Here’s the first half of my conversation with Siân Thomas for her podcast ‘The Poetry Bath’. Siân's an excellent interviewer and made me think afresh about my own poetry. I do hope you enjoy it...!
I'm chuffed to have a poem in the new issue of Nimrod. It's my first publication in the U.S., and in a significant journal to boot. Thanks to Boris Dralyuk, the editor, for selecting my work. Here's a pic of the cover...
If a poet believes they're being sidelined or deemed irrelevant by supposed gatekeepers, they might feel tempted to rail against the perceived slights in public, wailing into a vacuum, trying to punch up or out, but only landing on their own jaw.
I'd suggest they might well be better off putting their grievances to one side, using their time to write stuff that's actually relevant to a potential readership...!
I've reviewed Anna Crowe's translation of Pedro Serrano's The Conjurer for The Friday Poem. Here's the opening paragraph...
The act of translation involves the need to resolve ambiguities or ambivalences that were intentionally left open in the original, just as it forces the loss of connotations that cannot be replaced on a like-for-like basis. For some translators, this process is drenched in frustration, but for others, it’s a creative challenge, the chance to generate a new entity that simultaneously does its utmost to respect the source. And on this occasion, we’re lucky to find that Anna Crowe is the translator of Pedro Serrano’s new collection, The Conjurer (Arc Publications, 2024) as her method firmly falls into the second category. Crowe’s considerable experience in translating the likes of Joan Margarit (from Catalan) and Juan Forcano (from Castilian Spanish), both also published by Arc, is here brought to bear on a selection from Pedro Serrano’s three published collections in Mexican Spanish...
If you'd like to read the review in full, it's available via this link.
I'm delighted to be able to showcase today a poem from Martin Ferguson's latest pamphlet, Stone Age Howl (Dreich Press, 2024).
The poem I've chosen is titled ‘Fugitives’. It's
especially interesting because of its delicate layers, starting with the title,
which seems to refer to the protagonists but also hints at the passing of time
itself, a theme’s that’s pivotal to the poem as a whole. A mention of
grandparents nods at the passing of a generational baton, as encapsulated by
the children’s use of rusted, ageing skates. And then there’s the filter of
memory: this poem takes place in the past and the narrator’s perspective is of
an adult who’s no longer a child. It’s an implicit invitation for us to reflect
on our own lives, the specific rendered universal. I hope you enjoy it...
Fugitives
Small
window in the winter
of English
winters, when we knew
that
conditions chance aligned,
to hold the
weight of our escapes.
And we knew
the place,
that the
ice would not wait,
we made the
trip to silvered field,
we tied
them on, ready to wield
those heavy
blunted clunking clogs,
would make
us feel as high as sprites,
the brown
old leather ankle boots,
their metal
blades with flecked rust bites
had seen
better snowbound seasons
on our
grandparents' quick heels.
Back upon
the glaze, animals transformed,
how they
still could dance and reel
make our
growing bones buzz and sing,
and race
and speed on frozen range,
then we
were their ghosts–
Souls flying free over flooded plains.
(First published
in The Poetry Village 2020)
When putting a manuscript together, a poet and their editor (if such an entity still exists!) work together on synergies, grouping and flow, on how poems establish dialogues with each other on the page. However, once the book's been published and the poet starts giving readings from it, a whole new process begins, in which they have to relearn the collection from the perspective of different audiences.
What do I mean by this term? Well, I'm referring firstly to finding out which poems work in public and which fall flat, which work on the page but not when read aloud. And secondly, there's the question of how to introduce them: not too much, not too little, not a paraphrasing or spoiling of the poem as a whole but just enough information to facilitate entry when the audience hears it for the first time.
Speaking from my own personal experience, I reckon this process takes me about ten readings to master from every new book before I reach a sweet spot. And even then, I find myself tweaking my set according to the make-up of the audience, while it's also important never to get bored or stuck in a rut of always reading the same poems, though two or three so-called signature pieces simply have to be included!
The aim, of course, is to launch the poems on umpteen new journeys inside other people's minds, thus encouraging them to purchase the book and carry those poems off with them afterwards, turning listeners into readers. And readers are worth their weight in gold for any poet!
Right, so a heads-up in case you can make any of the three readings I've got coming up in the next few days...
...the first one is at Faversham Literary Festival on Saturday, though the issue is that their website currently says my event has sold out (see here). Then I'll be the guest poet for the South Downs Poetry Festival in Chichester on Wednesday (see here), followed by a reading in Cowden Pound on Thursday, as per the following poster. It would be great to see you at any of these events. And if you make it along, please do come up and introduce yourself...!
