Poetry: Interview With Andrew Wilson...by Lisa Mangen
Monday, June 10 Admin2 |
|
|
Unregistered Guest writes "Andrew Wilson is editor of the poetry and new media project centrifugalforces.
Interview With Andrew Wilson
By Lisa Mangan
Biography
Andrew Wilson is editor of the poetry and new media project centrifugalforces. He says he is the least famous of the many poets from Huddersfield in Yorkshire, and his book Des for Pres about Des Lynam becoming President of Great Britain, is still available from www.poetrybusiness.co.uk.
As well as poetry he has written and directed a short film called Shoes, Rings, Fish, filmed in Huddersfield indoor market, which has been shown at film festivals in the North.
I met him at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature in October and bombarded him with questions from the floor of a debate on text poetry he was involved in. Not happy with that, I pestered him with email questions…..here’s the result.
1 You were involved in the Cheltenham Festival of Literature this year, tell us a bit about that.
As part of the Festival centrifugalforces launched the first issue of onesixty which is an ongoing text message poetry magazine. Writers can submit poems to it from our website www.centrifugalforces.co.uk, or as text messages from their mobile phone, then the magazine gets sent back to readers as fourteen text message poems, one per day for fourteen days.
2. Enjoy it?
Yeah, it’s been fantastic. I was looking forward to seeing what came in, and I’ve been really pleased with the results. So much so that I’m finding it quite hard to choose the best fourteen for the first issue.
3. Text message poetry, what's it all about? Is it any different from conventional poetry?
No. If it’s good as a text it’ll be good on paper, and the other way round. The difference is in how you receive it - the message symbol on the phone screen makes you clear your head for a few seconds, gets you ready to receive something new, and that space is just right for a poem. You can be sitting in a train station and get a text message poem about going on a train journey. If it’s a good poem, that can be really powerful.
4. How did you get into it?
I was sending and reading texts, and watching loads of other people do the same, and I just thought “Everybody’s writing, why don’t we all write poems, and send them to each other.” I was waiting for a bus on a rare hot day up here and wrote this one:
SUMMER DRESSES
weighing less,
folded up,
than tea towels,
on bare legs
and backs,
tanned
from holidays
and fake.
Then I sent it to a couple of my friends, who thought I’d been out in the sun too long.
That’s from June 2000 and so far as I know it’s the world’s first text message poem - though I may be proved wrong.
5. What's the point?
I can’t answer that without coming over all arty - the point is the same as any book or bit of music or film or whatever form of art you want to name: it helps us make a shape out of what is shapeless.
6. Will it last or is its temporary nature part of its appeal?
I think some of the best poems of the next couple of years - the ones that will still be read in fifty years - will be short enough to fit into a text message. And it will change the amount we need to write to call it a poem. My prediction for poetry fashion is this - poems are going to get a lot shorter for the next few years.
7. Any really good text poets emerging?
I’ve read a lot of good single poems, but the writer who has put together a few that are all great is Alison Dunne - Ivoryfishbone from ABCTales.
8. What's your favourite poem to date?
These two from The Guardian’s competition:
EADSTAND
I look at the clear
green
sky above.
Stars,
like daisies,
glinting all around.
theres a girl in my school and she is shy too i ask for her mobile number i ring her up and see if she needs a friend by stacey brewer
Neither of these two made the final shortlist of seven, and I’ve no idea who wrote EADSTAND. They’ve probably forgotten all about them by now, but they’re both fantastic. I’d have given a prize to Stacey Brewer just for being so nice.
9 And personally, which of your's do you like the most...and why.
This one, because it’s about my mum looking after my uncle, who was dying. I wrote it in my head while I was sitting in the hospital room with them then tapped it out later on my phone:
KNOCK
He lies
on his side
bones
like blades.
Each breath
a groan
his chest
gurgles
and knocks.
She wets
some tissues
pats
his forehead.
She’ll b here
hours yet
And this one, because it’s about my ex girlfriend who was always really funny, and it’s got a line from The Simpsons in it, which is always a good thing:
EPIGLOTTIS
What I loved most
wasnt eyes, lips, hair
but her favorite words.
Twilight -
camping out as a kid -
& what she used 2 call me:
baboon, baboon, baboon
10. Any particular words keep cropping up in this genre?
Themes more than words. I read about five thousand text message poems for The Guardian’s competition, which gave me a pretty good idea of what people use text messages for: to express love in ways that they can’t say out loud and to talk dirty to each other. Perfect subjects for poetry if you ask me.
11. Are you responsible for bringing poetry to the masses? (sorry sounds very corny but got to be asked!!)
Corny or not I’d like to be. The contemporary poets I like - Peter Sansom for example, who judged The Guardian’s competition - want everyone to care about reading and writing as much as they do. They never want to leave anyone out. I’d like to follow that lead - no-one should be left out.
12 Advice to any ABCtalers who want to give it a go?
Do it on the bus. The best time to write poetry is sitting next to an old lady with her shopping from the market.
Originally Published on ABC Tales"
|
| |
 |
Related Links |
 |
|
Options |
|
|
