Shell Island (Waywiser, 2006)
Can still be purchased here: https://waywiser-press.com/product/shell-island/#description
Q: How important is music in your poetry?
A: It's important in two ways. In one sense I'm very interested in the lives of musicians (and songwriters in particular) because I see in them a kindred spirit. I have poems about Coleman Hawkins, Hank Williams, Duane Eddy, Fats Waller and Jerry Lee Lewis, all of whom have articulated something I could never have expressed through words alone. Writing lyrics for three albums with Mick Jenkinson has been seminal and a revelation. In the second sense, the musicality of poetry itself has been central. I'm not interested in ideas unless they're encapsulated in something that has a rhythmical value and, therefore, an inherent musicality. Common speech has musical values too.
Q: Looking at "Jazz Train", how important is form in your poetry?
It's central - and Jazz Train is a good one to highlight in that respect. I've always felt that the poem is more than the subject matter implies; that it is also the sound it produces and the shape it makes on the page. Being possessed of a form makes it distinctive and different, of course. to prose which, I think, performs another function altogether. The form is the lifeblood of the poem and is as important now as it was in the sixteenth-century. Certainly the poets I read and admire now are aware of the potential and possibilities of form.
The weight of history – The Friday Poem
Poetry is always a subjective experience. Often a reader’s understanding and enjoyment of any poem may be at odds with the consensus , or indeed ,the poet’s own intentions.
Approaching “Jazz Train” without reading the accompanying review , it fed into my own experience of jazz and trains in a pleasing and thoughtful manner.
Jazz and Trains have always been good companions in my book. The constant rhythm of the engine and the always improvised journey with its assortment of passengers and stories.
It reminds me of the actual “Jazz Train” which used to run between Huddersfield and Sheffield and how when I asked the drummer how big the band was , he told me it depended who got on down the line.
Their repertoire was flexible and uncertain at the outset and simply evolved as we passed through Barnsley and Wombwell and Meadowhall before journeying back at Sheffield.
On the way back , the music slowly blended into the dark night as the same musicians left the train one by one…