Poet of the Month

I have a host/parasite relationship to my poems, fussing over inspiration until, oftentimes, it decomposes into ruins: host poems. From that non-process, new poems, unique, sprout from the loam, subsuming what 'nutrients' exist and become my better poems. They arrive, and within ten drafts I'm happy.

Influence can be overt, deliberate imitation, or more subtle, an absorption one is hardly aware of. I deliberately imitated Dylan Thomas in my adolescence and learned, along with some bad habits, much about formal technique from him – as from Donne, Herbert, Milton, Keats, Yeats, Hardy, Auden, Larkin, Hecht. In the writing of blank verse there is a long line from (dare I say it?) Shakespeare to Wordsworth, Browning, Stevens, Frost. Among Australians, Shaw Neilson, Slessor, Hope, Wright, Harwood, Campbell, Peter Porter.

When writing and recording music, I often just start with a technical ‘problem’. (How does parallel compression work? What does this plug-in do?) In contrast, the low-tech and ‘invisible’ nature of writing tends not to engender such creative problem-solving, so I admire those writers, such as John Tranter, who can embrace ‘proceduralist’ strategies.

I’m inclined to say poems are triggered, or ‘arrive’, rather than they’re the fruit of inspiration. The poem does have to be written, which is in itself craft. The best poems may need a little tinkering, but on the whole I’d rather not labour away at a sow’s ear. (Though I should say I value a real sow’s ear above a silk purse.)

Lesbia Harford would have been interesting to meet, because of her unconventionality and political views, in addition to the poetry. Earlier, Percy Shelley, for similar reasons.

I admire Jeremy Prynne, Clark Coolidge, Mina Loy, and Lyn Hejinian, but I don’t know whether they have influenced my work. To limit this list in time somewhat: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Eliot, Auden, Berryman, Ashbery, O’Hara. Among the Australians: Kenneth Slessor, Francis Webb, Michael Dransfield, John Tranter, Jennifer Maiden, Martin Johnston, John Forbes. Everything one reads or hears is an influence. The list seems infinite and includes songwriters such as Thomas Moore and Hank Williams.

Poetry is song, every word in every line must work, each word transcribed like a note, each line connected to a breath. Fine prose is song, too; each word in the sentence must earn its existence. Thought is both a god and a devil to the line’s ability to sing.