{"id":14626,"date":"2023-02-24T08:02:46","date_gmt":"2023-02-24T06:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=14626"},"modified":"2023-02-24T01:04:57","modified_gmt":"2023-02-23T23:04:57","slug":"poetry-is-the-underground-water-we-all-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=14626","title":{"rendered":"“Poetry is the underground water we all need”"},"content":{"rendered":"

[interview with Simon Fletcher]\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

by Monica Manolachi<\/p>\n

Monica Manolachi: Last autumn you were one of the four commended poets in the Michael Marks Environment Poet of the Year Prize. What does this recognition mean to you? <\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Simon Fletcher: It means a lot, frankly. I\u2019ve been writing environmental poetry for years and getting a few poems accepted here and there, including in Crevice<\/em><\/a>, but not found my work, or perspective, perhaps I should say, welcome in the \u201ctop\u201d literary magazines in Britain. So, to be commended in The Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year Award is very encouraging. It means, on one level, that I haven\u2019t been\u00a0 on the wrong track, which is pleasing. Michael Marks (part of the Marks & Spencer retail family) set up literary awards for poetry pamphlets some years ago, but this is the first time they\u2019ve run an \u201cenvironmental\u201d award, specifically.<\/p>\n

\n

MM: What do the places where you can write poetry look like? What are the most unusual? What helps you focus and create poems?<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

SF: I don\u2019t have a specific place where I write. I walk in the wooded hills near my home very often and that inspires poems. I carry a notebook with me most of the time and find myself moved to write any time of the day. There is something physically important about pen or pencil on paper.<\/p>\n

\n

Very often poems grow out of the environmental workshops I run, which always involve walks. Mostly these are in \u201cgreen spaces and places\u201d, so there\u2019s a given sense of people in a landscape reacting to their environment. It\u2019s a way of recording change but also how we react to change and what this does to us and how this may effect the environment. I think that\u2019s at the heart of the current debate about environmental poetry.<\/p>\n

\n

People may get confused about the various labels attached to the poetry we used to call \u201cnature poetry\u201d. Nowadays, there is a distinction to be made, perhaps, between \u201cenvironmental poetry\u201d, which includes people in the landscape, is sometimes informed by ideologies and may have an impact in society, and \u201cecological poetry\u201d, which focuses more on poetic experiment linked to the science of nature, I think. One of the poems I wrote, which particularly impressed the judges of the Michael Marks Award and they commented on, was \u201cDecember Blues\u201d that can be found on the Crevice<\/em><\/a> website. I think it put its finger on what\u2019s at the heart of the environmental and climate crisis.<\/p>\n

\n

In terms of the actual writing, poems can start forming over a period of weeks or months and then something triggers the writing down of a first draft. Poets are magpies and we have a tendency to bring together shiny and significant things. Very often intensive reading over a day or two sparks a poem. We benefit from spending time in Poetryland.<\/p>\n

\n

MM: What has poetry meant to you over the years, from the early days until the present? What concepts have guided you? Why do you write?<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

SF: Poetry has meant a great deal to me since I was around 13 and I read Shakespeare\u2019s Henry IV<\/em>, Part one. Something about the joy and wonder of metaphoric language grabbed me and hasn\u2019t put me down. I don\u2019t know about concepts, but I\u2019ve tried to explain the world to myself and others, to understand things better through poetry. In this sense, it\u2019s a machine to think with, but a very complex and intricate machine.<\/p>\n

\n

Seamus Heaney\u2019s definition of poetry seems the most adequate to me. He felt it was \u201csomething sweetening and at the same time something unexpected, something that has come through constraint into felicity\u201d. That\u2019s good enough for me. Why do I write? I can\u2019t stop it and I try to create something beautiful and something telling.<\/p>\n

\n

It can be a marker of \u201closs\u201d and I sometimes warn about what we might lose, but I prefer to celebrate the positives in life, the joys and beauties, friendship and love.<\/p>\n

\n

MM: I\u2019d like to know in what context you made your debut with poetry. Did your family or friends encourage you?<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

SF: I think there have been several occasions we could call \u201cdebuts\u201d, false beginnings for me, as there\u2019s not been much continuity or clear progression in my writing. I wrote a lot when younger and had encouragement from teachers, but I didn\u2019t find any real recognition until Ted Hughes, the then Poet Laureate and a huge figure in the poetry landscape, read my Occasions of Love<\/em> (Pennine Pens, 1994). A friend had badgered me to send him a copy after I\u2019d interviewed him for a Sunday newspaper. He said some very warm and encouraging things about my writing and I\u2019ve tried to match up to those expectations ever since.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

My family didn\u2019t encourage me to write as they didn\u2019t have any experience of a writer in the family. I think they found it worrying. My father was dismayed when my English teacher, Jim Charlton, suggested I should study English Literature at university. They haven\u2019t been supportive, apart from my brother James, but I\u2019ve had a number of friends and partners over the years who have been.<\/p>\n

\n

MM: Which poets of the past have had an influence on your own writing? If you could meet them today, how would you spend your time together? <\/em><\/p>\n

\n

SF: The list is a very long one, but I would add some of the great English poets, those mentioned above plus Wordsworth, W. H. Auden and R. S. Thomas, plus the American Mary Oliver and the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. I hope we\u2019d have a pleasant chat somewhere walking in the woods or by water. I spent an afternoon with R. S. Thomas, in 1979 in his study, which was delightful. As a promoter of poetry I\u2019ve spent many happy hours with poets over the years and a few that have left me cold. Not all poets, it turns out, are kind and generous.<\/p>\n

\n

MM: What do you think about the relationship between literary tradition and modernity? What particular lines have stayed with you over the years?<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

SF: I think that there\u2019s a constant engagement between poets of today and the poets that have gone before. It\u2019s very often the case that reading a really brilliant poem inspires people to get writing in the first place. The relationship often takes place in the form of a tribute or \u201cwriting back\u201d. Carol Ann Duffy edited such an anthology in 2007 for Picador. I\u2019ve written tributes to a number of poets myself including \u201cWriting back to Mary\u201d in my collection Close to Home <\/em>(Headland, 2015). I hope I\u2019ve expressed my warm admiration for Mary Oliver, a wonderful American \u201cnature poet\u201d, and her poetry there. My head is full of lines of poetry. Where to start?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

MM: What poetry or prose in translation have you read and enjoyed lately?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

SF: I don\u2019t read much prose as I\u2019m a very slow reader. I have been studying the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova\u2019s work in translation recently and am falling in love with her. Part of the reason for this is that I\u2019ve been teaching a course on Russian Poetry (from Pushkin to the 2000s), in translation, to a group of enthusiastic poetry readers in Wolverhampton. Here\u2019s an example of her work from the 1930s, which says something about the dangers of writing poetry in Stalin\u2019s Russia:<\/p>\n

\n

Answer<\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019m certainly not a Sibyl;<\/p>\n

my life is clear as a stream.<\/p>\n

I just don\u2019t feel like singing<\/p>\n

to the rattle of prison keys.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

(Translation by Robert Chandler in The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry, <\/em>2015)<\/p>\n

\n

MM: Do you have any favourite bookshops, libraries and other venues suitable for poetry readings?<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

SF: I live in the countryside so the idea of having a \u201cfavourite bookshop\u201d is strange. There is one in the nearest town, but the owner isn\u2019t interested in stocking my work or that of Offa\u2019s Press poets. Make of that what you will. There are some great libraries in the region who do support poetry, despite tiny budgets and increasingly difficult work conditions. My favourite venue is the Water Rat Pub in Ironbridge, Shropshire, where I\u2019ve been running \u201cCountry Voices\u201d for the last few years. The atmosphere of the pub is very pleasant, perched as it is above the River Severn with lawns going down to the river bank. And, of course, the small town of Ironbridge is a world heritage site which draws a lot of people in.<\/p>\n

\n

MM: You used to be a teacher. What has this type of interaction taught you? What determined you to leave the regular education system and enter the specific cultural area of creative writing?<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

SF: I found teaching very educational, given that I worked in both private and state schools. The overwhelming impression I got was that privately-educated people have a huge advantage over their state school-educated peers like me. This is one of the main problems in Britain\u2019s \u201chierarchical\u201d society and causes a great deal of ill-will. The students I found pleasant enough in all schools, but they have very different life paths and expectations on leaving. I left full-time teaching because I was getting very busy being invited to do a lot of paid poetry readings, and other poetical activities, from about 1997 onwards. These extra demands made it impossible to do a full-time teaching job. I still do a little teaching and have some adult creative writing and reading students on a Friday, most weeks.<\/p>\n

\n

MM: How did you decide to establish Offa\u2019s Press, why did you choose this name and what has your experience as an editor and publisher been like? <\/em><\/p>\n

\n

SF: When I worked, part-time, as the literature development officer for Wolverhampton Libraries from 2000-2013, I set up many writers\u2019 and readers\u2019 groups in the city. Also, importantly, a live literature event, \u201cCity Voices\u201d, which is still going after 20 years. There were some very talented poets in the city who\u2019d never been published, so setting up Offa\u2019s Press was a chance to publish their work and give them a chance to gain wider fame. That was in 2010 and we\u2019re ticking along nicely, publishing the most interesting West Midland voices we can. Some of them are gaining national recognition.<\/p>\n

\n

Offa was a great king of Mercia, including the area of the West Midlands, which was his power-base in the eighth century, and an interesting character. He had cordial relations with King Charlemagne in France and is the only Anglo-Saxon king to put his wife\u2019s head on the reverse of his coinage. Cynethrith was, as it were, the power over his shoulder. He could be seen as a tutelary spirit in some sense. I also live a mile or so from Offa\u2019s Dyke, a long and impressive earth mound he had built to protect his people from invading Welsh.<\/p>\n

\n

Being an editor and publisher is a mixed blessing. The work is often long and difficult, but publishing a manuscript one really believes in is exciting and has brought a lot of joy and satisfaction. There is little money in all this so it\u2019s largely a labour of love. The Arts Council of England has given us some funding, from time to time, to be fair.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

MM: In June 2020, Offa\u2019s Press started an ecopoetry project called <\/em>\u201c<\/em>In the Sticks\u201d. Tell us more about the reasons, the workshops, the people involved, the main themes and the outcome. <\/em><\/p>\n

\n

SF: We didn\u2019t think of it as an \u201cecopoetry\u201d project at the beginning, but it developed in some ways in that direction. \u201cIn the Sticks\u201d is a project that came about because we couldn\u2019t do live workshops. We had planned a load of live activities in the West Midlands and then in March 2020 the pandemic lockdown happened. We quickly realised we\u2019d have to re-package the whole thing online and got some support from Arts Council England for the website creation and editing and publishing.<\/p>\n

\n

Cherry Doyle, my colleague, did most of the work putting the website together and we took turns to write the workshops and gather poems, photos etc. It was a very productive effort and a happy chance. We don\u2019t think that many people looked at the webpages during the preparation period, but they have done so since.<\/p>\n

\n

We did run a couple of workshops via Zoom, which was strange but rewarding. And the anthology is a very good one. Cherry and I are now thinking about developing a \u201cshow\u201d based on the book with Tom Allsopp, another rural poet.<\/p>\n

\n

MM: In 2022 you celebrated twenty years of contributions to the literary atmosphere of the local community. What has it been like? What are City Voices, Country Voices and Virtual Voices?<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

SF: Much of this very enjoyable work grew out of my being the literature development officer in Wolverhampton. I had set up a \u201clive lit\u201d evening in a pub in Exeter when I was a post-grad, in the early 1980s, so it was fairly straightforward to put together an evening to include local writers in Wolverhampton and then Ironbridge, Shropshire. \u201cVirtual Voices\u201d came about because of the pandemic. It has been very rewarding being in a position to offer poets and writers the chance to read their work or perform and to watch them grow. You build a performance space and people will inhabit it.<\/p>\n

\n

MM: Could you give some personal examples about how poetry can make a difference in society?<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

SF: I can\u2019t give you many specific examples of how poems have made a difference in British society since poetry isn\u2019t widely read, although a lot of people admired W. H. Auden\u2019s poem \u201cFuneral Blues\u201d when it appeared in the film \u201cFour Weddings and a Funeral\u201d. Perhaps it softened the attitudes of some towards homosexual couples.<\/p>\n

\n

Multicultural and multilingual poetry shows have started to emerge over the last 25 years as society has changed and as a conscious reaction to the racism of British society.<\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019ve worked with Debjani Chatterjee, originally from India, and Basir Sultan Kazmi, originally from Pakistan, for 25 years now, quite consciously challenging dumb stereotypes and racism. Our poetry readings (based on the north Indian tradition of multilingual readings or \u201cmushairas\u201d) present different angles on post-Empire life and have been well-attended and applauded over the years. Have we made a big difference to society? I\u2019m not sure but it\u2019s been a lot of fun and taken us to some wonderful places including the Oslo Festival, Norway, in 2015.<\/p>\n

\n

There is always the danger that one is \u201cpreaching to the converted\u201d, so enthusiastic audiences may not indicate a real change is happening, but we certainly hope it is.<\/p>\n

\n

MM: What are the most important qualities of a poetry editor? How about some of the biggest challenges?<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

SF: Wide-reading, tolerance, patience. Challenges include a lack of funds and time.<\/p>\n

\n

MM: What literary festivals have left a mark upon your career as a poet and editor?<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

SF: I haven\u2019t been invited to many literary festivals, but I would mention the Oslo Festival, Norway, in 2015, where I read with my colleagues Basir Sultan Kazmi and Debjani Chatterjee and, more recently, a couple of poetry festivals in Scotland, Callander and the Wigtown Book Festival, where I\u2019ve enjoyed reading a few poems.<\/p>\n

\n

Meeting new people who enjoy poetry and literature is always great, but I also think the travel involved is important. It opens oneself up to so much that is new, different and challenging. As a writer one spends so much time at home, alone, with the computer and the books. Travelling for poets is like letting a curious bird out of a cage.<\/p>\n

\n

MM: If things like ethnicity, origin or accent still matter nowadays, in what ways do they?<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

SF: In England we\u2019ve been living under an increasingly right-wing and zenophobic government where \u201cothering\u201d, racism and blatant inequality aren\u2019t challenged. So, these things matter, as does class background, but when you have a self-serving \u201cclub\u201d in charge, it\u2019s hard to make much progress. It has shown itself in a very poor light over the last year or so, for what it is, and the people have had enough. With any luck the current government will be thrown out in 2024.<\/p>\n

\n

MM: Is poetry for everybody? Why (not)?<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

SF: It would be nice. And, in a strange way, it is although we are quick to forget nursery rhymes, spells, and rhyming aids to learning. It lives with us and we remember it when we have emotional crises. Perhaps poetry is the underground water we all need.<\/p>\n

\n

MM: Is writing as a human activity going through some major changes? <\/em><\/p>\n

\n

SF: The jury\u2019s still out. Will the internet and social media liberate the writer in all of us? Who knows?<\/p>\n

\n

MM: How has the internet helped you as a poetry editor and promoter? <\/em><\/p>\n

\n

SF: It has made life a lot easier and speeded things up a bit. Without email I\u2019d get through an awful lot of envelopes and stamps. Facebook and Twitter have also impacted the poetry scene and it\u2019s a lot easier to find out where things are happening and who\u2019s doing what, at short notice.<\/p>\n

\n

Many poets now have their own websites which must help to promote the word. I write a blog now and then about my preoccupations: www.simonfletcherwriter.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

MM: What have you noticed about poets\u2019 voice over the years?<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

SF: Poets are better at performing than they were 25 years ago, but perhaps that\u2019s just my experience. What I mean by \u201cbetter\u201d is that poets now practice their work before reading and some even learn the words off by heart so it becomes more of a performance. They are presenting themselves more as professional performers like storytellers. This is a very exciting development and, in some ways, harks back to the earliest European poetry.<\/p>\n

\n

As a promoter, I\u2019ve encouraged poets to work at their presentational skills as they are more likely to impress an audience if they present a polished show.<\/p>\n

\n

MM: What poetry projects are you working on at the moment?<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

SF: 1). A pamphlet collection of work based on my Michael Marks commended poetry submission (its working title is Wild Orchids<\/em>) which should appear in April. 2). An anthology of poetry about birds, Away with the Birds<\/em>, with Kuli Kohli, the current poet laureate of Wolverhampton. 3). A bit further down the road, three more volumes for Offa\u2019s Press. www.offaspress.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

MM: Many thanks, Simon. Good luck and lots of inspiration! <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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