Interview by Beth Mcauley
“If you let your characters speak, you can give them enough rope to hang themselves: they reveal their own nature without the narrator having to comment; you’re showing and not telling”
Backchat
I help to clear the grass of dogs’ mess, glass and the odd syringe. We walk the pitch in a line like the police at a murder scene. From a Portakabin with metal shutters, the teams emerge. The sky can’t be bothered. The pitch’s heavy with dew that’ll mark the first skirmishes, dribbles and sliding tackles. My lad’s warming his hands down his Skins or trying for a top bin or crossbar challenge. One of three supporters, my chest swells as he lines up in midfield and I shout into the damp, Win the headers, to a son who ignores me. The blues fly into the reds, legs tangle, the whistle shrills. Their manager has the measure of it all: Fuckin’ hell, ref— what fuckin’ game are you watchin’? Soon, there’re stud marks in a thigh, a cut eye and their keeper subbed for concussion, standing behind the net and pointing. Then my boy clatters Seven from the side. Arms back, they’re forehead to forehead, ref prising them apart, their manager observing: Go on, if you think you’re fuckin’ ’ard enough. My son’s sent to the sidelines. Everyone resets. After five, I wander over, speech half-shaped: keep calm, let your football do the talking. Before I start, Jack shakes his head, Sin-binned. All I said was, ‘Ref, that’s disappointing.’
Skins—compression clothing
top bin—top corner
crossbar challenge—to hit the crossbar
Your choice of perspective is interesting, as the primary voice is that of an observer on the margins of a scene of intense sport. The voice, however, seems suspended in a state of anxious paralysis. Did experiences of movement and observance, of action and inaction, influence the poem’s form, and how?
The activity of watching a rough and tumble game of football played by young men with lots of ambition and testosterone didn’t lend itself to a set form, to quatrains for example. Once the game was underway and the tackles flying in, there was little pause, little structure that could be captured in a form. To look at it the other way around, a set form would seem to impose an order on a game that was without clear, set breaks or periods of play. The sense of the game being organically and naturally without progressive stages is also suggested by the many run-on lines that convey the relentless, fast action and the energy of the players.
Your poem has a polyvocal quality. Why did you choose to include quotations, and why these particular phrases? How important is audial experience within the poem, and how do intrusive voices engage with ideas of violence, and possibly sport?
Direct speech is sometimes useful to add variety to a poem, to give the perspective of the characters within the poem. In ‘Backchat’, the direct speech is, of course, different from the calmer narrator’s voice. Direct speech is also unfiltered and authentic, so the reader is getting the exact words of what is being said.
The poem works around the irony that bad language is accepted as normal but, in this instance, a plain statement of disappointment is regarded as offensive. Therefore, it seemed helpful to let both types of expression have space within the poem. Also, if you let your characters speak, you can give them enough rope to hang themselves: they reveal their own nature without the narrator having to comment; you’re showing and not telling.
I think the poem is trying to comment on male values and different ways to be. Although the ending might raise a smile, the poem describes the surreal and violent game. Ultimately, the referee, the person who is invested with power and responsibility, makes the wrong decision and is endorsing the violence that makes his job an unpleasant one.
The opening stanzas’ description of the environment focuses on rubbish – remnants of human neglect. Also, the line, ‘The sky can’t be bothered’ implies a mutual indifference between the human and the natural subject. And yet, the ‘damp’ and ‘dew’ seem to be atmospherically important. How did these facets of an outside environment influence the poem?
The natural world in the poem is neglected, people are indifferent to their world and how to care for it. A public space, such as a field, could be a celebrated and cared for locale. There is also the sense of a winter’s day with the damp and grey sky; football is not played in the summer. On this particular day, the sky seems to be contributing to the other grim aspects of the pitch and the changing rooms; in this sense it’s a bit of pathetic fallacy.
The dew, I think, is often regarded as positive, silver, delicate. In the poem, it is used to record the skirmishes, the overly vigorous actions of the players. In this way the dew is being used in an anti-pastoral way, until it is entirely wiped away by the game, it records action and plots movement; it’s more functional than visual.
