Interview by Zoë Brigley
“Within this poem there is definitely a sense of disclosing a long-held secret – a secret desire, perhaps – that fantasy of rummaging in the Blue Peter Badges, whatever that might mean. It’s as if the speaker has finally found their moment to say something, so they are going to say it all, let it spill out.“
I love you, Helen Skelton
After Kim Addonizio
You know, I’d love a rummage in your biscuit tin full of Blue Peter badges – the white one, the orange one, the coveted gold one. I bet you’ve got them all, Helen Skelton, even the diamond badge. Did they present it to you when you returned from Antarctica, all cold sores and black toes? I would have kissed you all the same, Helen Skelton – let you rest your manky feet in my lap, on the orthopedic pillow recommended by our physio, me filing your callouses. I wouldn’t complain. I’d just keep my eyes on Countryfile. And when you comment that you like Anita Rani’s wax jacket and welly combo, I clock right on to what you’re thinking, Helen Skelton: you’ve had your fun making crap out of yoghurt pots; you beat the crap out of that other girl when you trained to be a boxer; you’ve proven you’re the full package, Helen Skelton. And fuck that fuck-faced misogynist prick who chucked you out prematurely from the SAS programme. He’s an idiot. You’re the epitome of special forces, Helen Skelton. You’re the epitome of everything. So, if you’re thinking of asking, my answer is yes – I do think that this wholesome Sunday night tele programme is the perfect fit for your next hosting gig. You look so fucking hot in tweed, Helen Skelton. And even though you’re as old as me, you don’t have all the lines around your eyes. Is it because, while I was staying up all night and passing out over strangers’ toilet bowls, you were unleashing your pent-up frustrations on assault courses, and Sport Relief? Oh, Helen Skelton! I wish you hadn’t recommended back bacon and full-fat cream from the local farm shop to 6 million viewers. You know full well they sell vegetables, too. They’ve got beetroot, cauliflowers, field upon field of tenderstem broccoli. I love tenderstem broccoli. And I love you, Helen Skelton. I’d love you even more if you were vegan. Think of all the whole-food plant-based dishes we could cook together. Ditch the sausages, Helen Skelton! Please! I want to make bang bang tofu with you.
So to start off with, was this inspired by Kim Addonizio’s ‘Forms of Love’1 or was it one of her other poems? Tell me more.
What I enjoy most about ‘Forms of Love’ is the way it celebrates the dynamism of human love. Each of the forms listed could represent love for the same person, or for many people simultaneously, or even for the self – despite the often-contradictory nature of the loves described. I think it is brilliant the way this poem holds up human love as capricious and steadfast without making us believe that these qualities are mutually exclusive. A standout line for me is “I love you, but one or both of us is/are fictional.” This line sort of makes me wish that ‘I love you, Helen Skelton’ was written after this poem, because it suits the way I feel about my poem so well. In fact, the poem was inspired by Addonizio’s ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You, John Keats’2 (from Now We’re Getting Somewhere). The first draft of the poem was written in an Arvon workshop led by Caroline Bird. Caroline had heard Kim read the poem (Kim was also a tutor on the course) and then challenged the group members to write about someone they couldn’t stop loving. The first person who came to mind for me was the writer John Updike whose ‘Rabbit’ novels I fell in love with in my early twenties and whose gaze has since been like a pair of clunky glasses I wear involuntarily. At this point (the time I joined the workshop), uneasy with the influence I felt this ‘gaze’ had over me, I had been writing poems in which the speaker is re-evaluating her relationship with a man modelled on Updike’s ‘Rabbit’. A sequence of break-up poems, essentially. With Caroline’s prompt, I thought I might write my own “I can’t stop loving you, John” poem and explore the reasons I was preoccupied with my attachment to his work. I tried, but it didn’t feel right! One of the things I love most about “I Can’t Stop Loving You, John Keats” is its adoring tone. Addonizio is brilliant at using anaphora and repeated refrain in her poems. In this poem, the return to the formal full name, John Keats, alongside overfamiliar phrases like “I fancy you” felt so playful and adoring that I felt that the tone of the poem I needed to write about Updike was incongruous and couldn’t be written after a poem that was so joyful. It felt the answer was to write about someone I felt good about loving! That’s when I thought about Helen Skelton. I think she is wonderful! I knew there would be joy in a poem about her.
And what about Helen Skelton? This feels like an ode, but I like the feeling of women flirting in it too, women’s solidarity, the humour, and the joy that comes across. Would you describe it as an ode or something else?
Thank you – I’m glad all of that comes across. These were all very important themes to me when I was writing the poem. As to whether the poem is an ode or not, I’d like to think that it could be considered an ode to Helen Skelton: she is brilliant and certainly deserves to have many odes written about her! I like thinking about the ode as a form used to praise the strength and endeavour of ancient Olympic champions because Helen Skelton has completed some phenomenal feats of physical and mental strength and endurance including kayaking the entire length of the Amazon River. I’m in awe of her for this! If a key objective of the ode is to elevate and/or celebrate its subject, I hope that this poem goes some way to meeting that objective. I do wonder whether the poem has the ‘decorum’ that an ode is meant to possess. While the language of the ode is traditionally overtly poetic, some of the language of my speaker uses seems deliberately unpoetic, like when she says, ‘fuck that fuck-faced misogynist prick who chucked you out prematurely from the SAS programme’. The ode has a spoken tradition and I think this comes through in the colloquial language, but perhaps I would argue that this is less a nod to the ode and more a very self-conscious effort on the speaker’s part to establish a persona or voice of her own.
From that point of view I think this poem could be seen as having a confessional feel to it: the speaker has acknowledged that she and her subject, Helen Skelton, are the same age, and she has directly compared what each of them was doing at periods in their lives. I think there is a sense that the speaker’s feelings towards Helen are entwined with her feelings towards herself: perhaps she wants to be close to Helen as a way of being closer to a version of herself that she would prefer to the one she has. I think it could even be argued that the speaker is more interested in herself than she really is in Helen Skelton: many of the references to the life of the subject are factually inaccurate – the reference to Anita Rani being a Countryfile presenter before Helen, for example. There was a conscious decision not to look up any of this information as I wanted the poem to be true to the speaker’s experience rather than the subject’s. Hopefully this speaks to the reference made to Addonizio’s ‘Forms of Love’: are one or both of the people in this poem fictional?
My admiration for, and adoration of, Helen Skelton are genuine, and I do hope that this poem can be read as a celebration of her, but it feels as though there is more to unpack about the difficulty of trying to negotiate all the ways women might feel love for other women and for themselves as women. In this poem, there is certainly flirtation and attraction, and there is companionship, too. And solidarity. And joy. These are elements of an imagined relationship the speaker might have but they are also the dynamics of relationships with women in my life so perhaps the poem might be considered an ode to women’s love in its many forms. I’m thirty-nine, and I grew up in a time when popular culture pitted women and girls against other women and girls. This was something I subscribed to. I am grateful that my thirties has been a decade of falling in love with the women around me and finding joy in writing with them, exercising with them, reading their work, talking with them, dancing with them, supporting them, and being supported by them.
I enjoy the long line in this poem. Are there any poets you admire who use the long line well? I think that it is something that American poets tend to do, right, thinking back again to Kim Addonizio?
Yes, I think it was the long line that first drew me to Addonizio’s poetry. To me, there is a confessional feeling inherent in the long line: a pouring out of one’s thoughts without self-censoring. I think that is why I chose to write ‘I love you, Helen Skelton’ with a long line. Within this poem there is definitely a sense of disclosing a long-held secret – a secret desire, perhaps – that fantasy of rummaging in the Blue Peter Badges, whatever that might mean. It’s as if the speaker has finally found their moment to say something, so they are going to say it all, let it spill out.
I do find myself drawn to poems that are written with a long line. I think Ada Limón has some beautiful examples. I love ‘The Real Reason’3 (from The Carrying) which tells the story of why the speaker has no tattoos (though, as she says, it is not really her story to tell but her mother’s). I think Limón uses the long line here to brilliant effect. With some quite prosaic language and conversational interjections that the long line makes space for, it’s as though the poem wants to masquerade as straightforward narrative – perhaps even wants to play at nonchalance – when it is actually a highly poetic and compassionate rendering of a daughter’s love, respect, and gratitude for her mother. I think it’s really clever and very very beautiful.
I’m also a fan of Natalie Diaz, who often uses the long line. There is one particular poem I am thinking of – though perhaps its line might be considered medium-long(!) – and that is my favourite of Diaz’s poems, ‘Ode to the Beloved’s Hips’4 from Postcolonial Love Poem. It’s a stunning poem and I never read it just once – always at least twice through each time I look at it – because it is so packed with image and sound that I want to take away as much as possible. I think the line length is part of its magic: it allows multiple images to sit right next to each other. I love ‘Bone butterfly. Bone wings. Bone Ferris wheel.’ The poem is absolutely full to bursting and I feel that when I read it. I think that’s what I enjoy most about the long line: the potential for an unapologetically urgent, passionate, personal voice to build across each line’s length. While each of these poems is about someone else, it’s the speaker who is revealed, through the voice, through the line.
- “Forms of Love” by Kim Addonizio – content warning: suggestions of intimate partner abuse ↩︎
- Audio of ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You, John Keats’ ↩︎
- Audio and transcript of ‘The Real Reason’ – content warning: miscarriage, body scarring ↩︎
- Video reading of ‘Ode to the Beloved’s Hips’ ↩︎
