How did you begin writing, and what keeps you going?
I imagine my answer to this will be similar to most writers: I know it began early, I know reading prompted it (and continues to prompt it), and I know I have to do it. It’s not a choice. I can’t remember a time when I was not making up stories, or playing with words. I wrote plays, too. I think plays are akin to poetry in a way prose isn’t. I now find writing prose tortuous. It hurts me physically. But plays and poetry have stuck with me forever. I was especially drawn to old, musty books. I picked up a small second-hand book when I was quite young and took it everywhere because it fitted in my pocket. I’m not sure, but it might be something that was once called a ‘compendium’. It was primarily a dictionary, but it also had translations of Latin phrases, a précis of Greek and Roman classical myths, explanations of car registrations (honestly!), and other wonderful nuggets of information. I can remember sitting and just reading the dictionary. That may not be normal, but I loved it. The covers have fallen off, but I still have it sitting comfortably on a shelf like an old dog that can no longer move from in front of the fire. I once wrote a ghastly poem at school that was saturated in histrionic Romanticism mixed with elements of Conrad’s Nostromo (I know, wtf?). I submitted it too late for the school magazine (of course – I was a total arse as a teenager), but my English teacher was impressed enough to Sellotape it to a table in the school library. I don’t think anybody read it, which I’m pretty sure was an early lesson in restraining one’s expectations as an adult poet.
Have you noticed a difference in how you approach writing since you began publishing full-length collections?
That’s a very interesting question. I can remember talking about this to another poet friend of mine not long after my full collections came out. Unusually, they came out with different publishers but quite close together in time. And the answer is yes, I have noticed a difference in my approach to writing. I’m much more relaxed. I find my process more enjoyable and interesting now that I place less emphasis on what we might term ‘product’. It’s quite a release. And a very unexpected one. It’s satisfying and liberating. I no longer seek approval, and am a little ashamed that I seemed to need it before. I wasn’t really aware that I needed it, I suppose that’s down to a certain immaturity, but I forgive myself. I liken it to the feeling I used to have when acting. I was always more excited about rehearsals than performance. That’s where the experimenting went on. The discoveries. Once the play was up and running, it was repetition, and a surfeit of vanity. I fear that. I don’t know how The Rolling Stones keep their shit together playing 50 years of hits over and over again. It would drive me insane. I know they get paid well to do it, but I’d rather have my sanity than another house in the south of France.
What poets have influenced the ways in which you write?
I think anybody whose work you admire is an influence on your own (perhaps even those whom you don’t/no longer admire). This changes through time, as does the way in which it influences you. Like most small-town kids in the 60s and 70s, I was largely limited to what was in the local library or on the shelves of W.H. Smith – which wasn’t much. My father was a maths and physics kind of man (my inabilities in these fields frustrated the hell out of him), and he taught himself how to do anything that caught his fancy (he began to build computers in the 80s). But in the early 70s he decided to do an Open University literature course, so there were books left around the house that you wouldn’t be exposed to at school, like Prufrock and The Waste Land, which as you might imagine, was pretty eye-opening to a 12-year-old brought up in an extremely conservative environment. I was also fortunate to have access to a small but thriving theatre scene and excited by avant-garde and political theatre. My early diet ranged wildly around theatre and poetry: Beckett, Ionesco, Albee, Pinter, Shakespeare, Shaw, Miller, Brecht, Al Alvarez’s ‘The New Poetry’, the ‘Mersey Sound’ poets, Romantic, Victorian, Elizabethan, and Metaphysical poetry (every English schoolboy’s experience, I imagine), Easter European translations, just endless eclecticism, I suppose. I didn’t realise these early influences were so important until I was in the editing process of my first full collection, when I could hear so many resonances underneath the work. But they are slight. As I say, the nature of one’s influences changes over time. I admire so many different poets, and so many different kinds of poetry. If you could scrape the top of my head, you’d probably find Anne Carson, Vahni Capildeo, Anna Moschovakis, James Tate, Karen Solie… I could go on and on. I’ll be influenced by others in the future, to be sure. And none of this touches upon how music and art influence me, which they do. Sight and sound shape the way we make art, I think, as much as reading. All our senses are an influence.
How important has mentorship been to your work? Is there anyone who specifically assisted your development as a writer?
I owe a huge debt to two poets: Alexander Hutchison and Tom Leonard. Tom held workshops at the University of Glasgow on a Saturday morning. He was fearsome and generous and passionate, but most of all he was a teacher. To his bones. He didn’t much care for my poetry, but he never let that interfere with trying to help me become a better poet. One of the things I took from him was to pare it all down until it is sharp and gleaming. Sandy, on the other hand, was more of a Zen Master. His work is witty and intelligent, it sparkles with argument and empathy. If you’ve never seen him read his poem ‘Everything’ you should rectify that by going here: https://vimeo.com/82322229. I spent a year being mentored by Sandy, and learned to go with my instinct, to not be afraid, to allow a poem to grow if it wanted to. To trust it. My poetry, like the universe, learned how to expand and contract under these two men. They are both gone now, and there is an acute absence in Scottish literature without them. There’s another aspect to mentorship, too. And that’s the support of a few trusted friends with whom you can share work, or talk about it, or on whom you can empty your frustrations and gird your loins in order to go on. I’m lucky to have a couple of those, and it’s the best.
What are you currently working on?
I’ve been writing a great many prose poems over the last few years. I’ve recently finished a very long project titled Men Who Repeat Themselves and am now wondering what to do with it. Presently, I’m writing another book of prose poems, and this one has a continuous ‘narrative’. It’s a tricky business trying to give the whole thing a unity while also allowing each individual poem to remain its own singular event. It takes place, as much as I can understand it at the moment, between an early Friday evening and a late Sunday afternoon. It surprises me at every turn. I’m enjoying it immensely.
Can you name a poet you think should be receiving more attention?
I can think of many, but I’ll give you four of my favourites and their new books right now. You should all go out and buy these: Vicki Husband’s Sykkel Saga (https://mariscatpress.com/publications-in-print/); Kathrine Sowerby’s House However (https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/poetry/house-however); Tessa Berring’s Bitten Hair (https://www.bluediode.co.uk/product-page/bitten-hair-by-tessa-berring), and Juana Adcock’s Split (https://www.bluediode.co.uk/product-page/split-by-juana-adcock). Really. Buy them all.
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