{"id":272,"date":"2016-08-12T09:53:30","date_gmt":"2016-08-12T09:53:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/?p=272"},"modified":"2016-09-07T09:37:06","modified_gmt":"2016-09-07T09:37:06","slug":"answers-to-an-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/?p=272","title":{"rendered":"Answers to some interview questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve begun to take part in an on-line interview about my intentions and ideas in poetry for Andy Cochrane’s blog\/magazine, http:\/\/as-I-read.blogspot.co.uk\/<\/span>: (or google Andy Cochrane As I read blogspot.<\/span>). \u00a0 I’ll also post it here as it develops, for your possible interest . For me, it gives an opportunity to try to clarify some ideas.<\/p>\n

A.C. \u00a0I’d like to dive straight into your 2008 collection\u00a0The English Civil War Part 2<\/em>\u00a0and talk about ‘Postcards from Auschwitz’. The poems in this series share an insidious quality that seems to stem from the naivet\u00e9 on both sides – Jewish prisoners and German officers. The Jews seem to trust that ‘all may be well’ (where the word ‘may’ is so much more devastating in its uncertainty than had you used ‘will’), while the Germans appear not to be much more clued in to what is going on – ‘My orders come from higher up the line.’ I’m wondering whether it’s denial at work here. Can you talk a little bit about what you hoped to achieve with ‘Postcards’?<\/p>\n

K.C. Any poem which tackles this darkest of\u00a0subjects must somehow\u00a0mediate between Adorno’s question, “How can anyone write poetry that can comprehend the barbarity of the Holocaust?” and Santanya’s assertion that “Those who do not remember History are doomed to repeat it.”\u00a0\u00a0I \u00a0have tried to evade\u00a0this contradiction, tried\u00a0to hint at just some aspects\u00a0of the experience,\u00a0 by\u00a0coming at them from a\u00a0multiplicity\u00a0of\u00a0directions, viewpoints, styles. \u00a0 About half of\u00a0these mini\u00a0soliloquies\u00a0were written as if\u00a0from the Jewish\u00a0victims’ points of view…presumably some believed the official line that they were travelling\u00a0to a work camp, \u00a0many must have\u00a0sensed the dreadful\u00a0truth,\u00a0while others perhaps preferred to be in denial?\u00a0 Another\u00a0six or so of these overheard voices\u00a0were written from a variety of\u00a0non-Jewish perspectives – the train driver (part\u00a04), the book keeper (part 6) the retired elderly guard (part 10) the Nazi Inspectors (part\u00a05)\u00a0etc, which mostly emphasise\u00a0the ordinariness, the\u00a0routine-ness, \u00a0of their contributions to the\u00a0horror.\u00a0\u00a0 The overall design \u00a0for this piece was\u00a0for a\u00a0spread<\/u>\u00a0of voices,\u00a0tones and styles\u00a0. \u00a0Obviously, the main\u00a0organising idea\/metaphor is\u00a0that of Postcards (as suggested in\u00a0part 9)\u00a0– postcards\u00a0being brief and\u00a0partial points of view.\u00a0\u00a0Some may be\u00a0crying out, some self-exonerating. \u00a0\u00a0Partly this Postcards idea may have been\u00a0suggested by Craig Raine’s\u00a0“Postcards from Mars”\u00a0<\/em>collection,\u00a0his\u00a0“Martian”<\/em>\u00a0theory of poetry (1975?)\u00a0suggesting that well-worn subjects and\u00a0descriptions can be refreshed by being approached\u00a0from\u00a0alien points of view; it\u00a0is strange to think of his essentially playful, indirect, approach \u00a0being applied to the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

A.C. That’s certainly the sense I get with most of your poetry, a playful, indirect style that is applied to really complex, sometimes harrowing, events or issues. How do you balance that? I assume there is something going on in your mind about the dual issue of\u00a0how not to make fun of important subject matter, but also how not to come across as morbid or sentimental.<\/p>\n

K.C. Yes, its’s sharp of you to notice my \u00a0predilection for looking at appalling subjects in a quasi humorous tone. \u00a0In other collections I’ve written about cannibalism\u00a0(in the Chilean air crash), Hiroshima, the\u00a0Cambodian killing\u00a0fields, a firing squad\u00a0in the Phillipines etc etc \u00a0Come to think of it, I’ve \u00a0also written about a\u00a0lot of unattractive individuals too\u00a0– a Tourettes sufferer, an autistic boy, a paedophile (spelling?), a girl brought up as a hen, a Peeping Tom, plus\u00a0innumerable\u00a0disfigureds and cripples..all of which makes me a not\u00a0very nice person? \u00a0I’m reminded of John Lennon’s memory of being fascinated by the assorted ‘freaks’ of Liverpool, often choosing to follow\u00a0or sit behind them on the bus. \u00a0Except that I’d like to think my interest in the victimised is ultimately\u00a0 sympathetic. \u00a0I guess I feel that we must be prepared to\u00a0approach the\u00a0darker\u00a0aspects of our humanity, contemplating, for instance, systemmatic evil in\u00a0Postcards\u00a0from Auschwitz.<\/em>\u00a0(I’ve also\u00a0written alot of celebratory\u00a0poems, about the brighter side of the human spectrum,\u00a0especially in my latest pamphlet,\u00a0The Grandpa Years.<\/em>) \u00a0\u00a0With the\u00a0darker subject matter I feel that it is best saved from becoming merely maudlin, mawkish, \u00a0by being served up\u00a0with WIT of\u00a0tone and style, – verbal\u00a0humour which\u00a0may offer\u00a0a detachment, an\u00a0ambivalence, towards its subject matter. \u00a0Wit is a quality I admire in much 17th Century\u00a0poetry \u00a0– the way\u00a0Marvell , for instance, presents the execution of Charles ! with such knife-edge equivocation.\u00a0Wit seems to allow one to gaze at\u00a0horrors \u00a0while remaining detached. \u00a0 A\u00a0sense of humour in general and verbal\u00a0wit in particular may be qualities absent from a\u00a0lot of post-Romantic\u00a0poetry? \u00a0We tend to prefer emotional\u00a0intensities and authenticities of texture,- poetry which is “close to the bone” (and the nerve)? \u00a0But I do think that humour\u00a0can act as a corrective, almost a safety valve, to too\u00a0much\u00a0intensity. \u00a0 \u00a0Question: could Sylvia\u00a0Plath have survived the horrors of introspective self-therapy if she had been able to laugh\u00a0about\u00a0herself…and would the poetry then have\u00a0been\u00a0less interesting?<\/p>\n

A.C. \u00a0That’s very interesting, that you question Sylvia Plath’s ‘introspective self-therapy’. Is that how you see your own poetry: a kind of self-therapy in which you can make sense of your own experiences? I’m referring more specifically to the shorter poems about your life, taken from the section ‘Looking Myself Up’ in\u00a0Civil War<\/i>.<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

K.C. Yes, there is a bunch of mainly personal family poems in one section and more scattered among other collections. I don’t know that I would go so far as to call them “confessional” (in the tradition of Robert Lowell and Ann Sexton) but they mainly describe an unusual childhood – being the son of medical missionaries in Northern Nigeria (in the area now devastated by Boko Harum). Such a provenance – the last days of the British Empire included – all feels politically incorrect these days, but I hope that, at least, it is an interesting background. I’m not sure whether these more personal pieces are “therapeutic”; the ones about a difficult relationship with my father probably are. As hinted in a previous reply, I have doubts about the health benefits of diving too deeply into oneself as in the later poems of Sylvia Plath (I rather hate her ‘Daddy’ poem) or in the Henry poems of John Berryman, which are really autobiographical. Both after all couldn’t live with what they had discovered. On the other hand, to contradict myself, I love Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ and ‘Kaddish’ holy excrescences, which couldn’t be more “personal”. \u00a0So, to answer your question, yes, I do write directly from personal experience from time to time, but does that make more personal poems more or less authentic? In theory I prefer the idea of art developing a Yeatsian”mask” for oneself, or, to use T.S. Eliot’s phrase, finding an “objective correlative” for the merely personal. But, again to be contradictory, I think that the most powerful elements in T.S. Eliot’s own poetry (the period from ‘Prufrock’ to ‘The Wasteland’) are much more personal than he himself would acknowledge. He liked to claim that he was a spokesman for the classically non-personal … but I suspect that the strongest elements in his own best poems are in fact the product of a sense of sexual sterility and confusion rather than, for instance, a vision of post-war Europe. Perhaps instead of “We are the Hollow Men” he should have written “I am a hollow man”?<\/p>\n

A.C. In terms of Plath and Berryman, though, its obvious that their poetry wouldn’t have existed absent their dysfunctionality. I think for a lot of poets, and artists of all kinds, the art takes precedence over life, in the sense of making a lasting impression in the world and of creating beauty out of suffering etc.\u00a0(maybe you think this a naive way of thinking?). And that’s what I love about their work, particularly Berryman’s\u00a0Dream Songs<\/em>\u00a0– they don’t seem to hold anything back, or to be written in a Wordsworthian tranquility, but instead seem to have been direct and\u00a0necessary<\/em>\u00a0to the two poets’ existences.\u00a0\u00a0Does\u00a0your own\u00a0poetry take a secondary role to your life, or is it something constantly present in your mind, something\u00a0necessary<\/em>?<\/p>\n

K.C.\u00a0 The Art or the Life? \u00a0That does seem to\u00a0be a recurring question for, as you say, artists of all kinds.\u00a0 Yeats put it bluntly:\u00a0The intellect\u00a0of man is forced to choose\/ Perfection of the life or of the art.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Reading biographies of artists does seem to confirm a kind of\u00a0necessary\u00a0egotism\u00a0– that\u00a0<\/em>‘chip of ice in the heart’\u00a0<\/em>as someone put it. \u00a0Having just read Jonathan\u00a0Bates’ biography of Ted Hughes, I am appalled by his attitude\u00a0to the\u00a0women in his life,\u00a0for instance going off with\u00a0one of many mistresses\u00a0while supposedly on honeymoon with his last wife, Carol, \u00a0or\u00a0spending that famously cold\u00a0January\u00a0weekend with yet\u00a0another mistress during Plath’s final attempts to contact him.\u00a0 Examples of artistic self-centredness abound.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As for myself, I seem to have\u00a0drifted into the position of finding myself\u00a0with a large dependent\u00a0family without ever\u00a0having had\u00a0the courage to find an alternative. \u00a0Thus over forty years of school\u00a0teaching, while trying to fit poetry into the interstices of holidays and weekends… \u00a0Does that make me an amateur – a “weekend painter” as it were,\u00a0rather than a full-time\u00a0“professional”? \u00a0Certainly it does. \u00a0It probably also made me an uncommitted teacher, thinking\u00a0poetry while supposed to be\u00a0marking\u00a0or\u00a0preparing lessons. \u00a0“Get real” as my wife hung around with kids might\u00a0have said.\u00a0 \u00a0In more harassed\u00a0moments I\u00a0have envied the apparently family-free lives of such favourite gay poets as Ashberry and Edwin Morgan who seemed to have felt free to experiment with their lives\u00a0as well as\u00a0their Art. \u00a0But that is a silly response; gay writers\u00a0must depend on a range of\u00a0relationships quite\u00a0as much as any\u00a0“family man”. \u00a0Larkin, as you will know\u00a0from several poems such as\u00a0<\/em>Self’s the<\/em>\u00a0Man,<\/em>\u00a0prided himself on his family-lessness\u00a0while at the same time, with typical complexity, seeming to regret\u00a0it. \u00a0Other artists\u00a0seem to have\u00a0been\u00a0deeply\u00a0touched\/inspired by their family connections\/constrictions. \u00a0In poetry\u00a0I am thinking of Chaucer’s dedication to “Little Lewis”; or\u00a0 Shakespeare’s wonderful\u00a0sense of the vulnerability of children\u00a0(maybe\u00a0guilt-driven\u00a0by the death of his son,\u00a0Hamnet?]; or of Browning’s carer-role towards his wife Elizabeth; or the mutually supportive\u00a0partnerships of Mr and Mrs Tennyson, Mr and Mrs Edwin Muir, Mr and Mrs William\u00a0Blake…\u00a0So that the Yeatsian\u00a0Life\/Art dichotomy\u00a0may not be\u00a0as clear cut as it would\u00a0seem; probably the very\u00a0tensions that it necessitates can be creative?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A\u00a0clear\u00a0case of the\u00a0productive friction between\u00a0having to earn a living for his family and yet being\u00a0driven to abandon them for his art’s sake is\u00a0that of\u00a0Edward Thomas? And Wallace Stevens, to judge by the “fat cat” photos of him as boss of the Western Union Insurance Company, was happy to commute between work and poetic playfulness.\u00a0I don’t know what conclusion to your interesting question all this name-dropping is coming to. \u00a0On the one hand you get the bullish misogyny of a Picasso, on the other the tenderness of a\u00a0Rembrandt towards Titus and Saskia.\u00a0\u00a0In my own unimportant case I have always felt a\u00a0need to think of myself as a writer as well as an equally strong, often contradictory, need to find security in the idea of family.\u00a0\u00a0And now I must go off and wipe the noses and\/or\u00a0bottoms of several grandchildren…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A.C. Is this why your poetry hasn’t achieved mainstream success, this juggling of your art and your family life; earning a living while writing? Or is it a part of your sensibility as a poet? Do you, perhaps, see poetry as a free enterprise, a way of life rather than a way of achieving fame\/recognition\/money?<\/p>\n

K.C. \u00a0 I guess that my poetry hasn’t achieved widespread recognition mainly because it hasn’t been outstanding enough. I’ve had more than my fair share of chances, being picked, for example, as one of “ten promising English poets” in 1970 by Carcanet, who then published a first collection. But I’ve found it more and more difficult to gain publication, never mind recognition, since then. The market for poetry has become increasingly crowded and competitive, for would-be writers almost more than for readers. The “poetry scene” of my youth was dominated by a few big names (Heaney, Hughes, Betjeman, Lowell, Thom Gunn – all men!) and a few (male dominated) publishers. The “poetry world” has changed hugely. For one thing there has been a proliferation of creative writing courses (alas, none available when I went to Uni) which in turn has spawned probably thousands of would-be “creative writers” all toting for recognition\/publication (and sometimes, one suspects, for the academic sinecures – those creative writing tutor jobs – that go with becoming a published “name”. \u00a0In such an overcrowded field, it would often seem to be necessary to have some kind of personal novelty\/gimmick or interesting back story – coming from a different ethnicity, for instance – to begin to grab attention? Or perhaps a knack for self-publicity? Or perhaps, as always, the right personal connections? But I do think that the plurality of poetry outlets these days is generally much more healthy than the old Faber and London Magazine dominated days of fifty years ago. Also, thanks to desk top publishing (and the Internet) there are such a lot of really interesting little specialist presses and magazines to be sampled, from the avant garde (Prynne et al) down to the very local. And the poetic energies seem to be more widespread too – often coming most distinctly from what used to be called “the regions”, i.e. not London. \u00a0In spite of this new more hectic, pluralistic, competitive atmosphere, I still do think, must believe, that the most outstanding talents, those with true originality of voice – Alice Oswald and Jo Shapcott spring to mind – can make it to the top of the heaving pile of would-bes. Almost every year fresh young voices emerge – last year Liz Berry and Jonathan Edwards particularly impressed. As for myself, I am probably one of thousands of 2nd or 3rd division “poets”, all fighting like cats in a sack for our brief moments of local fame and recognition… (but certainly not for any money!)<\/p>\n

A.C. What influences would you cite on your poetry? Have these influences changed as you’ve grown older?<\/p>\n

K.C. My first big\u00a0influence was Chaucer; one of my A level teachers at school was David Herbert (who went on to edit the\u00a0Penguin Book of Narrative Verse)<\/em>;\u00a0he was very keen on Chaucer, going so far as to paint a mural of the Canterbury pilgrims around his classroom walls.\u00a0\u00a0So I guess I can blame that influence for having tried \u00a0so many times to write long narrative poems \u00a0– completely out of sync with contemporary taste?!\u00a0 My main tutor at New College\u00a0was John Bayley,\u00a0who also idolised Chaucer; his book on\u00a0Troilus and Criseyde, The Characters of Love,\u00a0<\/em>is still a worthwhile read, I think,\u00a0and must have reinforced my tendency to try to\u00a0write those\u00a0lengthy “story poems.” \u00a0But, \u00a0having decided to read nothing but poetry while at Oxford, I soon came upon other influences, especially Donne, Marvell and all the so-called “Metaphysicals”, which, hopefully, had a\u00a0more healthy influence on my own attempts to write,\u00a0tightening up metre and toughening up style generally. \u00a0The Oxford Eng Lit\u00a0Syllabus famously stopped short of studying\u00a0the 20th Century \u00a0(probably it has now modernised itself?) , but,\u00a0since getting free\u00a0of Academia and being able\u00a0to choose what I read, \u00a0I find I\u00a0 have rather preferred American poets – Emily\u00a0Dickinson, John Crowe Ransome, Richard Wilbur, e e cummings,\u00a0 Lowell, William\u00a0Carlos Williams,\u00a0Stevens, Ginsberg, Ashbery\u00a0etc… but especially Robert Frost who, together with his English friend Edward Thomas, is still a favourite. \u00a0At best American\u00a0poets always feel fresher than their European counterparts? \u00a0 Of course, having been a schoolteacher for over\u00a040 years, I’ve also\u00a0had to get to know and teach\u00a0a\u00a0lot of 20th century UK\u00a0poets\u00a0and have developed a more than grudging respect for such near-contemporaries as Hughes, Heaney, Gunn,\u00a0Larkin, R.S Thomas \u00a0and, more up to date-ly, \u00a0Carol Ann and \u00a0Simon A…\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0So, thank you very much , Andy, for asking about\u00a0\u00a0“influences”.\u00a0\u00a0I feel flattered…\u00a0but also feel that \u00a0I should have dropped a\u00a0lot more contemporary this-century\u00a0names into the mixture!<\/p>\n

A.C. Not at all. You’ve given a pretty extensive account of your growth as a reader as well as a writer of poetry there. For my final question, I want to ask you about your current work. I know you have a pamphlet –\u00a0The Grandpa Years<\/em>\u00a0– out at the moment, but what are you working on now? What does the future hold in store for readers of your poetry?<\/p>\n

K.C. I recently turned 70 – the \u00a0“allotted span.” \u00a0Having had\u00a0your questions to try to answer\u00a0has given me\u00a0an opportunity to look back, sometimes mournfully, always solipsistically, over what could be called a “career”. \u00a0 I seem to be writing as keenly as ever, mostly confining myself to shorter pieces; I have a collection of these,\u00a0The Goldsmith’s Apprentice,<\/em>\u00a0for\u00a0which I hope\u00a0to\u00a0find a\u00a0publisher soon. I also have a dusty drawerfull\u00a0of narrative poems which deserve an airing.\u00a0 The question is when to stop. \u00a0Does one know when one is “past it” or,\u00a0at least, past one’s\u00a0best? I’d like to think that I’m writing as well, if not better, than ever… but maybe that is just\u00a0the usual\u00a0self-deception?\u00a0 I remember when I was about 50 and\u00a0 attending\u00a0a poetry\u00a0workshop which was\u00a0full of pensioners, I used to think\u00a0<\/em>“Why don’t some of them\u00a0just shut up? Don’t they realise how OLD they sound, – ‘old’ in terms of subject matter, out of date style, or somehow just lacking in\u00a0verbal energy\/ vividness?\u00a0 Why can’t they be more open to change?” \u00a0\u00a0<\/em>But\u00a0now I find myself\u00a0in the position of those despised\u00a0pensioners, carrying on regardless\u00a0with a “writing hobby”,<\/em>\u00a0still\u00a0trying\u00a0to compete in\u00a0what is increasingly a young person’s game… Anyway, to quote Yeats in\u00a0“Sailing to Byzantium”, Why should not\u00a0old men not be mad? \u00a0<\/em>Why not\u00a0<\/em>continue to\u00a0experiment, to try to make poems, if only for my\u00a0own interest?<\/p>\n

“An aged man is but a paltry thing,
\nA tattered coat upon a stick, unless
\nSoul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
\nFor every tatter in its mortal dress”<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve begun to take part in an on-line interview about my intentions and ideas in poetry for Andy Cochrane’s blog\/magazine, http:\/\/as-I-read.blogspot.co.uk\/: (or google Andy Cochrane As I read blogspot.). \u00a0 I’ll also post it here as it develops, for your possible interest . For me, it gives an opportunity to try to clarify some ideas. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-272","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=272"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":294,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions\/294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}