1) Aaaarrgh!
2) Define ‘popstar’: if we’re
talking a critically successful alt-rock musician with a moderately sized but
loyal fanbase – a Bob Mould, say, or a J. Mascis – then I would say ‘popstar’ without
a second’s thought. But the real appeal
of poetry is in the fact that no one – and I mean no one – is watching; no one
cares what we do, which might sound pessimistic, but I see it as a great opportunity. If you have the dreams and ambitions of an
entire generation of teenagers resting upon your every move and utterance and thought, coupled
to the financial needs of a megacorporation who are just as dependent (if not more so) on your
continued success, you have no real artistic freedom.
I'll admit that poets exist in the gloomy crevices between cultural productions that actually
have some kind of impact in the real world, but they are, unequivocally, our
crevices to do with as we please. Errrr…
3) Any time you have a few
minutes or an hour spare, I’d say.
4) The ego? No role at all: to my mind, the role of
poetry is to allow language free play do as it will. The moment your ego steps in, it brings a
shedload of inhibitors along with it: cultural, psychological,
sociohistorical. They just get in the
way.
5) No, but it not mattering
doesn’t matter. See answer to 2.
6) Yes and no: there are
poets who seem to get a lot of attention at the expense of lesser known lights
how are far more talented, sure, but to call it an Establishment, as though
there were a secret club that a poet could become a member of if only s/he
climbed the greasy pole with enough alacrity, doesn’t feel all that
helpful. It’s useful when you’re a young
buck, as anger’s quite energising when you’re just starting out, but it becomes
exhausting after a while. Besides
anything else, I think that the current technological dispensation’s been
really good for unknown poets, letting them disseminate work through channels
running parallel with the more accepted, established publication structures. Having said all this, the notion of a Poetry
Establishment is useful for one thing, and one thing only, which is this:
whenever I read a review by Sean O’Brien of a new poet he doesn’t like, that’s
a pretty surefire way of tipping me off about fresh-faced writers that I’m bound to
enjoy.
7) Yes. No doubt.
Not always well, but it can be learned, like any skill.
8) Subjects are for
absolutist monarchs; poetry should have its eye on other matters.
9) I do remember, as a matter of fact,
though couldn’t recite it verbatim. It
was rather a bawdy piece in rhymed quatrains with a jaunty iambic pulse about a bee that stings a buxom
dinner-lady on her ample bosom. Edward Lear by
way of Donald McGill, in short.
10) (d)
11) Reasonable? Probably not, but it’s not something I lose
sleep over. The best thing to do it so make up the shortfall by
writing the best poems you can hope for yourself.
12) The poetry on the
internet is a kind of poetry; the internet itself is a kind of 12th
century Gothic cathedral erected in code.
13) (a)
14) What’s it to you, hmmm?
15) To an extent: speech
always wants to be heard, whatever form it’s in. The act of writing poetry, though, is radically
anti-social, which is one of the reasons I’m drawn to it as an art-form.
16) I tend not to have
language / poetry dreams, though I do dream impossible books rather regularly. One time, though, I did dream up a revolutionary
system of transcribing dolphin speech, but failed to make note of it upon
waking. Silly man: that could have been
my fortune.
17) (d)
18) Originality’s for the
birds.
19) Sometimes, but it’s not
a given.
20) Probably, I guess.
21) I dunno.
22) No: the whole move of
poetry has surely been to incorporate wider and wider subjects, and every era will
have its own leanings and bugbears. This
is what’s so fantastic about poetry, right, that there’s an almost unbridgeable
gulf between the architecturally-minded religious epics of Dante and the clerihew,
between Pope’s brittle classicism and Whitman’s freeform cowboy strut through
the American century? An unbridgeable gulf, that is, in any world other than poetry. That demented variety is not a glitch in the system; it is the system.
23) (a)
24) Plymouth.
25) It probably depends on
how many references to early Hitchcock happen to be in them.
26) (d)
27) It depends on the poem,
but I’m not ruling it out in the future.
Beware of hard and fast rules, particularly hard and fast rules that
have the faux whiff of liberation about them.
28) Ah, the whole ‘perfection
in the life, perfection in the work’ conundrum.
I think it is possible, yes, but you’re liable to get less work done,
as by default you’ll have to take other
people’s needs into account.
29) Every day, every minute:
each poem’s an attempt to start again, and that’s how it should be. I remember reading Roy Fisher’s account of
writing The Cut Pages, of how at the
start it was merely a means of getting his writing off the ground again after a
period of block. Most people would see
that as maybe a cautionary warning, but I read it as a manifesto of sorts. What if everything you wrote was a means of
getting up off the ground again? What if
you wrote every poem as though it were your first, and your last? What then?
Aye, what then?
30) I wold say ‘see answer
to 29’, but that would be a lie, not to mention inveterately lazy. I
believe that it’s possible to fall out of love with the habit of writing, certainly, but I
don’t believe in any real sense in writer’s block. You can’t get deserted by the Muse, in part
because the Muse simply don’t exist, but chiefly because there are millions of ways
of getting back on the horse, writing-wise. That’s the
tough bit, naturally, but once you’re high in the saddle, well, it’s a
different story.
31) (d)
32) Myself, and a small
circle of friends. If anyone else happens
to be listening in, that’s lovely, but it's by no means necessary.
33) Obviously not, but there’s
a two way street whereby each bleeds into the other.
34) Absolutely, but the
trick is to stay young whatever decade you happen to be stuck in the middle of.
35) No, sadly I don't but the young poets in Swaziland are producing some pretty astounding work.
36) Naah.
37) I refer you to:
38) (c)
39) It's a better policy to treat your whole
career as though it were a plateau, I’d say.
40) Since when have poets of
any age done anything gracefully? Gah…
41) One of them dresses like
Wednesday Addams on a particularly gloomy Sunday, and spends their working life
adding cosmetic touches to lifeless, inanimate objects in order to give the
impression of vivification for the benefit of emotionally fragile onlookers; the other is an
undertaker.
42) Soylent Greenleaf
Whittier? Yeah, why not?
44) Not one iota.
45) Too many, I would wager: they are an
impediment, for all their virtues.
46) Yes; last Tuesday.
47) I should freaking well hope so: my
legacy will be written across the stars, goddammit!
48) Aaaarrgh!
49) Zzzzzzzz……..
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*No, I'm printing the questions, partly because it will be fun for you millions of readers out there in Digital Poetry Land to guess what I'm responding to, but also because you really ought to buy the book, as it's a hoot, and Leafe are a small poetry press very much deserving of your moolah. Off you go.
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