Interview by Zoë Brigley
That’s how a lot of my poems start really, a flimsy reference or a bad joke
Noontime Newtown
Easy girl easy the harbourmaster told me
like he thought I was his horse or stoppable
what are you doing running in this heat
why’ve you come this way at such low tide
I’d have been more bothered if the people
on the island didn’t treat their horses
so impeccably well, so I turned and first sat
and then lay down in the long grass
when out of nowhere a passerby said
she wouldn’t do that if she were me, she’d seen
an adder in exactly that spot and I thanked her but
I stayed there, defiant, shedding clothes,
not the slightest breeze to take my mind off
with them what was I doing running in this heat
but the tide came back, it couldn’t stay away
so in I went swimming, I set the fish leaping
in dismay Fuck! Off! they took it in turns to tell me
closer to my face each time they broke the surface
fins so thin and expressions so outraged as though
in the middle of sharp intakes of breath I retreated
and where I clambered ashore was one field away
from where we by we I mean me and my brother
it goes without saying we were walking, talking
about George Michael RIP about shame
and its behaviours, when a ram appeared suddenly
bolting and headstrong I wouldn’t say hostile
I’d say young and lost, no herd for miles and nothing
but sea ahead of him Don’t worry mates, I’m on the case!
cried a National Trust lady chasing three red setters which were
the colours of that evening, which were the best I’d ever seen
and we let the sun go down without catching him
and really, after all this, Newtown’s such a good place
on a grey day to watch an incoming storm, like when
we leaned on the boathouse and compared the thunder
to that which Edward went in RIP Granny Joan at his side
quote at the ready, or jolted into her brain like lightning
good night sweet prince and the rest her stroke
soon after, a real broken-hearter, made her nearly speechless
for the remains of her days when the doctor used flashcards
you know sheep. dog. fish. Fuck! Off! is what
she managed to say
the same way that salt will put a spring into soil
salt will make good wooden things much better the wood on
the walkway over the water is the softest I’ve ever known
why else would I have rested right up against it as I dried off
until I got splinters lodged in my temples until I saw
what I thought was a fencepost was a kestrel
because the fencepost was flying away
This poem has been replicated as best as possible for the website. To see the original formatting of the spacing in the poem, download the PDF below
I love the way in which this poem sets up themes of freedom and joy versus restriction and shaming. The George Michael reference immediately made me think of the great song ‘Let’s Go Outside’, which I see as a queer intervention into debates about sex, the body, and public space. Did the poem emerge intuitively or did you have a clear idea of what you wanted it to say when you started writing?
Ah that’s amazing, I can’t say I was deliberately alluding to it, but I adored that song when I was little! Sure, some of the references went over my head, but now I get them and I like the song even more. The bit when George sings ‘You say you want it, you got it, I never really said it before’ is still in my head on a regular basis. He’s quite a hit on TikTok these days. The George Michael Official TikTok account recently posted a clip of his duet with Whitney Houston, If I Told You That, and someone tweeted it saying ‘It’s literally unfair we don’t get to experience this level of talent anymore.’ It’s certainly sad. They were certainly very talented, and, to borrow your words, both had much more than their fair share of restriction and shaming, despite the freedom (this is turning into George Michael bingo) and joy they brought to many.
Another George Michael song which I very much had in mind while writing the poem was his duet with Elton John, Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me. The poem is quite a collage of memories from a particular place, and one such memory is a walk my brother (also called George) and I went on over Christmas 2016, just after George Michael’s death had been announced. The sunset was stupidly beautiful, so that song sprang into my head. And that’s how a lot of my poems start really, a flimsy reference or a bad joke.
This poem started with that first line though, and the sense of motion and breathlessness which then carried me through the rest of it, as I thought intensely about Newtown (on the Isle of Wight) and travelled through different parts of it, and different times in my life.
I am really interested in how your poem uses dialogue or speech. How did that come about? Do you use dialogue this way regularly?
A lot of my poems have speech in them – reported speech at least. And yes, reading back through it, I realise speech is an important part of this poem as a whole – the loss of it, the unsaid, saying the wrong thing. There’s the poem’s accidental patron saint again, ‘I never really said it before’. The use of speech in Noontime Newtown is a way of populating it I suppose. I struggle to write ‘nature poems’ without people in them – people interrupting, getting things wrong, trying their best, making things infinitely worse.
I know lots of poets would have no time for my instances of anthropomorphism, or all the humans in the way, but it’s reflective of my lumber through the world. Going back to your previous point about freedom/restriction and joy/shame, the poem is built around moments of liberation (the run, the swim), tranquillity (lying in the grass, leaning on the boathouse, resting on the bridge), recovery (retrieving the ram, regaining speech) which are often thwarted by embarrassment and calamity. That’s life as far as I can work out and, though it’s easy for me to say, that’s fine by me.
Could you talk a bit about how you use white space and gaps in the poem?
There are a few reasons I think. It’s partly that interruption again, the stop-starts, preventing anything from flowing too smoothly. It’s awkward pauses and missed opportunities. I’ve already described the poem as a collage and, as such, it’s messy. Some parts line up more neatly than others. It’s also, if you squint, a bit of a muddy estuary at low tide. I’ll see if the National Trust fancy putting it up with the maps in (the improbably named) Newtown Old Town Hall.