As a child: the usual nursery rhymes and tales (reprised when my children were under ten). As a teenager: I listened to and often transcribed art-rock songs – ‘Thick as a Brick,’ ‘Close to the Edge,’ etc. – whose almost-incomprehensible words were annoyingly not on the record cover. I became aware of poetry when I came across it in novels, such as the occasional songs in Lord of the Rings and Dune. At about 15, studying Eliot’s ‘Murder in the Cathedral’ led me to think something weirdly interesting was going on with poetry; reading ‘The Wasteland’ the year after confirmed this. (When your brain comes alive in early adolescence, you want to test it against the toughest stuff around.)
Would you say your childhood and teenage experience of poetry has had a distinct influence on how you write poetry now, and why?
Like most new writers, I emulated the kind of poetry I was reading. Appropriating poetic texts always remained an interest – and it became an ethic later in life, after many years of exploring poetic language as a marker of a personal interaction with the world. It was a way of getting away from writing just about me. So I tried to wean myself of ‘confessional poetry,’ and suppressed self by trying out voices not my own. All of this arose out of an early teenage itch to write poetry, which evolved into wanting to make an art of it.
Who is another poet whose poetry you admire and why?
Sorry, I’m going to name three (in order of admiration):
1. Ted Hughes: an astonishing nature-poet, who provides obbligato throughout my writing. His Gaudete, which I read in my early twenties, is bizarrely creative and powerful. (If you read it and still scratch your head, don’t stand next to me at parties.)
2. William Wordsworth’s The Prelude is the great rite-of-passage poem, profoundly examining the development of a poet and the difficult transition from youth to (uh-oh) responsible adulthood.
3. Robert Pinsky’s ‘Shirt’ reintroduced me to the power of the definite article, and how research (and connected vignettes artfully constructed around a theme) can produce most intense and satisfying art. It helps that Pinsky’s a brilliant reader of his own work (Willem Dafoe meets William Burroughs).
How would you summarise one of your poems in one paragraph?
I’ll do it in one sentence: ‘After the Budapest Conference’ is about a scientist walking around the winter city after visiting friends, then getting mugged withdrawing money from an ATM off the main square.
How would you describe the appeal of this poem to readers?
One appeal to a reader could be that, though the poem is descriptive, it has a discernable voice and ‘storyline’ to hang on to. (It is oddly engaging because we discover his girlfriend has a fiancé.) It might also have the attraction of weaving in the language of science and quantum studies, which is unusual in poetry. And, I hope, a reader might engage enough with the main character to understand and sympathise with his dilemma of connecting with people yet maintaining an emotional distance.
Could you share a stanza or small section of this poem?
…a wind shook light off the Square
made my system a shimmering mockery
dissolved my method, my money
Sometimes I am nowhere sometimes
I am somewhere at the same time
Heat leaks away and my state deteriorates
How would you describe the contribution this stanza or small section makes to the poem?
Here comes the critic in me:
Scientific concepts, as well as weaving through this poem, are also incorporated in small forms within. These aphoristic lines exist as micro-poems while at the same time constituting the poem’s structure and conclusion. This is where the poem changes from past to present tense – pushing into the future, seeking continuity beyond nothingness. The last lines, after an events-driven narrative, pose a purely internal insight. Employing words that leapfrog, fuse and evolve – “Sometimes… nowhere sometimes… somewhere” – the paradox presents the overall poem’s key polarities of substance versus non-substance, being versus nonbeing.
The last line combines internal with external. The words are like a warning, and invoke the distancing concept of quantum states. The poem’s conclusion offer polarities: voice versus silence, material versus non-material, body heat versus the cold of dissolution. The reader is warned of the implications of choosing dematerialisation, which is the inevitable destabilisation of the human array – in other words, death – before silence envelops the poem.
Would you describe your poetry primarily as narrative, thematic, character portrait, or how would you describe your poetry?
My poetry is all over the place, with little discernable topical or thematic unity. But there are a few things that recur, including using languages that aren’t often taken up by poetry. This includes, represented by the above poem, the language of science, in reconciling scientific training with human reactions. It also includes the language of bureaucracy and politics, often employing parody. I’m interested in adopting characters and voices outside myself, sometimes taking poetry into the realm of dramatic monologue – and, using specialist language, using voice and narrative to dismantle and expose political maneuverings.
Do you read your poetry aloud to people? If so, how would you describe the size and response of your listening audiences?
Hey, it’s poetry: you can guess the size of audiences! However, there are many opportunities to read, and not always to the converted (but mostly); I would read to an audience (live, radio, etc.) roughly every month. My readings have lately gone beyond the resources of my voice, in trying to replicate other genders, races, etc. However, the response has often been good – especially with ‘poetic monologues’ using characters in advertising and politics.
Do you write groups of poems to form collections? If so, how were the poems connected in your most recent collection?
Poems let me know whether they need companions; sometimes they breed on their own and up to fifteen children will appear. They rarely congeal into a whole collection, which is why there is not usually a single topic. And they don’t let me know when there’s enough for a collection; I just bundle them together one day. However, my latest, unpublished, collection came out of doing a PhD at Adelaide University and it has an overarching trajectory: it develops from voices and longer forms towards smaller poems and silence.
Author website: http://www.stephenlawrence.blogspot.com
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