Photo credit: Peter McGoran | Interview by Zoë Brigley
“All of the images had come together and started to work on each other, and then that word seemed a little like a lightbulb that could help illuminate the poem, sort of let one question fall across it, maybe creating a sort of (albeit fragmented and nebulous) whole”
poem for an imaginary marriage
If I had a ring what would it sound like when dropped at the side of the sink, the exquisite risk of it because only after I noticed I had written asleep rather than love did I recognise two states customarily felt as falling I have stopped before calling rain a redemption, leaves calling back the water they’ve already given up and the moon a wax mask of your fingertip abandoned on the dinner table my mind wrapped halfway round the image, which is, I suppose, one way of holding onto what you can’t see Because I’ve been struggling to find where one thing is handed over to another so I practise it over and over again, the grip and then the letting go, but in the end there’s this – when you’re the landslide I’m going to die under, and by die, I think I mean live forever
It’s funny how much longevity the idea of marriage has – the romance of it endures! And for many people, getting married is still the epitome of happiness. This poem seems to be more ambivalent?
For sure. But the word ‘marriage’ actually came very late to this poem. All of the images had come together and started to work on each other, and then that word seemed a little like a lightbulb that could help illuminate the poem, sort of let one question fall across it, maybe creating a sort of (albeit fragmented and nebulous) whole. Maybe it was an idea that was there from the start without me really realising it. But yes, ambivalence, and hesitation, and not being able to see everything clearly… if it’s a lightbulb it’s certainly low-wattage, and it casts a lot of shadows.
I’m at that age where more and more people I’ve known in life are getting married. As an idea, it still seems to glow with this notion of completion, of happy-ever-after, no matter how sceptical you are about it as an institution or about how long any marriage might last. It’s a ritual of hope, a ritual that plays with countering our sense of always being partial, incomplete, solitary, scared. But it can also be lots of other things that can be more dubious, frightening even. It flickers. I’ve been with my partner for nearly six years and it’s an idea we teeter on the edge of, but it also doesn’t really map onto the way we’ve chosen to live right now. In any case, the idea of an ‘imaginary marriage’ is a very different beast from real-life. So all of that’s there, I suppose, under the surface and around the edges. But having said that, I would be very reluctant to say the poem is ‘about’ the question of marriage in any straightforward way…
I guess I’m really interested in an expanded (or maybe stripped back) idea of ‘marriage’ as a sort of mechanism: the image of two people or things as one composite, both held and hidden inside each other, found and lost. What does that do to our idea of self or individuality? Of mortality? Of communication? And this certainly isn’t exclusive to the actual institution of marriage. The questions around this are active in any partnership, in any close relationship between two individuals or entities, between parent and child, even between the two interactive sides of a metaphor, I think.
This poem doesn’t explain everything but leaves the reader to wonder about the various images and scenarios. How do you decide how much to reveal and how much to hold back in poems?
I think one of the reasons I write poetry and think it’s important is because it permits so much ambiguity, permits a valuing of ambiguity that can get squeezed out of so many other parts of life and communication and knowledge. We’re inclined to look for answers, to be able to solve problems and categorise things, extract the facts, but poetry lets you sit inside the questions, the simultaneity and paradox of things, the rich, squirming dark spaces between images and ideas that might constellate, the unsaids and uncertainties.
Deciding how much to reveal or hold back isn’t really something I do consciously. (I’m pretty shy by nature and not inclined to be confidently absolute about anything, so that’s probably at play here too…) Often the images are there before I know what the poem is ‘about’, and after that comes to light, for me it’s often a matter of weeding out anything that’s getting in the way of the sort of ‘room’ I suppose I’d like the reader to find themselves in with the poem, and building on the architecture of images and syntax toward that end. And, vitally, making sure I’ve left enough space, enough silence…
I’d really embrace the idea (a la Barthes) that the reader is a collaborator in the writing of the poem, and so has to be able to get inside and participate in how things relate. Mystery (like ambiguity) is a wonderful thing I don’t think there’s enough room for in everyday life these days, and I like the idea that a poem can be a framework for specific and peculiar mysteries. That’s the ideal anyway! Whether it works out or not most of the time is another matter… our compulsion to tell is very strong.
The poem is written in couplets, except for the one line ‘Because I’ve been struggling to find where one thing is handed over to another’ which feels important because it stands out from the rest. How do you go about making decisions about form and where or when to break form?
That really varies, and instinct is part of it I guess… in general at the minute I’m trying to use the sentence as a formal foundation to depart from, to break into or interrupt or amplify or distort with line-breaks and white space, and sometimes by letting formal structures like couplets, stanzas etc. come in and play a sort of sculpting role. What comes to dominate form-wise can be thematically led. Here, for example, questions around twoness-vs-oneness are very active in the images that make up the ‘text’, and couplets felt like a natural way to help animate or reinforce that inquiry. But it also wouldn’t have been right for the poem to resolve into unbroken couplets…
I think if a phrase feels pivotal or like it could throw light onto the poem from a different angle, or like it might hold some sort of key to some complexity or irony, I’m inclined to give it space to hang and resonate on the page, leave it free to interact (maybe) with different parts of the poem or hover slightly outside of its other structures and clusters. Sometimes I make the wrong decision and throw the balance, of course. But I think I’m still happy enough with the silence I’ve left around this one.
