The Starbeck Orion Issue #9 Showcasing: Alan Parry, Page 2 of 25
A Feast Of Words And Image
Here's a link to Alan’s latest published writing: Peeling Apples:
https://amzn.eu/d/1wcrqRt
Festschrift Interview
Q:3. How important is form in your poetry?
Form only matters to me when it’s collapsed. I’m only really interested in the residue of form. I don’t write with a ruler in hand or wearing a sonnet crown. The metrics of traditional form are too tamed for the kind of work I’m chasing. I want poems that are feral, not polished showcases. Traditional form, for me, reads like taxidermy. Lifeless.
I want my line breaks to matter. I want my poems, my images, to rupture. I want the white space in my poetry to hang like silence after an argument. Whatever form my work has, it must serve the image, the ache, the urgency. Yes, there’s a kind of architecture to even my most fragmented pieces, but it’s held together by instinct.
The public at large think that poets spend their lives wandering through cornfields or dreamily conjuring up new ways to describe the beauty of clouds. Whilst I can’t deny that I have sometimes been inspired by clouds, I have, on the whole been drawn to poetry which inhabits the seamy side of life. Neon lights and rain lashed hotel windows is welcome territory for me. Alan Parry’s poem has all of this and screeching tyres…strong black coffee and the open road.Great.