I am on my way to see ‘The Shankly Story’ at Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre, so am quite excited. It’s the Press Night, and I’m told there will be hot scouse served beforehand.
Yesterday I was talking to somebody who dislikes the idea of writers’ residencies, and in fact she went so far as to say that money and patronage of any sort makes all art compromised and biddable. There was a time when I’d have agreed with her, but nowadays I think the real anxiety might be one of authenticity; specifically, the authentic poem achieved at the correct artistic temperature. Creating a context – I mean by offering a residency, or commissioning a specific work – is a contrivance that, some would argue, is increasingly taking the writer or artist away from their field of genuine interest and ability; like a kind of cultural long-shore drift. But this idea of the ‘real’ is incredibly compromised.
When I agreed to do the Wordsworth Trust residency – which is easily the most time consuming single thing of this sort I’ve done to date – I entered into it in a spirit of experiment; mainly, what would happen to me if I lived outside of the city for any length of time? And it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to try something like that. So I was in. But the writer always has to understand what he or she is getting into, of course. Will they be wheeling you out to perform over a snifter of sherry? Does it simply look good to have a couple of quatrains in an annual report? Shouldn’t the writer weigh anything of this sort against any licence, access and freedom of movement that might be feasible, and also the prospect of revelation and discovery? I think that last point is the most important: if you’re likely to be surprised or challenged in some way by your experience, then it might prove fruitful. Otherwise, you could end up copywriting.
This NPD residency has been interesting mainly because the theme – ‘work’ – opens up all kinds of nicely paradoxical relationships between writing, thinking about writing, and clearing (or buying) the space in which to think about writing. It’s an opportunity – too good to ignore, in my book – to try and show both how simple and complicated a business writing poetry is to as many people as possible. If I’ve felt less willing to talk about the work itself, it’s because I’m wary of offering retrospective accounts of how x or y happened. When I visited the power station, I instinctively knew something would come of it, so trusted my curiosity and instinct about the place. I wanted to go, literally, right to the centre of it. But you’re never really sure what you’ll find. Last word goes to Louis MacNeice, writing in 1935: ‘Poets do not know (exactly) what they are doing, for if they did, there would be no need to do it. So much of truth is there in the Plato-Shelley doctrine of Poetic Inspiration. Poetry is not a science, and it is more than a craft. This is why, when the poet tries to explain his work, he is much less helpful than the mechanic explaining an engine. But it is a human characteristic that the poet must try to explain and the reader to comprehend why, how and what the poet writes.’
This NPD residency has been interesting mainly because the theme – ‘work’ – opens up all kinds of nicely paradoxical relationships between writing, thinking about writing, and clearing (or buying) the space in which to think about writing. It’s an opportunity – too good to ignore, in my book – to try and show both how simple and complicated a business writing poetry is to as many people as possible. If I’ve felt less willing to talk about the work itself, it’s because I’m wary of offering retrospective accounts of how x or y happened. When I visited the power station, I instinctively knew something would come of it, so trusted my curiosity and instinct about the place. I wanted to go, literally, right to the centre of it. But you’re never really sure what you’ll find. Last word goes to Louis MacNeice, writing in 1935: ‘Poets do not know (exactly) what they are doing, for if they did, there would be no need to do it. So much of truth is there in the Plato-Shelley doctrine of Poetic Inspiration. Poetry is not a science, and it is more than a craft. This is why, when the poet tries to explain his work, he is much less helpful than the mechanic explaining an engine. But it is a human characteristic that the poet must try to explain and the reader to comprehend why, how and what the poet writes.’