A Climb Through Altered Landscapes (Blackwater, 1998)
Editor’s Note: I first met Ian at a Mexborough Ted Hughes Festival where Steve Ely was speaking about Ted Hughes’ Vacanas. He invited me to attend the Mexborough Read To Write where I first experienced his excellent tutor and mentorship. I am indebted to him for encouraging my photography through commissions and my writing through regular opportunities to present it to the group. I was further honoured and delighted when he offered to publish a pamphlet of my sonnets, These Random Acts Of Wildness through his Glass Head Press. This festschrift is by way of a thankyou. It is also a way of celebrating forty years since the publication of his first pamphlet, Gargoyles In Winter.
Retrospective Interview:
Q:2. "Gargoyles" immediately places the reader in a place. Your next book was called "Altered Landscapes". How important is landscape in your development as a poet?
It's central. Even though my subject matter has changed over the years landscape has always remained a touchstone. Everything that happens takes place somewhere and those places resonate with associations. This might be the case with personal events or with national ones too. My poems that deal with social injustice try to connect those events to both an historical and geographical location. I've never been able, as a poet, to think of a concept without visualising a landscape which contextualises it.
Ian McMillan on Ian Parks
What follows are the full versions of the two poems Ian quotes: