The Starbeck Orion Issue #8 A Festschrift of Bob Beagrie, Page 9 of 25
A Feast Of Words And Image
From This Game of Strangers, (sequence of poems written with Jane Burn) Wyrd Harvest Press, 2018
Bob Beagrie Festschrift Interview
Q:10. How did your collaborations with Jane Burn differ from the collaborations with Andy Willoughby?
Sampo: Heading Further North came from the exchange scheme and the trips to Finland me and Andy made, involving hanging out, talking while travelling, joking around, arguing, performing together. So, lots of those poems emerged from ongoing face-to-face conversations, a few others were written with us taking turns to add lines and phrases and then passing them back and forth, others we drafted out alone but then edited together. It is quite difficult to define exactly who wrote what in the book because of this fluidity of the creative process. Kids was similar although not quite as intertwined, but that too came out of a close working relationship, the co-delivery of workshops, the conversations around the young peoples' lives, the lack of opportunities, and informed by their often-traumatic experiences of neglect and abuse, and from us watching Chaplin's film together. Of course, looking at Sampo now, I can see certain poems that I know are more his than mine and vice versa, but the majority were co-written.
The collaborations with Jane were largely conducted remotely, primarily through email. We had initial conversations about the subject matter and agreed on a general approach, then I would send her a couple of poems and some contextual ideas and musings and because Jane is such an extremely prolific writer, a few days later she'd send me five lengthy incredible poems in response, quite frightening really! I'd read them and write a few poems in response, picking up on themes and tropes in her work and send them back to her. So the poems in both Remnants and This Game of Strangers are much more clearly defined and separated in authorship than in the books I did with Andy.
Q:10.1. Was the order of the poems in Remnants and This Game of Strangers decided between you?
Yes they were, once we had enough poems for the book we each made suggested orders, but as it happened they were pretty similar and this was because the poems had largely been written in conversation to one another so there were natural and organic connections between them and they followed a rough narrative.
Q:10.1.1. What was the subject matter agreed upon, and what changes happened to your approaches through the conversation of poems
For This Game of Strangers Jane suggested we write a sequence of poems exploring the dynamics between Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot. It obviously involved a considerable amount of research, and it was fascinating reading the different versions of the Arthurian myths throughout the ages and how they changed due to the politics of the various periods when they were popular. We wanted to explore the social constraints and the dilemmas between loyalty, desire and temptation, the power relations, the devastating consequences of the transgressions and the idea of blame and shame.
Our conversations explored the different versions and what they suggested in terms of changes within the social order, and how they would play out in our contemporary world within various cultures. For instance, towards the end of the collection is a poem called 'Variations on an Ending' which has five parts to it with each part providing a different version of the conclusion told from both Guinevere and Lancelot's viewpoints.
Jane Burn on her collaborations with Bob
