Denni Turp: How I Wrote ‘How It Is’

Interview by Zoë Brigley

“It’s a funny thing with writing, as so much of the time I find I don’t really know where I’m going to end up with a poem… I guess what I’m trying to say is sometimes it does happen ‘organically’ and sometimes it’s more purposeful“

How It Is

Ac mi glywaf grafangau Cymru’n dirdynnu fy mron.
Duw a’m gwaredo, ni allaf ddianc rhag hon.
Hon, T.H. Parry Williams

And here it holds me in its grip,
safe,
sounding consonants that roll around
these hills,
a fi heb fedru mynd.

I was away once, never daring
in my head or heart to think
of how,
yng Nghymru, yn y gogledd,
roedd y môr yn dal i redeg
i’r traeth

while I was lost in streets
that gasped for air,
and how, dros y mynyddoedd,
roedd yr haul yn gwenu
while my heart wept
in hiraeth.

Mae’n wir, mae crafangau Cymru
dig deep into my heart,
refuse release—
ecstasy and pain—
ond dim ond yn y fan yma,
for me,
is peace.

T.H. Parry-Williams’ Hon used to be my favourite Cymraeg poem as a teenager, and I used to know it off by heart. How did you become interested in T.H.?

I guess I first fell in love with this poem (and others) when I was lucky enough to have to study three subjects in my first year as a mature student undergraduate at Bangor University, and Welsh Literature was one of my three. The course, including the end of year exams, was entirely through the medium of Welsh so, as I’d been here in Wales for just two years, and only three months or so previously had sat Welsh as a Second Language GCSE, it was a brilliant opportunity for me to get properly immersed in Welsh-language novels, poetry, and drama, as well as Middle Welsh (!).

To underline how much Hon immediately spoke to me, I’ll add that I’d first come to Wales on holiday some years earlier as a young mother, and something just clicked. I was heart-broken to leave, and went home to east London with a copy of Welsh in a Week which I’d bought in W H Smiths in Caernarfon—ridiculously over-optimistic as I knew no-one who spoke Welsh, and the three other adults I was with had zero interest. Eleven years later, when the opportunity to come and live here finally came up, I started to teach myself and then, once we’d arrived, I participated in my first Wlpan Summer School (also at Bangor).

I’d say that here, Gwynedd especially, is, for me, inextricably interwoven with the Welsh language, and the absolute love I feel for both is something that my poem tries to explain, using these particular lines from Hon in the hope of making that more resonant. Although perhaps I don’t have—indeed, can’t lay claim to—some of the duality and possible frustration that it expresses, Hon spoke to me, still speaks
to me powerfully because of that hold, that inescapability, that beautiful discomfort, and How It Is really is just how it is for me and how it has been since I first set foot here, and how it pulls at me if I’m not here. There is nothing I can do to change that.

You use some very short lines here, and it makes us regard the words used very carefully, appropriate for a poem thinking about language. How do you decide on line length in poems? Does it happen organically or is it more purposeful?

That’s a hard question to answer in any definitive way. I’ve been writing since childhood but, given my very working-class east London background, I never knew anyone who even read poetry never mind actually wrote the stuff, so I had no-one to share with, no networks of any kind. But I read loads, and as soon as I had my first Saturday job, I bought poetry paperbacks, especially the Penguin Modern Poets series. I guess this is a way of saying that I’ve been influenced by so many different poets as well as that I’ve had so much time to try out differing forms and all kinds of presentation.

In addition, although almost all of my writing is in English, I’d been trying out other languages every now and then since I was in my mid-teens—though not yet Welsh then, of course. I wrote How It Is as my response to the macaronic poetry prompt during ’52’, that wonderful year of weekly online prompts from the very excellent Jo Bell—to whom I will be forever grateful.

It’s a funny thing with writing, as so much of the time I find I don’t really know where I’m going to end up with a poem and, yes, sometimes that means the form, the line breaks and even if/where there are stanza breaks, does happen ‘organically’. That said, there are sometimes poems I do research for and which then have much more consciously determined structures. And then, of course, there is editing which often means the initial structure doesn’t work well enough or even at all so some of the changes will be of line length. I guess what I’m trying to say is sometimes it does happen ‘organically’ and sometimes it’s more purposeful. I tend agree with Denise Levertov:

“I believe content determines form, and yet that content is discovered only in form”
[“I believe poets are instruments”. The New American Poetry 1945-1960, ed. Allen. (1960) (Rpt. in Strong Words: Modern Poets on Modern Poetry, ed. W.N.Herbert and Matthew Hollis, (Tarset: Bloodaxe, 2000) p.102],

as well as with the great David Jones who described the way the poem appears on the page as working very much like a music manuscript.

The lines in your epigraph are my favourite, where he compares Wales to a dragonish lady who sinks her claws into him and drags him back. He can’t escape his origins. I think it is a little tongue in cheek, but still painful. How do you view your relationship with Wales?

I had those lines on the wall above my PC shortly after I started my undergrad course at Bangor because, as I’d mentioned above, they spoke so clearly to me of how I experience/d the hold of Wales over me and within me. In the late 90s, because of ageing parent responsibilities, I had to go back to live in east London. This was very difficult for me, and is referred to in my poem. Until I was about to return to Wales, I was largely unable to think about it, and certainly could not have just visited—the wrench was far too painful.

Relationships, good ones anyway, have to be reciprocal. Wales has given me so much: good under-and postgraduate degrees; in 2013, my first published poem, and with a Welsh-based magazine (Prole Poetry and Prose); a wonderful new language and all the history and literature that opened up for me as well as new communities to be part of in both the real and virtual worlds; amazing natural environments; interesting and worthwhile employment in the third sector as well as the public sector; and a sense of belonging. One of the many things I loved about Wales when I first came to live here was the very strong sense I experienced that this was a place where how you are, what you do, are of far more significance than who you are, what your material status is. And that this had been the way for a very long time was underlined by my PhD research into Arthurian fiction published for and read by children and young people: some of the differences in ideological presentation between work originating in Wales and by Welsh writers and that coming from England are quite stark. Of course, I recognise that in some elements of our society here, this has shifted, but it’s something I still experience very strongly in the community where I live and in other communities of interest in which I interact. I’m passionate about the language and the real history of Wales. I believe that we should and eventually will be an independent nation out of the control of our generally more right-wing neighbour (am I allowed to be so political here?)—maybe in a confederation of Celtic nations—and I’d be happy to do whatever I can to work towards this. In the meantime, I’m a member of our local community group, Ffrindiau Penygroes, which just aims to make our little environment better for everyone who lives here.

Back to my poem’s title: for me, it really is just ‘How it is’. I’m held here with my hope for this future:

Re-source/Sycamore

In Hebrew, the sycamore’s name is shikma, meaning to nurture, regenerate or re-establish
(treespiritwisdom.com)

You dust the streets with keys,
more and more each day. I

walk past hundreds flown
by last night’s winds, each

step, cam ar ôl cam, knowing
they will mock any attempt I

might make to hold them all.
Too cold to linger, angen symud

ymlaen, I wrap my jacket closer,
dropgaze down the hill to catch

a glimpse of sea, y môr annwyl
melodaidd hwn that spreads to Môn,

yr ynys glaer where Mynydd Parys
alone and silent now, still holds its ore.

Things deep are buried deep. Seeds
wait for spring, spring ar ei ffordd,

where keys are words, and language
dusts the streets with falling sound.