Collected Poems

"When I walk around my garden or in the fields, I always carry a copy of R S Thomas, or if I am going off in my car to teach a poetry course, I will, without fail, pack R S Thomas in my luggage. I would pack others as well, like Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. Of the late 20th-century poets who have died, I think R S Thomas is fantastic. He’s so amazing even though he actually uses some very common language: ‘He’s died you know.’ It’s just what a person might say. There’s a wonderful poem called ‘Zero’, and in ‘Zero’ he says, ‘What time is it? Is it the hour…?’ It’s a fantastic short poem that brings in the whole mythology of Europe, and he brings it to a crisp punch at the end. I love his language. In fact, I knew him and liked him a lot. Yes, he was grumpy, but he was never grumpy with me because I was a woman and he was always nice to women: he liked women and young people. His poems mean a great deal to me and I learned to be a writer from poets like R S Thomas. He said, ‘Get up early and read something substantial.’ (You can just imagine it’s 4am and he’s probably reading Nietzsche.) ‘Then get a piece of paper and see what words will do.’ And I think I’ve always done that – not the early morning bit, but the ‘read something and see what words will do’. I think that’s really good advice and when I’m tutoring courses I always tell students that. No, I must admit I don’t, I’ve never done that. I used to leave my poems around and my son Dylan used to ask questions about things, and I thought if my 15-year-old son can understand enough to ask a question, then I’m probably doing all right. I also want to go to the edge of mystery with no audience in mind and I listen to the language, as my ear is most important. The words are round the corner of my head when I’m walking in the fields. When I get home, I pick up a pen and a bit of paper and the thing that’s in my head starts to get born. It’s a very strange, very mysterious process and you can’t will it. You can have a go and write a few things down, a phrase or two, but it’ll come or it won’t. When it works, you see something that connects with another something. For example, I’m looking at a river now, from a 12-floor block of flats, and I might have in my head something that occurred a few days ago. And when I look at the river, they connect and a spark occurs, so it all arises from language and metaphor: two images speaking to each other. For me, the pivotal thing is language, the sound of language, and that’s why I must read. I don’t think anybody learns to write poetry unless they read. Yes, the visual arts. I nearly did art in art college but my English teacher persuaded me to do English. But I also love music. I have two musical sons, but I can’t play anything, so all I do is listen – we have a family piano. I co-founded the writer’s house Ty Newydd in North Wales. I used to go to loads of primary schools, but these days I really value working with one group for a week, going deeper each day. But I also teach an MPhil in writing at the University of Glamorgan, to only two students. I’ve been contemplating how I’m going to plunge them even deeper into poetry and knock them about a bit (not literally). With poetry in schools, though, if a teacher is enthusiastic, then a whole class will be won over. Many teachers read poems aloud superbly. I don’t like actors reading poems, though, because I like ordinary human beings reading something they love. I read for something called Poetry Live; along with lots of other poets, we read to 100,000 GCSE kids a year. However, even though I’m allegedly reading to the kids, I’m reading and speaking in my head to the teachers. I’m really saying this to you, so that the teachers can go away and inspire the children. The emails I get from the kids show that they’re not put off poetry at all. My poem ‘Cold Knap Lake’ is being studied for GCSE and I get loads of questions from teenagers about it."