is the question of popularity. Online attention as popularity
(particularly divisive attention) and thus the favouring by algorithms of the
popular, the separation of self between the online persona whom we perhaps
believe is more popular than our unvarnished selves, and also poems that
reflect on what that popularity means. These are all hiding in the wings. The
collection itself is concerned with discovery, humour and invention that takes
its cues from the Invisible Man, assorted British wildlife, Kubla Kahn and
David Bowie among others. In other words, nerdy, but fun nerdy.
What boundaries did you break in the writing of
this book?
I was already working on poems after Ed
Sheeran, Tones and I and The Weeknd, to challenge myself. All three have penned
some of the most streamed songs of all time. I did also write poems in response
to some of the UK’s favourite poems including Wordsworth’s ‘I Wandered Lonely
as a Cloud’ (aka ‘Daffodils’). A working title for my first pamphlet was Pilots
and I think that tradition in my work of every poem being a test shot into the
unknown continues. With that comes the risk of spectacular failure. In order to
send work out, I have to be okay with that. This of course is alongside any chance
of success. If I can inspire poems by people who had previously felt
intimidated or alienated by poetry, then that is greatest reward and that for
me is where the poems take off into new lives.
I also like poems that offer a valuable journey
to a reader who wants to spend more time casting around and isn’t afraid to get
out their own answer to literary sonar in search of ancient ruins, revealing
treasures and uncovering histories for themselves. (You can see a little bit of
this in poems like ‘Alphabets of the Human Heart in
Languages of the World’)
Where does that sort of courage come from?
I read a news story the other day about a local
guy so high he took a kid’s little yellow bicycle and tried to outrun the
police on it. Courage comes from all sorts of different places. To be more
serious about it, post-pandemic, I think like a lot of people, I needed to talk
myself back into a hard-truth, yet highly empathetic reality.
There’s more to it, and I tend not to wear it
on my sleeve, but I am dyslexic and I am on the spectrum, what people used to
call Asperger’s. I think dyslexia gives me the most courage. You not only
think, see, and hear the world differently, but you also learn the true weight
of a blow. This can help you to understand how to inspire other people to fight
for what they want to write and what they want to say and that’s exciting. For
yourself that opens a space to write and create without limitation, but of course
there are some cold light of day dangers to that too(!). Days and nights at the
keys are all very well and good but you should also absolutely take a break and
listen to the birds. Anthony Minghella, director of The English Patient
said he had the affliction of being uxorious. That’s an affliction I also share
that gives me the most courage (pukeworthy, but also true!).
Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your
book’s road to publication.
The book spans twelve years of writing. In that
time my poems have blasted off to Mars, others have been printed on cakes, cast
in ice, put onto train station platforms and one was turned into a turning
steel monument another performed with a jazz orchestra in Rotterdam. They’re
young, they need to get out there and do their own thing. It’s hard to have a
favourite. I think one of the best was when I heard Kathleen Jamie say she
liked my work. I think my pulse has not quite been the same since. I read poems
on stage with Pete Brown (who wrote the lyrics to Cream’s ‘White Room’ among other songs – probably the one song in
the world that for me that most epitomises pre-internet London) before he
passed and that was really very special. I also got to shake hands and share a
glass with Jan Erik Vold – a privilege I will never forget. I walked with Nikola
Madžirov and had one of those life-changing conversations about writing and the
imagination and I got to watch the tempestuous Norwegian Sea rise and fall
around black cliffs at midnight with Endre Ruset – and see how deservedly
adored he is. I banged my head against a desk in frustration at my own poems
while talking to Alice Oswald. The world turned. I worked nights at the
supermarket during the pandemic. I wrote. I lived in a caravan, then in a
shepherd’s hut and wrote a meditation for the birds and I translated secret
codewords from the Russian military into English (for a poem). A close friend
died of cancer. I wrote poems with Julia Lewis. At night I walked across the
fields by moonlight to my house. I held my bed for six months while waiting for
a doctor’s appointment because I thought my heart was going to explode. I
conducted interviews with the trees and my niece wrote a story where everyone
on Earth left got in a rocket and set off, leaving me behind with a bunch of
dinosaurs, a canoe and a chocolate cookie. Poems about some of this ended up in
the book. There is so much to explain, but I am grateful for all of it.
What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?
Don’t finish that day’s writing when you’ve
finished the thought, but rather when you know what the next sentence will be.
It’s more for prose writers than for poets, but
building that rhythm and swinging across the gap from one sentence to the next
to keep that pace going… Invaluable.
My favorite writing advice is “write until
something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?
I was working on a piece about ‘The Empire
Strikes Back in Reverse’. For a reader, it’s all over in a few minutes, but for
me it’s been a quarter of my life. I always knew the poem had its own secrets.
I took the two main characters outside of the cramped conditions of the car
where most of the poem is set and it broadened and suddenly all this light came
into the room and the relationship between them opened up in its scale and
conversely it focussed their intimacy and that was revelatory. I started that poem
in 2013 and finished it eleven years later… the amount of times I’ve seen a Tauntaun regain its innards and come miraculously back
to life… It was all that time to find that one secret.
How did you find the title of your book?
An earlier version was called Spooky Action
at a Distance. It has that feeling. People travel to Mars and lose contact with
Earth, others the reader steps into a cassette tape and becomes the song on the
album. Gradually, working like a selected poems, it became more of a mixtape
and more about song and sound.
Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to
know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)
Gremolata Linguine. A perfect spring or summer
afternoon recipe. It is zesty, tangy, a little bit spicy and feels warming and
indulgent. It does not strictly feature in the book, but this is a big recipe
from my childhood (minus the wine) and my childhood does feature – as does time
travel, so if I travel back in time from the future, maybe it will go into the
book somewhere!
Here’s how to make it:
Ingredients:
3 garlic cloves
1 lemon (zested, then juiced)
60g wild rocket [known as arugula in the US]
100g parsley
1 red chilli
300g cooked and peeled prawns (will also work
with breadcrumbs, olives and rosemary)
300g linguine
250ml dry white wine
Pepper, salt, olive oil
You will need:
A boiling pan, a food processor, two large bowls.
Method:
Add two tablespoons of salt to a large pan of
water and bring to the boil. Cook the linguine to one minute less than it says
on the packet instructions, so it still has a little “al dente” bite to it.
Pour a little of the cooking water out of the pan before you strain it. I
usually drain the pasta and then, while it is still dripping, toss it back into
the pan with a drizzle of olive oil. Stir. Empty this into a bowl and chill in
the fridge for at least 60 minutes. If time is of the essence you can re-fill the
pan with ice and water to cool it quickly. Meanwhile zest and juice the lemon.
Wash the rocket and parsley. Peel the garlic. Add the lemon juice and zest, the
rocket and parsley, the garlic and that 250ml (or just a glass of wine) to a
food processor and blitz. Taste to check. Because the pasta is slightly sweet,
you need good acidity, good salt and a little spiciness to the sauce. Add as
much chilli as feels comfortable and a generous amount of salt and plenty of
black pepper. Give it another blitz. Once the pasta is perfectly chilled, toss
it together with the sauce and add in the prawns. The prawns like to holiday at
the bottom of the pan, so keep an eye out so everyone gets their fair share.
Serve immediately. Watch out for your time-travelling self coming back for
seconds… or is it firsts?
It’s a good travelling dish, and meeting poets,
I have made this with variations using butter instead of olive oil, local giant
sourdough loaves, sliced tomatoes and I have made my own fresh pasta with local
eggs too. A real crowdpleaser.
*****
READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.manmadebooks.co.uk
ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://ninearchespress.com/publications/poetry-collections/popular-song