(upbeat music) This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for Your Life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you, and happy listening. - Welcome, sir. We're ready to see you. So, we always start on interviews by just asking the poet what, you know, about your choice of poem. So, perhaps, say something about the Blake first. - Yes, I chose the Blake because I did a very large project round, Blake, in Russia a few years ago. William Blake's pictures went to the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. And although he had been translated before into Russian, it was the first time that the Russians had seen his pictures as well as his poetry. And so there was quite, it had a really huge impact. And I think it really changed how the Russians viewed William Blake, which was really wonderful. And one of the things that I did was, I was involved in the translation of the book of "Inincidence and Experience" and with some Russian translators. And I was talking to them about all the poems. And a couple of them really stuck in my mind, and that was one of them. And it was really good to translate it because translating is obviously such a fantastic way of studying a poem that we found with extraordinary spiritual depths in it, I suppose. So that's how I chose Blake. But as a sort of principle, I chose Blake because he's such an independent writer and he has such an unusual and unique position. And I admire that greatly, to be somebody who was not at all recognized in his own lifetime and yet to keep going and to keep going so assiduously and with so little reflection. I think on his own position, is an extraordinary thing. - And the Charles Korsley, 'cause that seems to relate to the Blake. And he's obviously thinking of Blake, the Korsley poem. I don't know, Charles Korsley. - Yes, yes. - I don't know him at all, yes. - I can't recommend him enough. He's a wonderful writer. And he's, as a 20th century writer, who lived in Cornwall all his life. Perhaps some of you know Charles Korsley. And I'm sorry if I'm telling you things you already know, but he's, I'm so full of enthusiasm for his work because he was a very rooted poet. He lived in, well I call it long-tested, but I think it's actually pronounced completely differently. - How's it from now? - Right. - Lamson, I've spent my life reading it and I've never got there yet. And he went to see in the Navy in the Second World War so he's loved his poems around marine ballads like this one and he's got the most extraordinary poems about being at war and being on a ship and visiting all the different parts of the world. And so he's an amazing poet, but he shares with Blake completely, a completely independent spirit really. And again, something he just kept writing. I think he works as a school teacher and he wrote and he didn't ever really, he never, he never doubted, he just kept going. And I think that's a really extraordinary quality. So in a way that's why I chose both Blake and the Causing because they both represent people who have such a strength of heart really, but they don't think, you know, they don't doubt and it's something I admire very much. - When we were talking earlier on you were saying that you might have chosen David Constantine who came to poetry, it's just interested to hear why you were thinking that she didn't, David was very impressed by him myself. David's somebody who has actually had a genuinely very profound influence on me because he taught me, as an undergraduate, he taught me German and Russian, I studied German and Russian and German poetry. And he found out at some point that I wrote poetry and a friend of mine wrote poetry and a few other people wrote poetry. And he agreed to give up his time and just do a poetry circle for us. And I've taken an awful lot from that because he's a very, very generous teacher and an extraordinary poet. And I think his attention to the word and his feeling that, you know, there is nothing more important of being very influential in my own writing life. Although I think, I'm partly, I didn't choose him tonight because I know he's been to read here and not that long ago. And I thought perhaps I would look at something slightly different. And partly also because I'm, I read his poetry now as extraordinary of all. So I think he's a magnificent poet. But I see that in some way philosophically I'm not quite doing the same thing as him. And so I suppose it was a kind of marker for me that I have to add on something slightly different. - So I said, yeah, good, yes, you have to do. So I want to start off, I sort of lost me more about your life first and then talk about the book a bit more. I wonder whether you could just say, I was sort of more interested in this. And when did poetry and how did poetry enter your life? Reading it, writing it, how did it, how did it come about? Does it mean? - We don't really go. That's a really, it's a very good question. But I'm not sure I've written poetry for a very long time. Probably not seriously, but I wrote it as a child. But I read a lot of poems as a child. Probably learning poems and reading in the school, but nothing particularly radical. I do remember though, the only thing I've ever stolen after Mitch has ever done was a poetry book, which I stole from school, because I loved it so much. But at the end of the time, we had to hand them back in. And it was a very old-fashioned one called A Choice of Poets with a selection of various poets, including Edward Thomas and Deitch Lawrence. And you know, a whole range of different poets. And I loved it so much that I said I'd lost it, and I kept holding it, and I'd stop it on my shower. (audience laughing) - Were you a family interested in poetry or? - No, not particularly. No, in fact, I remember once, I remember my father once asked me to define poetry, and I started to say, well, it looked to me for this week. (audience laughing) So, you know, one of the things I want to do or I'll ask about is your Russian connection. The estate, your volume, the estate starts with this wonderful sequence of poems about a pushkin and setting that you, I know your state is a state. And you've lived in Russia for five years. So I'd be interested to hear how, you know, not only how poetry entity, but how Russia entered your life sort of thing. Presumably the Russian language and so on. - Yes, again, it's slightly hazy for me. I started teaching myself Russian when I was at school, and then I met her through a teacher at school. I met a woman in Brighton who was extraordinary. She'd left Russia in the revolution, and she'd come to Britain by some incredibly secure to shoot around Europe, and she was just extraordinary, and she lived in a flat, very close to my school in Brighton, and on the outside it was an ordinary block of flats, and then inside it, for like as one day, it was Russia, and the Samavar, you know, Russian pictures and a Russian divan, and we read check-off together on Friday afternoon. (audience laughs) And she used to make me a lemon teacher. She was very elderly by then, and so I did that. Then I went to Russia, and then I studied Russian, and then went back to Russia, and spent quite a lot of time doing the throwing, and yes, it's always important in my life, and I can't, honestly, and quite why. - And you just started teaching us that, Russian. - Yes. - Why, do you know, why in Russia? - I don't know. - Well, how old were you when you started teaching us that? - I was about 10, or 11. (audience laughs) - Anybody else teaching themselves? (audience laughs) - I'm telling her about that very, very nice. - It's quite unusual, isn't it? - I really did feel very drawn to Russia, and I went to a school trip, and I remember, then we had an inter-risk guide. You know, one of these incredibly, they were very sort of, then, when I went in the '80s, they were very, they'd been chosen, but for their political allegiances, and so on, to go around with Western school groups, and this man was kind of completely, sort of, unsched one. I remember that I used to go up and pass it in with questions in Russian that I'd learned, but not what I'm saying, of course. (audience laughs) What was that, that's what I was thinking? - I lost my jacket, so you started learning Russian then. I thought you wondered whether it was to do with your neck, 'cause when I first heard you now, I assume that Sasha sounds like a Russian name. - Just convince it. - Yes, it's not that your parents are particularly interested in all the things you want to do. - No, no, no, I don't think so. - And what about theater, 'cause, you know, I'll see you translate in "Nigorous Praise," you talk about check-off. Can you say something about theater and Russian theater, particularly, and your whole involvement in that? - Well, I started, I was working with the British Council, and I was the arts officer in Moscow, so I was doing a lot of theater work, and, you know, theater's coming out from Russia, and I was with them, and I was going back to see British theater companies, and talk to them about coming to Russia. So there was a lot of theater in my life generally, and I've always been quite an avid theater girl, so that really, really suited me. And then we started a project called "The New Rising Project," with a lot of young Russian playwrights, and there simply weren't any translations of their work, so I said, "Well, I better do a few, "so there's something to work with." And so that's how it started, really. I translated a few plays, and then found, I had a real appetite for it, and I really enjoyed it, and it was also a sort of urgency, really, because there was nobody doing that sort of work, then. There was nobody who was interested in new Russian writing and Russian, certainly not outside Russia, so it was a complete, just a vacuum, so there was everything to translate, and that's how I started working on the project. So then when I came back to Britain, I carried on working for the Royal Court, because, really, practically speaking, it was the same situation here, there was no one around who would translate Russian drama, and I just happened to be there, and happy to do it. - And what was it like working with the Royal Court? Did you enjoy it? - Yes, I like the Royal Court a lot, and I like doing the Russian drama. It was always quite odd, because most of the Russian drama was a real reaction to classical, so he had drama, so it was all completely obscene. And sort of highly pornographic, and, you know, it had all sorts of awful things happening in it, and mostly it was just, you know, kind of its sensitise. And so I'd sit in my house with this, you know, play in front of me, trying to translate and working out how to say certain things in English, like, "Think around with my friends," and I'd say, "I've got this race here, "and I just wanted to tell you to say it in English." (laughing) So it was odd, it was odd. - It was like a transition from one language, sort of through English, you know, to another language. (laughing) - Yeah, moving onto your work, you know, obviously Russia and Russian poetry have affected you very much your work. In the Guardian review, Paul Batche says it's a bit like the Edward Thomas in a conversation with Marina, I don't know. - Yeah, so the fact that there's this sort of meeting between sort of English, I mean, it's of English romantic or in pastoral sense, with sort of Russian and European poetry, would you agree with that? Is that your sense of your work? - It's so interesting, I don't honestly know, and it's very hard for me to judge. The only thing I can say is that what I was very impressed by in Russia and in Russian poetry circles and going to Russian poetry readings was again, but a bit like David Constantine, it was incredibly serious. It wasn't, there was no sense that it was a, something that you might do as a hobby. It was a, it was a deadly serious activity and you devoted your life to it. And there's something quite inspiring about being with people who think that poetry is worth that much. And so I suppose, even if I didn't take a lot of, I can't say I was highly influenced by any of the Russian poets, but I do think that seriousness is something really valuable. And perhaps in British poetry, which maybe at times, you know, it's the great form of Russian poetry is that it can spiral off into abstraction and sort of, you know, it's worse into stuff which just is abstract, no sense. The form of British poetry, it seems to me, it does the opposite, it's very happy to drop down into the everyday and sort of description of the everyday. So whilst, you know, it's quite a nice influence to have that simply, that seriousness, I suppose. Yes, you know, you translate it later in the charts, but you particularly drew on to her poems or, you know, was she an important figure for you? Yes, she was very important for me, I guess. I don't know, she was a poet of school. She's a very powerful poet. And after I did my degree, I was planning to do a PhD in Elena Scharz and Joseph Brodsky and I didn't get any funding and I got a job in Russia instead. So I took the job and I'm glad I did, but I always felt like I had some unfinished business and I had to come back. So I did translation in Elena Scharz and probably that was a much better thing to do because, you know, again, translation is such an act of homage that you, you know, it was almost a better way to have that relationship with Elena Scharz. And in fact, I finished her work and she was supposed to come over to Aldebra a couple of years ago and she rang me up and said she'd been having some stomach cramps and she couldn't come. And she died of cancer very shortly after that. So it was very, very sad. I almost met her more times than I can tell you and never managed quite to meet her, but translated her and always felt great closeness because when we talked about her poems on the internet or, you know, by phone, it was always wonderful to talk to her because she was so full of, she was very quick, alive person. So it's like it's very sad not to actually properly meet her. - And what draws you to translation generally? Because it's been now as being a fan-class, tense translation. I mean, in the old days, they didn't even, they didn't even sort of acknowledge the translators. What draws you to translation particularly? - Well, originally-- - It can't work, isn't it? - Yes, it is. I mean, originally it was a duty because there was so much in the new writing and also in Russian new poetry that was coming through and wasn't being translated at all by anyone or if it was being translated, it was translated by people who weren't necessarily that bothered. They just wanted to get a translation out there. They weren't going to spend hours fiddling with every line and that has its place too. I think that's, you know. So there was a sense that there was an awful lot of work that needed to make its way into English so that more people could read it. - And I don't know, and now I love translating. I love the sense that you're, there's a really great thing. You know, when Keats talks about negative capability and writing, and I've always been really struck by that idea of somehow undoing yourself in order to admit something great. So he talks about shapes, they're having negative capability. So the sense that you can undo yourself in order to enter into somebody else. And I liked that so much. And I thought that was a wonderful way to describe translation, which is quite a sort of, well, it's quite a sort of meditation in its own way because you do actually sort of undo yourself completely in order to climb into something that belongs to somebody else and find it again in English. So it's a very interesting thing to do down there. - Yeah, so let's move you a bit more to the work. I want to ask you a few questions, I've got a lot of questions. One of the things that struck me, for instance, is it's the use form in the books. So, you know, reading both Red House and the estate. There seems to be, this firstly, a really interesting form, it seems to me, is a lot of sonnets. You seem to be particularly drawn to the site form, I thought. You use quite a lot of rhyme, even full rhyme, which is quite unfashionable now. But there's also quite a lot of experimentation, I've found. You're such a quite particular use or not use of punctuation, for instance, or pose without titles. And so, as it fills me, there's this tension in the work between an honouring of the great tradition of form and a desire to experiment. I don't know whether that's a use for the book, but I wonder whether he says something about you and form and experimentation, at least. - I'm quite, yes, it's hard because, again, that is something that comes from Russia, of course, and up to, I mean, until now and even now, most poetry in Russian is written in formal metre and rhymes, I think there's some crazy statistic, like 3% of Russian poetry is written in free verse. So it's completely the opposite of the way the current here, I suppose. And so, and I've talked a lot to Russian friends, and I don't think this is why I do it, but it's certainly something that's interesting for me to talk about. And they, one of my friends, who is a particularly crucial group of authors, is a very brilliant translator of poetry, particularly Irish poetry and Yeats and Heenie. And he was talking about how rhyme is magic, because when you start a rhyme, you make a, it's like a magic spell, and you have to find a rhyme, and that what you find to rhyme with that word will take you off in the direction that you've never sensed was in the poem. And I've always really liked that idea that the poem would take itself off on a walk, I suppose, and through the rhyme. And I also feel sometimes that, in Russian people learn poetry, and they learn translations of poems, and they know, for example, many Russian people can quote burns, anything teets, and words worth, in Russian translation. And it's very widely done, people know poetry, they know it just by heart, and I don't think we do it the same way in us, but partly it's because it hasn't got back completely, it's a musical underpinning, I suppose. And the experimentation is mostly in punctuation, and it's interesting, I don't know, I'm glad you've said that, because it's sort of an interesting thing for me to reflect on the punctuation is very, very definite, 'cause whenever I spoke to my editor about it, she said, "Well, there's no full stop there, "so how you want it?" And I go back to it, and I looked at it, and I put a full stop in, and I looked at the wire, and then I put it out again, and he commented, it has to be has to be. And it's peculiar, actually, 'cause I think sometimes it does to look as if I've just left it off, but it's... - No, it feels very sunk, very conscious, and I had read it, hadn't I? Well, what it did to me in reading it, 'cause it meant I needed to be on my toes more when I read it, you know, how to read it. It creates a slightly different relationship to the poem, I thought, anyway. I didn't know whether that's where you didn't mind. - Well, it might be partly because that's when I'm writing it, that's also how I feel. It's not letting me listen to poem, it's not letting me come to a definite conclusion. Sometimes, yes. - In the sense of read house, it doesn't have a full stop at the end, is it the whole, the book that I was very struck by the last sentence, and it shouldn't have a full stop, well, I'll come back to the last sentence, but it sort of shouldn't have a full stop, shouldn't be either. That struck me, and then it sort of chimed back through all the punctuation in the sense of the way. But going, keeping to Russia for a minute, you know, I have very fascinating 'cause I don't know anything about Russia, I've never been there. I was very struck by your sequence, the estate in the estate, which starts the estate of the 2007 collection. It's really, it's about a popular legend about Pushkin. I wonder whether you say a little bit about it, it's such an interesting legend, and I was very struck by the sequence, whether you might just say something about that. - Yeah, well, I was going to Russia quite a bit to do seminars on translation, and we were translating British poetry and British plays in a place called Michalska, which is Pushkin's estate where his family and his ancestors lived, and it's the estate they owned. And it became a Russian, it's a really fascinating thing, actually, it's one of those extraordinary places. Pushkin is the kind of literary saint of Russia, patron saint of Russia in literature, and he's incredibly important to Russians, and most Russians know a lot of poems and, you know, so there's no real equivalent, I don't think, in Britain. But the estate Michalska, after the second world war, that whole area had been occupied by the Germans and been completely destroyed, really, and there was a very, very visionary man who took over the estate and decided that he was going to make it this museum place to Pushkin and to Russia. And with the most incredible, there was nothing there that was just Russia was destroyed. People were dying with hunger, and yet he managed to put together this wonderful reservation, really, round it. I mean, to the extent that, I mean, it's enormous, it's many miles squared, to the extent that there's a row embankment that stretches right the way across them. Originally, he had a row in line on it, and this man who took over the estate agreed with the government that they wouldn't replace this row in line, they'd leave the row in line out, because it was going through this special reservation where Pushkin had grown up. And so it's an amazing place, and even when Russia was falling apart in the 1990s, it was one of the few places that was kept absolutely immaculate. So all round the house where Pushkin lived, the drives were swept, and the bins were emptied, and the flower beds were, you know, we've stopped. And the '90s were a very difficult time in Russia, and a lot of Russia looked very drab, and it was really suffering. But Michaela's go was sort of place apart, some sort of mythical place. And it's enormous, and if you go there, there's Pushkin's house, and his various relative's houses, and a mill that he's supposed to place one, his poems on, and an amazing place. And it's also a very, very sacred place, because it's so untouched and so quiet. And I really see it, an opening for the London Buddhist Center. - Thanks, Russian. (laughing) - Fantastic. If you go to the summer, you cookies at midnight. (laughing) And bears, and wolves, and-- - You have to keep the bears, actually, but-- (laughing) - And hares, and hares. And there's a story that Pushkin, who was exiled there in the 1820s, do I mean that? I can never remember the dates. So 1820s, I think. Anyway, whenever the December startprising was in Russia, when a few people stormed with a person in the Petersburg, and demanding a constitution, and the people who led this uprising were all executed, or sent into exile in Siberia. And Pushkin wasn't there, although many of his friends were amongst those who were executed in exile. And the reason he wasn't there was that he was actually already exiled. He'd been exiled to Mikhailosko, which is a sort of very gentle exile, and his father had, I think, interceded on his behalf of the Tsar, and promised to look to spy on Pushkin, if he went to Mikhailosko. So he lived in his very uncomfortable relationship with his father, who was supposed to be spying on him. He was out on Mikhailosko. And he set off at St. Petersburg, and there's this legend that as he set off to meet all his friends, a hare around across his path, and in Russian superstition, folklore, that a hare running across your path is very bad luck. So he turned around and went to home, and if he joined his friends, then he would have been involved in the uprising and would probably be executed, or exiled. So that's the basis of that sequence about Pushkin in Mikhailosko. - Again, it starts with a summit, doesn't it? - Yeah. - Beautiful summit on the hare, it's quite a few. Yeah, actually, going on a bit more, I wanted to ask you something about some of the themes in the books. One of the first things that really struck me actually is that there's a theme of war in the books, but in both books. In the estate, from saying there's a terrifying poem called The Conscript, which, in a really frightened, is a terrifying, very, very frightening poem about someone being beaten up in an army on the barracks. There's a poem annunciation in Red House about Aaron's sense of rescuing children from the Warsaw ghetto. Yes, there's, through both cultures, there's a, there feels like there's a threat, quite lost, isn't there? There's a threat, one of the threats is of war. I wonder whether you, whether that's, whether you think that's right, and whether that's a theme that's there in the work. - Yes, it is there. It's partly, again, because of Russia, although it's not directly Russia. I think it's more the sense that living in Russia appeared when it was at war in various places, and, you know, particularly the Caucasus were, was very, was very, what was Russia was basically fighting but in the Caucasus the whole time I was in Russia. And, so I suppose that that's always there. And I think the other thing about being in Russia in the 1990s was that there was a freedom, suddenly freedom of, of, of expression for, you know, after Puerto Rico. And a lot of, what happened, I think, was a lot of people went back to Second World War or the Great Patriotic War, as it's known in Russia, and started talking about it freely and openly. And so some of that, I think, is, is, has found its way into the poems. That's, and also ghetto poem about Arina Zandra was actually some Russians I knew who were talking about her. - No, really. - You might say something about her. - Yes. - No, I don't know. - She was a woman who was actually nominated for a Nobel Prize at some point, but she rescued children from the Warsaw ghetto and she pretended to be a plumber or to be inspected with sanitation, took her plumbing kit with her and rescued children from, from their parents who were bound to die. So the parents had to give up their children and hope that they would be saved. And she rescued really an awful lot of children and then, and these orphans mostly survived. But she was caught, but she survived too, and she was caught and tortured, but she did actually, I think she, yes, got to the end of the war and didn't die, didn't die in the Second World War. And the, I'm just trying to think of each other. Yes, the poem about some, there's conscripts, again, a Russian thing that the Russian Soviet armies is formed of so many different nationalities and everybody's conscripted at a certain age and yes, they can find a reason, a good reason not to be conscripted, which people spend an awful lot of money doing. And there's a lot of, and there's just a lot of tension really in the army. And so I think that was a poem about something that somebody told me about their barracks, that they'd beaten up one particular soldier and it's basically, is it happens in the poem? I didn't, but it's a lot of. Yes, it is, it is very terrifying, isn't it? I was very struck by it. I mean, generally, I felt that in the, I would probably, positive things of me. (laughing) I don't want to be frightened, really. But I was struck by, you know, feeling that, of also that the positive human viciousness, in not just war, but also the human viciousness, though there's, in Belgium, which starts Red House, there's a line that says, "When the sun rises, "it will seem to our ancestors "that a new race has come out of the sea, "dripping with gold, cooler than the last." And that, again, that feels like a theme that runs through the board. It's a possibility of cruelty, the threat of it. Placed against, very often, in the poem, on beauty, placed against beauty of children, for instance. It, there's another, in Red House, she could say that there's a fear of rape, there's all kinds of, sort of, there's a lot of threat in the work in the poem, I don't know whether that's what you want to talk about more, but I was very struck by it. It's interesting, I did a review in Gossport, a couple of years ago, when I got to the end, the woman at the front of it. So you think there's not much comedy in your poem. (laughing) I thought I would just warn you. (laughing) Yeah, it's interesting. I think that that's actually the point where I diverge from David, and I mean in a completely, sort of literally, or poetic way, because I absolutely share his ideas about poetry itself. But I think that for David, when I read his poems, I get the sense that if we just do the right thing, and we sort ourselves out, then everything might be right. And it's a very, there's very something very reassuring about us poetry. If we just, you know, find that bit of love, and find that bit of, that thing that's right, then we will come through. And I think that, I don't know if it's because I'm part of a different generation, and I think that might be something to do with it. But I don't necessarily feel that way. I don't think I'm hopeless in the least, but I don't think that, you know, if we just find those, if we just get everything into its right place, things will be all right. And I don't, I think if you find me a generational thing, actually, it's probably more, 'cause I don't know. I mean, obviously that's very positive, 'cause it is set against very positive things. So there's a real celebration of nature in the Red House, that I'm thinking the wonderful poem, Dawn Chorus, and laughter. There's a real kind of celebration of nature. There's even a ton of fear about that, because there's, in the poem, "10 Moon," can you talk about? So, you know, there's this imagination of these moves, means that the wrecking can continue 24 hours a day. Because it's, again, a terrifying image, 'cause you expect poem about moons to be very positive, and something like what looks to be a romantic image, turned into slightly terrifying one. Anyway, I wasn't thinking just about that. (audience laughs) There's a lot of rejoicing in nature, there's a lot of feeling for nature in the person. (audience laughs) With that side of the film, don't you? (audience laughs) Would you agree? (audience laughs) There's nature, something that's important is that there's a feeling for the natural world where the clothes are in line. - Yeah, I think it's quite important to me, and it is a good count of balance for me, just because I think there's something you quite inherently safe in the cycles of nature, which, you know, and it's a literary commonplace, really, and I don't mean that in a bad way, because I hope it will always be a literary commonplace, that, you know, how often do you read about terrible things that have happened, and then, as they come to their clothes, you know, the birds start singing, for example, or, you know, you suddenly notice that, actually, it's not long till the trees come into it, but, and somehow, there's something very safe about the natural cycle. - Hmm, well, you turn that on its head, because there's one poem that I can't remember, which it starts with where, where a spring pluses winter, you know. (audience laughs) - I can't, but say, yeah, okay, let's move on. (audience laughs) One of the others, just one, two more questions, but the other, one of the other things that struck me is that the theme of motherhood and children, generally, is a wonderful poem in the estate called "Motherhood", which I found very, very moving, and there's "Wollstonebury" in Red House, and it's something that fishes dream. There's a lot of feeling about children, you've got children of your own, can you tell us something about children in poetry for you? - Yeah. - And motherhoods of them? - I haven't probably haven't written that many poems that motherhood, but I know somebody very cleverly wrote recently that you probably don't get too many poems about birth in early motherhood, 'cause you're too lacquered to actually hang on right about it. - Right, sure. - So, yeah, you're kind of mostly looking back, I think, which is maybe slightly misleading. But difficult to know what to say, really, I haven't written as much as I should have written about my children, but I suppose that's partly because, I suppose we're, right, I find the poems, again, I think it's something to do with this thing about everything that's going to be all right. I found a very straight kind of praise poems or poems that are about something that's absolutely wonderful, extremely hard to write. And they somehow, I think it's stuck in my throat, that makes me sound like a pretty twisted person. Somehow, you feel as if, you know, so many other poets have done that so beautifully and so wonderfully that as soon as you start looking at something that's extraordinary, you immediately turn to those poets and start thinking about their poems. So, okay. - What about, I want to ask you just a little bit about the sequence read house. It's a guess, it's a sense on it. Okay, it feels a very ambitious sequence to me, but it's both mysterious, it's unsettling, it brings in history, it brings in the threat of violence. I'm struck by the echoes of the King James Bible in it. Can you say something about the creation? 'Cause, you know, the first lie and the last line is the red house lies without the passion of the soul. Very unusual first line for a contemporary poet to be writing and the whole sequence is a very haunting and unusual sequence. I'm wondering if you're saying something about that sequence? - Well, it was written, it wasn't written, how can I put this? Some of the poems I've written have been started, I suppose, by looking at pieces of art. That was one of those. So, I saw a wonderful picture by Peter Daughey called The Red House and I started just thinking about that and so the poem is not all about that piece of work because it's very distinct in my mind, but it's certainly, looking at that picture started off a whole circle of thoughts and I'll read some of those poems. It's a sort of, I think it's called a crown of sonnet, so it's a series of sonnets with the first and the last line of the same. But beyond that, I can't honestly tell you what it's exactly about because part of me thinks that it's about writing generally and some of it is taken. And a lot of it is taken from things that I've seen or heard from people, various memories that people have given me. - It was interesting that 'cause that was very strong. I thought her poem at an open at Angora, which is a, I thought, major poem in the collection. It was very struck by your sympathy for the people you were writing with, a real sense of you inhabiting their world and seeing it from that point of view. So it's interesting that quite a lot of things you actually seem to be also to do with what you've heard from others and what your relationship with others. - Yeah, that's probably, yes, I think that's really true and I think that might be something to do with the translation and that it's always quite a good way to get into a poem. And I don't know possibly any form of art is by entering in through another's voice because if you're a freedom that you don't have or you start writing from your own voice 'cause you're freedom to express the things that you want to say. But somehow if you do it from a blue tango then it brings up an awful lot of other stuff. And I'd better finish, but finally, I'd like to ask you about the religious feeling about the poems, the sense of spiritual questioning the poems. There's a point in the Red House in the sequence we're just talking about when you say there is no addressing the Lord for we are playing beyond that. But isn't that white round a hole in the sky where he wants that? So that was where it's stuck by that. And again, he threw out the poem that the whole collection finishes with, your love is a walled garden and yet there would be no name that can contain it without full stop. So I'm wondering about the spiritual aspect. There seems to be, to me, a spiritual yearning in the poems and a sense of the absence of God from reading them. - Yeah, I think that's probably very true and probably something to do with, I mean, I was brought up a Catholic, although not a particularly, well, we went to church, but I wouldn't have said we were wildly devout, but certainly there's that kind of Irish Catholicism around that it's very cultural, really, and all about all sorts of other things apart from going to church and going to church is one of them. But, and I don't believe, and so, a lot of my childhood seems to be a series of rituals, which, and it's quite a hard thing to explain for me. I don't know if it's something that's particular to deeply cultural religions or if it's something that, I don't know, I mean, I'd be really interested to hear about your experiences, actually, if it's not something that I've ever managed to work out. But yes, certainly, I used to, I didn't go to church after when I was a teenager, but I did try and go back when I was at university and lasted a very short time, really, because. - And just to finish, have you got another collection coming out of this fairly recently, since the Red House came out of it? - No, I'm working on some poems at the moment, so I was saying, I'm working on some long poems, which is something that I haven't done before, and it's really fun to do, because it's a different pace, and I suppose it's different between a sprint and a marathon, really, it's hard, because you can't write from inspiration if you're writing a long poem, 'cause you just can't keep it up, so there's some different paying out of energy, which is fun to try and explore and see what happens. So I've just been writing about that. I've started writing a series about a sort of long poem, about two twin brothers, princes, and their father sets them to sail along the Seine, and they float down the river Seine in France, and it's such a brilliant scene. I think it was a picture that was painted, and it's in the art gallery in Rouen, I saw the picture, so I thought it's a great thing about that, and it's been great to do, actually, it's been a sort of wonderful thing to do, but that's about it, really, right? - Yes, good, well, thank you very much. Thank you, thank you, thank you. (audience applauds) - We hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate, and thank you. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
