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Transcript of the John Tusa Interview with Paul Muldoon It must be nice to be Paul Muldoon. In case you don't know, he's a poet, he's 53, he was born in Northern Ireland . But not just any old poet. He's Professor of Poetry at Oxford , he's Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton too, winner of the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize and the Pulitzer Poetry Prize as well. He published his first traditional slim volume when he was just nineteen, he was snapped up by Faber Poetry within a couple of years and then received Seamus Heaney's public endorsement soon after. Nine slim volumes and a Collected Edition or two later, what more could a poet want? Critical acclaim? No problem. Perhaps too much of it, too easy even. Popularity. No problem there. Everyone likes Paul Muldoon, except, well, except those who see him as infernally clever. Too clever by half. All surface and no depth. Too much verbal games playing, without real connection with life. But there aren't too many critical voices like that either. So, what does he have to fear? With a job in the United States , a post in Britain , a wife, two children and a poetic fluency every other poet would die for, perhaps only the anxiety voiced by his great Irish predecessor Louis McNeice, this middle stretch of life is bad for poets. ____________________________________________________ But lets start at the very beginning, in your home. Were there lots of words at home? Astonishingly there were not. My mother was a schoolteacher, and I suppose that makes it even more astonishing that there were not so many books in the house. It's certainly not that we didn't read books along the way, I assume they came from the library, but there were very, very few books in the house. The one volume of poetry we had in the house was a book of poems by Rupert Brooke. That I remember. There were a few Lives Of Saints. There were a few Catholic Truth Society pamphlets. Hardly literature. Well, literature of a kind perhaps. One thing we did have though was an encyclopaedia. The Junior World Encyclopaedia, which someone had come down the road, presumably going from door to door selling, and we bought one, my parents bought one of these, and that was actually my main reading. And you just kind of devoured that randomly, did you, or encyclopaedically? I read it looking for a plot I think. But I began, I remember the first entry which was 'aardvark' and I was really enthralled by this series of bits of information. When you say plot and as you're known to be a punster, do you mean plot as in the sense of narrative story or do you mean plot in the sense of conspiracy, as after all you're in Northern Ireland ? Well I think actually it was more, er more the narrative, though mind you I've used that device actually in at least one book, and indeed several poems, of going to A to Zee or Zed, so I'm sure it had, it took its toll, made its impression in some way. In terms of the plot in the other sense that of course was always a feature of our lives. I was born in 1951. During the 1950s there was for example an IRA campaign, I was very conscious of British troops on the, on the roads. So there was always that sense that there was some kind of political activity, even then, even then. Just going back to your father for a moment. You described him as a digging machine, because he was a farm labourer, wasn't he? Did he express himself in words, because after all you don't have to be educated to be verbal. No, he was not particularly verbal. He was pretty much illiterate. He'd gone to school only until he was about 11 or 12, something like that. Then I think one shouldn't perhaps linger over the hardships. We were, we were not, in any way wealthy but we, we, we had everything we needed. I'm sure my parents denied themselves various pleasures to buy a piano for example, which we all faced serially, there were three children, I was the oldest. And we all tried to learn the piano and all of us, of course, failed miserably at it. And then they were, they were attempting I suppose, my mother in particular to improve us in all sorts of ways. They wanted you to get out of the life they lived through education? I think that was the plan, as it's the plan in so many instances. So we went to elocution for example. You notice how well elocuted I am [laugh]. Anyway that I'm sure failed too, but various, various, various ways in which we might be improved, I suppose. Now, the politics. After all, you're a Catholic family in a Protestant area, and some of your poems are about the rough treatment meted out by the Protestant B-specials. I'm trying to get at how deep was this, I mean I guess if you'd felt really threatened by this it would have appeared more in your poetry, but was this a very deep experience or was it just an inevitable background to everything you were and everything you write? I think anyone from that part of the world has been, you know, profoundly affected by the depth of their experience. I have to say that my family, as you say, was Catholic, and I suppose we were Nationalists, but we were not constantly hearing, certainly not from our parents, tirades about the state of the nation or anything like that. They were absolutely non-violent. So it wasn't as if that was a constant litany somehow. It's not something that you felt that you had to write out, either, as it were, write into your poems, or write out of your system. Well I think it would be strange if coming from there and attempting, as one is attempting to do of course, as a writer, to make sense of oneself in the world, it would be very strange if something of that, or perhaps even a great deal of that, didn't find itself into the work. What you probably won't find in the poems, of course, is anything that smacks of taking a particular position. That's not to say that I'm a person who sits on the fence, but I suppose that put very crudely I can see arguments on both sides as it were there. And I, frankly I think that's one of the things we have to pursue, all of us. We have to imagine, no matter where we come from, which side we're on as it were, what it's like to be on the other side. Do you think that is part of the contribution that a poet can give, as distinct from a politician. Instead of saying I am a Catholic and my community's involved in this way, and I will reflect that in my poetry in some way; to say I have to take a different position from the one that a politician would take. If one wants really to understand what happens in a society, one may discover as much, if not more, about a society, from its writers, as from its politicians. Because I think that necessarily they reflect the psyche of a society, the collective unconscious of a society. I think by and large writers are media for the ferment of their society. And it's a bruised psyche, if not, more than bruised, traumatised psyche isn't it? I think the Irish psyche is certainly traumatised, absolutely. But the Northern Irish even more so? I'm sure that's the case because that's lingered, that's lingered, that sense of there being unfinished business there. Of a wound that won't quite heal. Absolutely, and I think everyone is traumatised by it. And I think you said that the whole experience of the troubles deadened people's reactions. Well I think that one of the ways in which we deal with trauma is to, is to put it to one side, is to smother it, is to pretend it's not there. And you know, there's a rather large remark, I suppose, and perhaps inappropriate for that reason, but I think that there is a national trauma that we are, as a people, and I think we're one people rather than two at the end of the day. That's something that really has to be explored much more. Many more things connect us I think, than divide us. And we're all traumatised. We're living in post traumatic stress. And of course it hasn't gone away because one of your comparatively recent poems, you hear the sound of a heavy lorry in the countryside in Connecticut and it immediately evokes the memory of a lorry perhaps carrying explosives for a bomb in Northern Ireland and you say it brought back so much with which I had hoped to break. Does that show how this is still an unresolved issue for you. It is and you know, while I haven't lived in Northern Ireland for fifteen years, it's still very much part of the, I don't even want to say back of the mind, it's in the front of the mind, constantly. And in a strange way of course, now living in America after 9-11, the experience there is in many ways becoming much more like the day to day experience in Northern Ireland, where one automatically raised ones hands for example, going into a building, expecting to be searched. And I think there'll be a great deal more of that in the US . Your first writings. Did you think there was anything odd when you wrote your first poem, or did your parents say good god, what's this, it's a poem? The first poem I remember writing was about Charlemont Fort, which was an Elizabethan Fort in the vicinity of where we were brought up. And I was drawing some kind of connection between, or actually more, not a connection, a lack of connection between that and the modern world and the smell of gasoline. And the work gasoline was a word I was using at the age of whatever, twelve, and what I remember about that was that a teacher said 'gasoline? Do you mean petrol?' So somehow the American lingo was in there already. What did the parents think? You know I really don't know. My father as I say could barely read. But you almost, do you remember almost being surprised yourself that this thing called a poem had come out? Well, I started, I suppose in quite an educated way in the sense that I set out to write a poem rather than something else. The something else was the weekly English essay and rather than write the essay which was you know, going to be three or four pages long, take a lot of time, I wrote a poem, which of course was only a few lines long and took considerably less time. You got a credit for that. I got a credit, I was called up to the front of the class and I was asked to read it out, and I thought to myself, hey, you know, this is the way to go. But you said that you found actually writing prose, difficult. I do find it very, very difficult to write anything. To write any kind of sentence, be it in verse or prose, it takes so long er to write. I mean I find for example myself lingering over the most banal sentences in e-mails. That's partly because of course I'm used now to spending a great deal of time over every sentence. None of it comes easily, none of it comes easily, and of course the ambition I suppose is to make it seem that it comes easily. But as you know that's where all the work is involved. But if I ask, as I will, where, do you have any idea, where the ability to rhyme, to pun, to play and organise with words in a way which is not like writing prose, do you have the foggiest idea, apart from something deep in your genes and your mental wiring where this might have come from? Is there any external source? Certainly there was a sense that other people have done it. And I'm sure that's really important for, for all writers. In other words the sense that for example John Donne, had done it, and we were reading John Donne in secondary school. The sense that so many poets in the twentieth century had become involved in this activity of writing poems. That there was something normal about it. And I had teachers of course who, underscored the notion that it might be normal. One of them for example came back from Dublin virtually every weekend bearing stories of having been drinking with Patrick Kavanagh, so in other words poets were living rather than dead, and that's an important thing to realise for schoolchildren. Which is one of the reasons why it's very important for poets to go into schools. And the presence of T.S. Eliot, I mean that was the strongest single influence on you, I think you said, that you wrote an awful lot of cod T.S. Eliot, when you were an adolescent. I did. I loved Eliot, and still do and of course, as an example he's rather problematic, because like so many great poets he is, has so sui-generous, regenerous, that if one goes anywhere near him, of course one sounds like him. And one's parodying him, so I had to go in some other direction. And actually the direction I went in, of course was partly, partly, partly the direction of the other poets in the vicinity. The poets from Northern Ireland who'd begun in the mid sixties, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon. All of whom we were aware of when we were in school. That must also have been a help wasn't it, the knowledge that there was a Northern Irish Poetic community? Absolutely. And that really goes back to your earlier question. I think the sense that there were people who had been brought up twenty miles away, forty miles away, who were writing about bog holes, and fogs, and all the aspects of life that in many ways would not have been considered to be poetic. That in some profound way, I think, I felt I can do that. Yes. Without being unfair to Rupert Brooke, as you mentioned him, as that was the book of poetry in, in the home, that it was clearly very important that poetry could be about things that you knew about. It didn't have to be about posh things. Well there was that, yes, though Brooke has a great poem called These I've Loved, or These I have Loved, I can't remember what the title is exactly, I wasn't reading it carefully enough, perhaps. A great litany, a great list of elements in the world, by which he was taken, so it's not as if he didn't leave his mark as it were, but the lists I suppose that more and more occupied me were the lists of the local, the local places, the local activities, the jobs that the neighbours were involved in. And to be able to make sense of one's immediate life of course was I think very important. You know it's not as if, of course, at the time, or indeed now, that one's sitting around intellectualising any of this, one doesn't sit down thinking, at least I don't sit down thinking well here I am writing a poem which reflects this or that. I think what drives one, to go back to your earlier question, certainly what drives me, is the, the adventure of it, the adventure of it. You know, the hope that this time, as one sits down, and puts one foot in front of another, one metrical foot in front of another, one word after another, that something is going to happen in this verbal construct. Something is going to change. One is going to come out the other end, with a, not necessarily a life changing revelation, but a revelation of some kind, however mind. Something will have changed in the world, one will look slightly differently at the world. Something will have changed in the world or something will have changed in your view of the world, cos I'm sure you couldn't possibly hope to change the world, though readers might also see things in a different way when they've read one of your poems? Yes, I certainly don't set out to change the world. I suppose I set out to, and I don't set out with any ambition indeed, with any plan. What I set out with is the hope that I will be sufficient open to whatever it is that is going to construct itself through me in words. It sounds a bit highfaluting perhaps but that adventure of making the poem is, is what it's about and that somehow, it is necessarily a new thing in the world. These words will never have come in precisely that sequence and, I suppose one hopes that you know there may be a simile in there, a metaphor that in some sense does make one look again at the world. And by extension, of someone, the few people who might come to read, over one's shoulder, er might experience something of that. How do you write? Are you at a table, do you write in a notebook? Or what? Describe the scene for me. Well, I don't keep notebooks, I do keep er notes. I generally have a piece of paper in my pocket, I, I and I you know, note some stunningly brilliant idea there. It might be an image, a phrase, that strikes one as it does, I think with most of us, whether we're writers or not, as if we've heard it for the first time. Ah, so that's what that means, that's an interesting phrase. And of course if one's in the habit of writing, and habit, so much of it is about habit, one would make a note of that and then wait I suppose for the occasion when there might be a couple of images, that might conceivably, however disconnected they might appear, that they might connect in some way. I mentioned John Donne earlier on, and he I suppose continues to be the single most important writer for me. And as you know Donne and the Metaphysicals in general delighted in taking these far flung images and bringing them together, yoking them by violence together, as Dr Johnson said. He was hoping to be unkind. But I er, I think it's one of the great attractions of poetry, is to be able to do that. So I sit down then in the hope that if I bring together a couple of components, set them down in a little petri dish or whatever it might be and there might be some little chemical reaction, so there's a chemical aspect to it. But you have to give yourself time, presumably. I mean you can't dash a poem off in half a day or something. Are you? Do you have to set hours or days aside to the sheer business of writing? I do feel that the decks need to be demi-semi cleared. I've an image of George Simenon, as he set out to write his Maigret novels, I remember reading about how he er, he went to visit his doctor, you know, to check that he had a clean bill of health, he sharpened all his pencils, he had all his pipes filled, and set up and then he went into this extraordinary er trance, I suppose you might say and, and you know, worked furiously at his novel. And I suppose something along those lines happens. You know I've, over the years, out of necessity I've tended to write actually in stolen moments. At lunchtime, when I worked for the BBC for example I would, I would write at lunchtime, always little moments where I felt that I was doing something that in some sense I shouldn't have been doing. I should have been doing something else. But anyway, that, that continues, but I probably like the idea of having a little bit, a couple of days, say, to write your average poem. But is it also a question that when you're not formally writing, and when you're not thinking about writing that of course what's going on in your head, it is actually doing all sorts of subconscious work, which is then ready to appear when you sit down, and you have demi-semi cleared the decks. Well I don't know about that, I find that really I've no idea of what's going on, of course there may as you said be a huge amount going on in the unconscious. Indeed that's what one's delving into, er, as one's writing, but I don't really have a sense before I sit down of what I'm going to do. Now, having started the poem and perhaps spent a couple of hours on it, I have absolutely no problem with leaving it. And coming back to it a day or two later. It doesn't necessarily have to be done in one, one fell swoop. In that sense, certainly I feel that a lot of work is going on in the unconscious and I encourage my students for example, to quit while they're ahead as it were, not to feel that they must do it all, and of course they tend to feel, understandably perhaps, well, if I don't get it down this white hot image, this mercurial poem is going to disappear. Is it white hot, or is there an important cool element in writing? I think it's the negotiation between the white hot and the cool, between the unconscious and the conscious. Between the, what one might call the writerly aspect, and the readerly, because the writer is after all the first reader of the poem. He or she is attempting to determine, from word to word, from image to image, what the impact of the poem might be. That immediately conjures up the idea that there's a curious binary aspect to it, that you as writer are one person, and suddenly when the thing appears on the page, you are, of course, the writer but you've become the reader as well, and that's a slightly different character, so is, is that a correct description? I feel so, I'm very struck by the binary aspect of it, as you describe it, that it's like AC-DC, one is negotiation, and negotiating from moment to moment between the two conditions. But does that feed back? Does the reader, you as the reader then look at it, and check back to the writer and say, that doesn't work or it's not convincing? Is that part of the self-awareness process and the self-criticism process? Absolutely. One is critiquing it as it comes into the world, and it's a very, very delicate business, and one I'm not sure if I'm really up to describing. Indeed my own experience of it. I don't think there's a decent metaphor for it. But certainly one has to be absolutely open to the possibility of anything happening and yet, keeping an eye on it. Because I think you've said that there are the two aspects of it, the controlling and the not controlling. Now, which is the controlling aspect of it? Is that, that you say, I will now write a poem in a very difficult technical form and you're famous or, I mean not just sonnets, but sestinas and heaven knows what, that you love the ingenuity. At what stage do you, incidentally, set yourself the problem of talking a difficult form? How does the idea of the form knit in with the imagery? Well, in general I'd certainly like to be able to say, and in general, can say fairly confidently that the form is determined by the poem itself. Now that sounds a bit strange, I know, particularly when as you say in one, I, certainly many of these poems that come into the world in these rather, what would one say, outlandish, in many ways artificial looking schemas, and one certainly would not be writing a sestina without some sense of what a sestina is, or indeed what a sonnet is, but I rarely, rarely, rarely set out to write a sestina. For example, if we go through it word by word, line by line, when we get to the end of the first line, which of course by its very definition the turn of that line, the verses, what makes it a verse, one's getting into the second line, by the time one gets to the end of the second line, various decisions will be made. One of them will be, for example, whether or not it will be written in couplets, and if one gets into the third line, and, and it's not a rhyming couplet for example, it might be free verse right the way through, by the time one gets to the end of the third line, another decision might be made, is it going to be in some triplet form, might it, might it.. Is that, sorry, is that a decision? I mean in what sense is that a decision, or is it that the imagery is driving it, I mean if you can't find that there's an appropriate rhyme for a particular line, do you sit there saying, god, I've got to find a rhyme, or do you say no, what that is pointing me towards is a different form. That's right, that's right. Again, it's very difficult to talk about, but, ideally it tells me, what it wants to do, however strange that may sound. It could sound fey . My saying that? Yes. It may well sound fey, but I'm simply describing how it is, in my experience. I am a servant to the poem. May seem very strange to say that, but that's how it is. Frankly, I'm not a very interesting person, I think. I've nothing particularly interesting to say. What I'm interested in though is allowing it to have its say, and hoping against hope that it will say something interesting. The chances are that if I know something you will know it too, and vice versa. It might be interesting from the social point of view, but it's of no interest in terms of art, at least, for me. We should just have a cup of coffee. Absolutely, and the things that, let's say, you and I know together, about Northern Ireland politics, and I'd write it down on a piece of paper and its not at all interesting, and then when you write it, it becomes something different, so I suppose that, that is what we're talking about. Well what we're talking about there, of course, language operates in several ways. We may use language as a tool, or we may be used by language. And I think that's the distinction. But even if one's using it, using it as a tool, I think every one has had the experience of even in that sterile condition one might say of being used by it. Even if you're sitting down to write a report on an historical incident, it takes over. I mean obviously not to the extent that one's going to change historical facts, but one is involved in some sort of fiction making. And I don't think there's any problem about that. Even to begin to describe what one's doing during the course of the day, or what one has done during the course of the day, so much depends on where we start. I mean do we, do we proceed in a chronological way, or you know, do we take one particular moment, that might be particularly interesting and begin there? So many ways of doing it. So that I think is the distinction. I am used, used by the language, he said, gladly. Do you have more than one poem that you're writing at a time? In general no, I find it very hard to do one thing at a time, never mind two, and that's one of the reasons why I like to you know pretty much have the decks cleared of other forms of writing, and I do attempt other forms of writing. Write a little bit of prose, criticism of course. But on the whole there'll only be one poem. In general only one poem. Yes, and do you have others which are stacked up in the back of your mind. I mean Muriel Spark said that she used to have two or three novels stacked up in her mind while she was writing. Uh huh. I have a few always, a few little ideas lurking about, but I'm focusing on one generally, most of the time, you know. Do you mind being called too clever, and all that, the extraordinary technical facility, the facility of form, the ability to play with words, the intoxication of language, the euphoria of language I think people have almost accused you of, though whether that's an accusation is an interesting thing. Does it matter? It doesn't really matter to me. It's not that I'm immune to what people might say. Actually I, if anything I find it somewhat amusing, I really do. Because I can't imagine why anyone would think it strange that a writer would not be interested in words. That's what we're interested in, I mean that's certainly what drives me, is the engagement with the English language. Well what about the accusation that you lack engagement with real life. Now in the light of what you've been saying about, you know, writing about the everyday things of life in Northern Ireland, that may seem odd, but you know, this comes up as a thread in certain criticism of you, that, you know, it's all surface, brilliant surface, and then you get below and, I suppose people are saying, is there any pain there? I suppose I'd say that there is pain there, if that's what we're after, there is feeling. And certainly one or two people have mentioned that. Frankly, you know I don't think they've read the poems. Those who say that. I, I think it would be hard to read these poems and say, these are merely clever. But you know what, supposing some of them are merely clever? I'm not sure if that's necessarily a bad thing. I mean poems come in all sorts of forms, and if something is clever, I'd say on balance that's, that's better than it being dumb. Yes, it would be a bit of, whilst here lies a clever poet. Well, you know, I mean I don't think that, I mean honestly, who know, who knows, I mean I, actually I find it very hard to imagine anybody reading these poems at all. I mean obviously a few people do. Would it really matter if you thought that they didn't? Could the business of writing, for you, be conducted in a way that you knew that this was a solitary exercise and that you were the only reader? I'm not sure frankly if it would be the happiest of circumstances. I think, I mean just as human beings we like the idea that somebody somewhere might read this, of course, absolutely. You know in the poetry business, I'm going to use the word business, is a mistake to begin with, for the simple reason that so few people do read poetry. So one's not ever, at least I'm not ever sitting around thinking about the thousands of people who are going to be reading this. Are you an Irish poet? If you're not I'm not quite sure what else you are. I guess you're not an Anglo-Irish poet, because of your background, you couldn't be, but is there something about being an Irish poet that defines you, and that helps you in your self-definition? I really don't know. I mean I was born there, lived there until I was 35. It still, as I was saying earlier, preoccupies me, but other things do too. I've lived in the US for 15 or more years, and I do write about my day to day life there. And the equivalent of the bog holes, the equivalent of the frogs in New Jersey, because I think that's one of the things again that writers are attempting to do, just as we all, are attempting, quite independently of whether or not we write, to make sense of things. So if you ran away from Northern Ireland , you haven't run away successfully. It's tugging you back. oh, no, no, no. Of course, absolutely. But does that matter, I mean did you artistically feel that you needed a shift from Northern Ireland , that it was too oppressive? No, no, I didn't no. I enjoyed very much being there and I left there, basically I'd worked for the BBC for quite a long time. You mean you'd run away from that? Well, I'm thinking as you mention that of when I worked at the BBC, which I did for thirteen years, pinned over my desk, was a line from Dylan Thomas, which was, 'in olden times, poets used to run away to sea, now they run away to the BBC'. [laugh] And I enjoyed that, and I worked mostly in radio, did a little bit of television at the end, and frankly it was just beginning to, as you know, it occupies so much of one's time. Also, other things were happening, my father died, and of course I didn't, it was years before I, I put that fact together with the fact that I left shortly afterwards. That was one of the reasons why I'd stayed. You're still writing poems about his death and about your parents grave aren't you? Yes. Yes. Does that ease the sense of your acceptance of their death. That's something we have to continue to deal with throughout our lives. Mm. But going back to the question of identity. Are you now an Americanised poet? People have said look, the Americans don't give a Pulitzer Prize for poetry for somebody who they think is a foreign poet. That may be unfair, but are you to a degree Americanised? Yes, I must be, I must be, because it's, that's a prize for example that's given to American citizens. But, one can do several things at once. One can be several things at once. One can have lived in Ireland for all those years, now live in the US and write poems that reflect both those aspects of one's life. You know, it's not as if one changes overnight and becomes equal somehow to one's passport. If somebody suggested, look at the experience of W H Auden. He went over to America, and when he wrote in America, he wrote less well, they think, in a more sort of inflated way, and they say is this a danger for you? I don't know about inflated. Um, one of the things I love, and I mentioned the English language there, I love American English also. I mean it's a wonderful language - yeah, right? For example. No, no, it's a great language and there's so many influences so I, that certainly is incorporated into the poems nowadays. American culture, for better or worse, has played a huge part in our lives. I was brought up on American culture, and of course British culture, in addition to Irish culture. Some people also suggest, they say, look at the change, in the axis of your life. Belfast and London, that was the axis. Every Northern Irish poet was to-ing and fro-ing to Faber Poetry mainly. Now it's Princeton-Oxford. And the tone, I mean this is, I'll use the word, a posh axis. Has that changed you? I don't think so. Not at all. You know the Oxford job, Professorship of Poetry, is a five year term. I use that almost as if it were a jail sentence, and I've really enjoyed doing it, but that is a, it's coming to an end in May, and I'm glad it is coming to an end. It's been a huge commitment. I've sort of tried to do it as best I can, but I'm glad not to have the pressure frankly, of coming up with three demi-semi interesting lectures each year. And written in prose. Written in prose, yeah, very slowly. I was going to say, yeah, 35 years elder, yes, but from the child who found prose difficult if not impossible to the person who writes the Oxford Professorship of Poetry lectures. It takes me forever, it takes me forever. Nothing has changed. By the way, you know, the posh thing that you mentioned earlier, I go to Oxford for a couple of days, and I love being there, but I'm not really part of the, the scene there. Princeton I suppose in a certain sense is quite a posh place, but I don't think of it in those terms. I er, have wonderful students there, scintillating students one might say. What do you learn from them? I learn a great deal from them. For example I teach a translation class, and I, I look forward to their, they send in their work by email of course nowadays and I look forward to their emails, which of course come in at two o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning, four o'clock in the morning, they're furiously writing. But what they're furiously writing are translations of Horace, or Caesar or whatever it might be, a Japanese novel, you know, a German poem, whatever it might be. And that's an education for me. And I think that's one of the great things about being a teacher. One's forced to be demi-semi alert, and er, thoughtful. And what do you teach them? Well a couple for example, go against the grain of what is usually thought of as the mainstay of creative writing. One of them is write about what you know, that's a mainstay of creative writing. I say, write about what you don't know. What else do I say? Write one line at a time, don't be concerned about where it's going. It sounds a very strange thing to say, and they, they, they think I'm nuts half the time. But er, be content to let it again, find its way into the world. Give yourself over to unknowing, that's the most difficult thing to teach oneself or a student. Particularly when a university student has been led to believe, rightly in most cases, that they know a great deal. And suddenly for them to turn around and give themselves over to the possibility that they know nothing, in this particular context of writing a poem, say, that's to say that they go again to that place where they know nothing, then bring to bear upon it, much more of their intellectual capacity than er, they bring to bear in most other activities, in conventional academic discourse. That's quite difficult to teach, but those would be one or two things. Do you still push yourself when you write, to take risks? Absolutely. I suppose I'd like to say that the poem pushes one to take risks. And that's one of the great responsibilities which is rather difficult to see through I think, is to allow the poem to be what it truly could be. Not to be satisfied with it being something less. Not to be content with it presenting a minor-ish revelation, but to go to the point where one will really be knocked off one's feet. Do you find Yeats' comment, 'Myself I must remake', useful, and if so, are you at the stage, or is it continuous, where you are remaking yourself? I think one is constantly remaking oneself. It's I suppose a biological fact that in some sense one is remaking oneself. But of course there's a core, if one's lucky of obsessions, that are constant. I think from the writer's point of view, he or she is generally hoping to do something absolutely new. Here she's not in the least bit interested in writing a poem, in this instance that is not at all like anything they've written before. Now of course, from the reader's point of view, they'll look at the poem, they'll say, oh, well that's obviously written by T.S. Eliot, it's written by W.H. Auden, its genetic material is quite evident right the way through. You can see the DNA, the little watermark of the personality of the author. But he or she, I think ideally, has imagined that they're doing something quite different, and that's the only decent place to be, I think. Particularly to go back to your very first er line about, where you quoted Louis McNeice. Yes, 'this middle stretch of life is bad for poets'. Well needless to say one thinks a great deal about that. It's hard absolutely, and you mentioned Auden earlier on. I wonder if what happened to Auden in the States was that, I mean I think he's a great poet, but like so many poets, I think there was a little bit of a falling off, through his life, and that, that certainly is the case, I fear, for most of us. Yeats was able, successfully to remake himself in quite extraordinary ways, he was successful in improving, in so far as there is such a thing to meet the challenges that he faced as Ireland came into the twentieth century. But, er for most of us it's a fear, and I suppose one, it's one of the reasons that one's hoping that one has to keep oneself honest, and do one's best. Paul Muldoon, thank you very much. |
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