Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

BM     I THINK IT’S FAIR TO SAY THAT YOUR REPUTATION IS BASED MAINLY ON YOUR LOVE POEMS. COULD YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT WHY YOU THINK THIS IS?

IP     Yes. Although it’s never been my intention to write just love poems I think I’ve developed a certain receptiveness to them in recent years. I’m convinced that you can’t go around looking for poems; that they’ll arrive out of your experience and, to some extent, dictate the sort of poet you’re going to be. For me, there’s an intimate connection between the condition of being in love and the sort of situations or states from out of which poems tend to emerge. I think it’s easier for readers to categorise me as a love poet because maybe it’s what I do best. Or perhaps it’s because there aren’t that many of us doing it these days: writing love poems that is - not falling in love [laughs].

BM     COULD I ASK YOU ABOUT THE TONE YOU ADOPT IN YOUR POEMS? CHARLES BENNETT IN A RECENT ARTICLE DESCRIBED IT AS ‘A TENDER SEVERITY’. WOULD YOU LIKE TO COMMENT ON THAT?

IP     I’m not sure that anyone would like to comment on that! [laughter] Except that Charles has got very close to defining something that’s almost intangible - the individual quality of a poet’s voice. You can spend hours (and many academics do) in trying to dissect a poem into its component parts - rhythm, rhyme, metre, whatever - and then end up with nothing because they’re only the building blocks that poets use to articulate this voice. It’s a thankless task. The poet’s voice is the essence of the poem, dictating the form and breathing through it like...

BM     THE LAST READING YOU GAVE... WAS THAT AN ATTEMPT TO EMPHASISE THE QUALITIES OF THAT VOICE?

IP     Yes and no. It’s a day for ambiguities, isn’t it? I suppose I read poems aloud in much the same way as I hear them in my head during the writing process. The intonation somehow becomes fixed at an early stage. Wasn’t it Dylan Thomas who said that a poem on the page is only half a poem; that it needs to be vocalised in order for it to reach its full potential? Unlike Dylan Thomas I’m trying all the time to be lucid and accessible. Readings are great because they give a poet instant feedback. You learn to measure an audience’s response in much the same way as an actor does.

BM     I DID A QUICK HEAD-COUNT OF THE AUDIENCE AND NOTICED THAT THREE-QUARTERS WERE WOMEN. CAN YOU ACCOUNT FOR THAT?

IP     I wish I could! [laughter]. Jules Smith asked me the same question in the last interview I gave and I’m as much at a loss to answer it now as I was then. Maybe it’s something to do with the subject-matter. It’s not as if romantic love is the preserve of women. I mean, men fall in love too don't they? [pause] Don’t they? [laughter].

BM     YOU MENTIONED TWO POETS DURING THE READING - AUDEN AND HARDY. I THINK THE AFFINITIES WITH AUDEN ARE OBVIOUS: THE DESIRE TO WRITE PUBLIC POETRY, THE POLITICAL AWARENESS, THE RELIANCE ON TRADITIONAL FORMS. BUT WHY HARDY? ISN’T IT HARDY THE NOVELIST WE REMEMBER THESE DAYS? THAT’S CERTAINLY THE CASE IN THE STATES.

IP     I think Hardy is a great poet. His reputation as a novelist has tended to obscure that fact. But surely it’s possible to be a great novelist and a great poet. Poetry was Hardy’s first love and the thing he returned to during the last phase of his career. There’s a powerful pull there. I love the way his poems seem suspended between two tenses; the way that the past is implicit in the present and, because of this, relationships are always somehow provisional or, at the very least, compromised. I think he’s really modern in the sense that he pursues the ideal of romantic love and yet feels obliged to question its validity. I’m learning all the time from Hardy.

BM     I SEE... YOUR LAST COLLECTION OF POEMS [A Climb Through Altered Landscapes, BLACKWATER 1998] WAS RECEIVED WELL BUT YOUR MOST RECENT PROJECT HAS BEEN THE RECORDING OF A CD [The Angel of the North, TARANTULA 2000]. WHY CHANGE TO RECORDED POETRY? HOW DID YOU FIND THE EXPERIENCE?

IP     I enjoyed it tremendously. I suppose it made me think long and hard about the poems I wanted to include as I was keen to make the selection representative. It was produced in Manchester by Seán Body and he brought a great deal of sensitivity to bear on the whole process. We felt that we wanted to convey some of the intimacy of a poetry reading and I think, by and large, it comes across like that. Some of the poems are new and haven’t appeared in any form before but others are drawn from various sources - collections, anthologies, newspapers, magazines.

BM     YES, YOUR WORK DOES APPEAR REGULARLY IN MAGAZINES. WHICH ARE THE ONES YOU WOULD RECOMMEND?

IP      Brando’s Hat, Dream Catcher, The Reater and The Interpreter’s House.

BM     COULD YOU SAY ANYTHING ABOUT EACH ONE?

IP     Certainly. Brando’s Hat is edited by Seán Body and I like it because it’s pure poetry - no reviews, articles, or criticism - and publishes several poems by each poet so you get a feel of their range and depth. Dream Catcher is edited from here [York] by Paul Sutherland and goes for a healthy mix of poetry, fiction, and visual arts. I’ve just been involved as guest-editor for the current issue and was impressed by the editorial policy of giving all submissions serious consideration. Nothing slips through the net. What can you say about The Reater? It’s edited out of Hull by Shane Rhodes and is one of the liveliest magazines around. It has a truly international feel to it. On one page you’ll have a poem by Fred Voss from Long Beach California and on the next a poem by Dean Wilson who works as a postman in Hull! I think you’d call that a mixed bag... Magazines are the place where contemporary poetry is happening. You can catch it before it solidifies into collections, anthologies and the like. How do you find the magazines in the States?

BM     I THOUGHT I WAS ASKING THE QUESTIONS! [LAUGHTER] YOU RECEIVED A TRAVELLING FELLOWSHIP TO THE STATES IN 1994. A FEW OF YOUR POEMS DEAL WITH THE CIVIL WAR. OUR AMERICAN READERS MIGHT BE INTERESTED TO KNOW WHY YOU - AN ENGLISH POET - FELT INCLINED TO RESPOND TO AN EVENT IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICA.

IP     Good question. Except the poems aren’t much to do with the American Civil War itself as my response to the way that it still seems alive to many Americans, especially in the South. Shelby Foote [Civil War Historian] said that the conflict was ‘the crossroads of our being’ and although he was referring primarily to the experience of America in the 20th century I think it’s fair to say that its repercussions sent shock-waves through the West in general. In one of those poems - ‘On a Cold New England Afternoon’ - I refer to America as ‘the one experiment in life that hasn’t failed’. And I think, to some extent, that’s true. American republicanism was imported from these islands, took root before the Revolution, and has found its fullest expression since the end of the Second World War. And then there are the poets...

BM     WHICH AMERICAN POETS DO YOU ADMIRE?

IP     That’s easy: Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, Anne Sexton, Rita Dove. I’m also interested in the work of the New Formalists although I’m very cagey about the terminology. The Americans have got a lot to teach us in terms of sheer spontaneity. We’ve inherited some great things from what you might call the ‘English Tradition’; but we’ve also inherited the crippling reticence which often makes us hesitate in the face of raw emotion. The great appeal of 20th century American poetry is that it seems to bypass all that completely. A poet like Frank O’Hara, for instance - it’s as if it never happened! I’ll bet you’re glad I said that.

BM     I AM [LAUGHTER]. FINALLY, IAN, WOULD IT BE ASKING TOO MUCH FOR YOU TO SAY WHAT YOU FEEL IS THE FUNCTION OF POETRY AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 21ST CENTURY?

IP     No, it wouldn’t be asking too much [laughs]. A friend of mine whose opinion I value greatly asked me the other day if I felt guilty for deciding to live the life of a poet rather than channelling my energies - such as they are - into more secular pursuits. Well, it started me thinking, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d feel guilty if I hadn’t made the decision, quite early on, to write. There’s this resilience in the human spirit that seems to have survived everything the last century threw at it in terms of war, atrocity, prejudice, inequality, loss of faith. The real threat now is the insidious growth of materialism and along with it the banal and manipulative language of advertising. I think we must always be on the lookout for ways of countering this language of the marketplace. Poetry is good for that. It’s written by the heart, for the heart.

BM     THANKS, IAN.

This interview with Bethany Merchant took place at the Station Hotel in York on 5th May 2000 and first appeared in New England Poetry Review (USA)