ENTREVISTA:
THE
POETRY KIT INTERVIEWS PETER HOWARD
Tell me about your background. Where were you born and brought
up?
I was born in Nottingham and
lived first of all in the village of Nuthall. My parents were both teachers.
When I was eight my father was seconded to the Nuffield Science Teaching
project and we moved to London for a couple of years. The Nuffield Foundation
provided us with what was, in retrospect, a fairly impressive flat near
Regent's Park. (We were close enough to London Zoo to hear the wolves howling
at night.) But my sister and I (my only sibling is two years younger than
me) just thought it was small. Then we moved to Powick, near Worcester,
where my mother still lives. Powick was a slightly embarrassing place to
live, because it contained a mental hospital. At Worcester Royal Grammar
School (older than Eton, and proud of it, though not at the time an independent
school) you got the mickey taken out of you if you said you lived in Powick.
Around then, they were doing some rather dodgy experiments with LSD in the
hospital, but nobody knew about that until much later.
Do you
come from a literary family?
Both my grandfathers were coal
miners. My mother's parents were very religious and I suspect that influenced
her to train as a teacher. My father was a postman and a butcher's boy before
World War II, and then joined the RAF Regiment. (The RAF Regiment operated
searchlights and AA artillery at airfields. The Army had previously done
those jobs, but there were conflicts of interest and loyalty.) When he was
demobbed at the end of the war, he joined the teacher training scheme, specialising
in Science (he'd always been interested) and English (he knew how to read).
In fact, he read voraciously. It's probably not surprising, given their
backgrounds, that my parents pushed me quite hard. But the answer to your
question, is probably "Not in the sense that most people would understand
it."
When
did you start writing poetry?
I was interested in poetry from
quite an early age. I remember a book of poems I had when I was about six.
In London, James Reeves' "Prefabulous Animiles" was a big hit with my sister
and me. (My father got housemaid's knee from giving us Hippocrump Rides.)
I had a bit of an adolescent reaction against it, but then an inspirational
English teacher (Oliver Goldfinch) read us Shelley's "Ozymandias" and that
got me hooked again. But I don't think I started writing poetry until my
third year at Oxford. If I wrote anything in childhood or adolescence I have
no memory or record of it. I started writing more regularly and prolifically
when I was teaching (at Worcester Girls' Grammar School). I made friends
with the Head of English (Margaret Smith) and she was very encouraging.
What
were the books\events that most influenced your beginning as a writer?
I suppose it's fairly boringly
conventional: I was very taken with Eliot, especially The Wasteland. I admired
Donne, particularly the sexy and the scientific poems. Blake seems to have
been a strong influence, judging by the symbolism I used in the first things
I wrote. As to events, my first poems were influenced by the fact that my
best friend had got off with a girl I fancied, and I was insanely jealous.
What
sort of poetry did you begin writing - what were its main themes and techniques?
My first poems were formal:
the first poem I wrote was a crack at a Petrarchean sonnet. I wrote quite
a lot in sonnet forms; much of the rest of my early stuff was metrical and
rhymed. I branched out into short, free-ish form things, and I've subsequently
written both formal and informal stuff. Informal poetry is much harder.
I've never believed in free verse - there's always a price to pay. The first
things I wrote were about unrequited love (never about requited love for
some reason, though I did have some of that) and social alienation. There
were a couple of deaths I wrote about. Then I think it got a bit more interesting
and adventurous: there was a colourful, surreal transformation of the Whitgift
shopping centre in Croydon, and a philippic about a publisher of computer
books who'd commissioned a series to which I contributed, and then weaselled
out of the arrangement.
To what
extent do your 'roots' influence what you are writing now?
Not much, fundamentally, but
quite a lot in detail. Because I've lived in various areas of the country,
I don't have a strong sense of 'place' or the need to write about one location
in any detail. Nor am I rooted deeply in any 'class' sense - my grandparents'
working class background is too remote to have any profound influence; by
the time I went to Oxford, the class associations of that place were much
weaker than they had been, or were popularly imagined to be.
But I do write a fair amount
about my childhood: it's interesting trying to pin down the details not
only of events and places, but also how I thought about things then, and
what was important to me.
How does
the way you make a living influence your poetry?
I make my living as a engineer
designing radio systems for organisations who need more than a mobile phone:
railways, ambulance services, gas boards, airports and so on. These days,
it involves a lot of computer software. A lot of my poetry is influenced
by that, either by the technical aspects of my job, or by the general business
environment in which I work. They (especially the former) are perhaps areas
which don't get a great deal of attention from poetry, so I feel it's a
niche where I can maybe make a contribution. I wasn't trained as an engineer,
though. I read Physics and Philosophy at Oxford, and I write about science,
or use references to it, as well. It needs a bit of care though, to strike
the right balance between using enough science or technology to be credible,
and reducing the potential audience too much. The first poem I had published
was rejected by Poetry Review on the grounds that people wouldn't understand
the Physics. (It combined the concept of the diffraction of light by a grating
with the story of Francesca da Rimini.) So I sent it to Physics Bulletin,
who took it, but asked me to provide a gloss explaining the Dante references.
Can
you describe your most effective working method? Do you wait for inspiration,
or sit down every day with the intention of writing?
I try to write every day, but
don't always succeed. Often I'll spend my lunch hour at work writing, and
then e-mail the results to myself at home to continue with. I tend to have
spells where I can start things, but not finish them, and other times when
I finish things off. I also have spells where I can do neither. My best
poems (however you judge what 'best' means) tend to come out of nowhere,
so I suppose you could call that inspiration. But I do think it's an over-rated
term, used mostly as an excuse for not writing anything.
How
important to you are formal workshops, or getting the opinions of other
poets about your work-in-progress?
I've gained a lot from workshops,
whether they've been face-to-face, postal, or conducted in cyberspace. They
can have their dangers though: once you get to know the group, you can be
tempted to write what you know will please them, rather than what you ought
to be writing. The most valuable workshops I've attended have been those
on courses I've been on, at the Taliesin Trust. There, you're immersed for
a week with a bunch of people who think it's quite normal to be interested
in writing poetry, which is a very refreshing experience. I also go to a
few one day tutored courses. Although by now I've done the exercises enough
times to know them off by heart, it's still useful in giving a structured
time to write. Writing circles where you read and comment on each others'
poems are useful if you find the right one. You have to be careful how you
take the comments you receive. Really, you should only change your poem
in response to what someone says if your reaction is "Why didn't I think
of that?" Otherwise you're letting someone else write your poem for you.
And for me, at any rate, it's important that comments tell me what doesn't
work (or does) and (maybe) why it doesn't, but certainly not how to change
it. If someone suggests a rewording, then I'm reluctant to use it, because
it doesn't belong to me. That's quite a difficult requirement, because sometimes
it's easier to say how you think something should be worded, than to articulate
what's unsatisfactory about the current wording.
I'm fortunate to know a number
of poets who will comment on my stuff and give valuable feedback. I don't
usually show work-in-progress in the sense of work that I've not got to
a reasonable standard of completeness. That would be dangerous and presumptuous.
But when I've got where I think I can with something, feedback from these
people can be very useful. Even here, even with poets who have more talent
and more experience than I have, I don't take their advice unless it works
for me. They wouldn't expect me to.
To what
extent if any do you collaborate with other artists?
My first attempt at a hypertext
poem was Midwinter Fair, and I invited other poets to contribute, by linking
their own poems or fragments. Quite a few did, and I like the result. (It's
still open, by the way, if anyone else wants to join in.) I'd like to do
a hypertext with a more close collaboration with other artists, but that
hasn't happened, yet. I did once make a minimal contribution to a renga that
was eventually published. My wife, Heather, is a painter (out of work hours
- she is also a telecoms engineer by day), and I've written poems about her
work. I keep trying to persuade her to paint in response to my poems, but
no luck so far.
How do
you decide that a poem is finished?
It's easiest with sonnets: if
it's got fourteen iambic pentametrical lines, it rhymes in the right places,
and makes some sort of sense, it's finished! Seriously though, if you've
managed to do all that then it probably is fairly near completion. Really,
the only way is to try as hard as you can to detect part of you telling
yourself "I can get away with this." Once you've heard that little voice,
you know it's not finished. Marion Lomax taught me this on a course. Every
time I showed her a new draft of a poem I was working on, she'd say "This
is an improvement, but you can't do that." I'd look to where her finger was
pointing and realise that I'd known I couldn't do that, but thought no one
would notice, that it was good enough. They did, and it wasn't. It's more
difficult than it seems to admit to yourself that something won't quite do,
but it's a habit worth cultivating.
Who
do you write for? - Do you have a particular audience or person in mind?
My principal audience is myself.
I don't know if that sounds egotistical: it's not meant to be. I think it's
inevitable. If the poem doesn't work for me then I can't in conscience try
to fob it off on anyone else. Having said that, I do sometimes write with
a person in mind. Most often it's Heather - when I'm writing love poetry
for instance. Sometimes it's for someone else, if they've asked me to write
something, or suggested a topic. Most often, though, I write the poem first,
and then wonder who might be interested in it.
Does
poetry have to be 'simple' to get an audience?
Not at all. Some people prefer
simple poems; others like the challenge, and perhaps the deeper perceptions
of complicated poems. (Notice I said 'perhaps' - I'm not falling into the
trap of claiming that complicated poems are necessarily deep.) But if you're
talking about an audience in the strict sense of the word, i.e. at a reading,
then I think you probably need the poetry to have a simple, accessible level.
It can be more complicated underneath. Even here, it's assuming the audience
hasn't heard the poem before. If you're an Immensely Famous poet, and most
of your audience is familiar with your work, then doubtless you can read
more complicated stuff and be appreciated. In my case, this is a purely academic
point.
Which
of contemporary poets do you most admire?
Oh, this is a difficult question.
I notice you said 'admire' rather than 'like' or 'enjoy.' Those are all
very different things, though there's a lot of overlap. Can I mention Miroslav
Holub, even though he's sadly no longer with us? I admire him for his bravery;
I like him for his celebratory use of scientific imagery; and I enjoy him
for his wonderful sense of humour. I admire John Whitworth for his tremendous
honesty and consummate skill. I like and enjoy his poetry too. I admire Ted
Hughes but I don't like him (I mean his poetry) all that much. Same goes
for Seamus Heaney, I'm ashamed to say. (I should make clear that I like and
enjoy some of the work of both those admirable poets, but only some.) I like
Matthew Sweeney's work a lot and enjoy it too, but where it comes in the
admiration stakes, I'm less sure. Same goes for Jo Shapcott, almost inevitably.
Les Murray is another I admire, for the sprawl, like for the sweep, and
enjoy for the exhilaration. Reading him is like being deluged by a breaking
wave of language and ideas. I could go on all night, but I'd better stop.
If I answered this question tomorrow, you'd probably get an entirely different
set of names.
Which
trends in modern poetry do you find most interesting?
I'm not very good with trends.
I'm not sure I'd recognise one if I met it in the street. I suppose I'm
interested in magic realism, if that's a trend and if I've understood the
term correctly. Where a poem describes impossible things, but in a way that
makes you believe them, and in doing so illuminates some real aspect of
the world. Some of Carol Ann Duffy's poetry does that (I should have added
her to my list of admirable poets) and much of Sweeney and Shapcott. Quite
a different sort of trend is to use the characteristics of formal poetry,
rhyme and metre and so forth, but in a more imaginative and less restrictive
way. I think that's quite interesting, and probably a Good Thing.
Does
poetry have any influence outside poetry?
Poets tend to be a bit gloomy
about this question, and worry that it doesn't. It's true that a lot of
poetry is read largely by those who write it, and there are precarious livings
being earned by poets taking in one another's washing. On the other hand,
poetry plays an important part in the development of language skills in
children; the techniques of poetry, at least, are widely used in advertising;
some poets have used their talents influentially in the their advocation
of political objectives (Ginsberg in the U.S., Adrian Mitchell in the U.K.
to cite two obvious cases); and the reading or writing of poetry has comforted
innumerable people in times of stress or crisis. Holub said that someone
had once written to him to thank him for his poetry. The guy was on the brink
of suicide, but after reading one of Holub's poems, had decided not to kill
himself, after all. That's an important influence.
Do you
see 'performance poetry' and 'slam' as sideshows or a return to the origins
of poetry as story-teller and social conscience?
It's probably heretical to say
so, but I don't think the origins of poetry are all that important to how
poetry is done today. It's like arguing about the origins of a word or an
institution: it can be interesting thing to do, but it doesn't necessarily
tell you anything about the current function. And it certainly doesn't give
any weight to how one ought to use a word or pursue an art to argue that
that's how people used to do it. Performance poetry does different things
from other sorts of poetry. (There's an implicit binary distinction here
that I'm unhappy with: there is a continuum between poetry that only makes
sense in performance, and poetry that only makes sense on the page.) Or rather,
it does similar things, but in a different way. Like any other style of poetry,
there are both good and bad examples.
Can poetry
and science live together?
Many of the concepts of science
are rather difficult, and this difficulty is sometimes masked by the attractive
and apparently familiar terminology, especially that of mathematics and
physics. It can be tempting to make purely linguistic use of terms like
charm, force, chaos, energy, incompleteness, and forget (or not realise
in the first place) that the technical senses of these word have only a tenuous
connection with their everyday uses. Then it looks as if one has constructed
a metaphor from science, when one has actually only constructed a metaphor
from the language of science, which is a much less interesting thing to have
done.
It's important that poets write
about science and technology, because they're part of our culture, and we
need to have poets commenting on all aspects of our culture. (Why do we need
this? I don't know, but we do, I'm sure.) There's a lot of good imagery and
metaphor to be mined in the area, too. I'm a bit depressed sometimes that
the majority of poems about science and technology seem to be critical of
it. I'm not against criticism, but there are good things as well as bad that
have come from science and technology. The ending of John Updike's poem "Cosmic
Gall" about neutrinos (which I otherwise admire (and like, and enjoy) greatly)
irritates me intensely, and I always itch to rewrite it. Yes, I do think
it's wonderful that neutrinos have the aloofness that they do, and that Updike
finds it crass I find very strange.
[In case you don't know it,
Updike's poem goes into humorous detail about the fact the vast majority
of neutrinos that reach the Earth from the Sun pass straight through it
without being affected. The poem ends: "... - you call / It wonderful; I
call it crass."]
But more scientists and technologists
have an interest in poetry than you might think, and that I find encouraging.
What
use do you make of the internet?
I have my own web site, on which
I display some of my poems, maintain a list of links to other poetry sites,
and publish various hypertext poems. I subscribe to a couple of email poetry
lists, which brings me into contact with other poets, with other outlooks,
which is stimulating. I used to be very active in CompuServe's Poetry Forum,
but I've not done much there for a while, because I found it was taking
too much of my time. I've had some poems published on e-zines, though I'm
afraid I'm reactionary enough to prefer seeing my stuff in honest print.
That's totally illogical of me, as far as I can see.
Is internet
publishing just a cheaper way of getting your poems seen by a wider audience,
or is it liable to produce new kinds of poetry?
The concept of hypertext poetry
is an extremely exciting one, and the Internet is an ideal medium in which
to create and display it. Well, almost ideal: the way in which HTML has
been developed, and the rivalry between browser developers has given rise
to some very frustrating incompatibilities. But the ability to provide different
routes through a piece, to make dynamic use of images, sounds, and layout,
strikes me as providing the potential for new kinds of poetry. It also provides
the potential for new kinds of silliness, but that's a risk with any technology.
On the down side, I wonder if
there's a tendency for the attention-span of an Internet reader of poetry
to be reduced. Some people prefer reading off the screen, but I tend to
be too conscious of my 'phone bill ticking away to concentrate fully. One
can download the page or print it, but some people don't like you doing that.
That might result in a concentration on shorter, more epigrammatic poetry
being preferred for Internet publication. Or it might be that people get
used to reading on- line and receiving large 'phone bills.
What
are you working on at the moment?
The requirements that the implementation
of Mobile Station Energy Economy mode functionality place on the interface
between Layer 3 and the Medium Access Control layer of the TETRA protocol
stack in a digital radiocommunications infrastructure. Oh, you meant poetry-wise.
I've been writing some poems using fairly simple scientific and mathematical
metaphors, and trying to see if they might form any sort of coherent sequence,
or are best kept separately. I'm investigating gently the possibility of
producing a light anthology of poems about food; this is in collaboration
with Diane Engle, a US poet I met via CompuServe. And I'm trying to win enough
competitions, and publish enough poems to persuade a publisher what an excellent
idea it would be to have a full collection of mine on their lists.
© Peter Howard, Ted Slade
1998
Ir a : [index] [firstpaper] [e-mails] [definición hipertexto]
[Obras del autor]
[Opinión personal]
[Bibliografía][Críticas] [Test02] [Test03] [Test04]