GW Professorial Lecturer in English Matt Fullerty, who is currently teaching ENGL 62 (Comedy) and ENGL 52W (English Literature), recently found himself in the middle of a national news story in the UK.
also the author of a pair of novels that feature the fictional mid-19th-century Russian detective, Porfiry Petrovich, introduced in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866): 2007’s The Gentle Axe (published in Great Britain as A Gentle Axe) and 2008’s A Vengeful Longing.
The more I thought about it, however, the more I wanted to do it. In the end, I sat down and I tried.
This issue we are happy to present Kathryn Simmonds, a poet and short story writer whose debut collection of poetry Sunday at the Skin Launderette was published to great critical acclaim and won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection.
Her idiosyncratic poetry is accessible and lucid without compromising on complexity and beauty. We thoroughly recommend you get hold of the book and keep an eye on what she does next. The Literateur expects great things from this new voice…
You have recently received a great deal of critical recognition. How has this affected your career as a writer?
I think when you spend a long time working on a book, the idea of it having a life in the world is fairly unimaginable, so it was a nice surprise when the poems found an audience. The fact that people seemed to like the collection is obviously a confidence boost, but there is still the problem of the next white page and the page after that, so in that respect it’s business as usual.
Much has been made about how unusually optimistic your poetry is. Jackie Kay has mentioned the ‘joy’ in your poetry, Stephen Knight has written of ‘the ebullience and optimism’. Yet I felt when reading your poems that they perhaps overstate the case. Do you feel there is an over-riding sense of happiness in your work?
It’s interesting that some reviewers picked up the optimism in the book because many of the poems were written during a particularly bleak period, so perhaps my efforts to transform the dross of despair have worked. I think anyone who writes poetry enjoys a good wallow, I mean, if you were feeling insanely chipper all the time, why waste time writing about it? There’s a poem in the book called ‘Against Melancholy’ which is about the ongoing struggle to resist melancholia,and this became a theme; in the end I want to engage with the world, find the bits and pieces that are sustaining, and I’m on the side of Wallace Stevens who said (in his delightfully sexist way) “A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.”
Many of the poems in Sunday at the Skin Launderette are formally structured. Do you set out to write, say, a poem in tercets on a given theme when you write or is structure something that you shape later?
I’ve found there’s something necessarily organic about the process of writing poetry when content and form develop together, so I try to listen to what the poem wants to be rather than forcing it into a particular shape. Sometimes this takes a great deal of patience because the process is as much about waiting and listening as it is about writing. The title poem is a case in point, it remained lines in a notebook for a long time and although I’d jiggle the lines around from time to time, I couldn’t work out how to write the poem. Then one day I realised something about the repetitive quality of the lines suggested a sestina and (after much gnashing of teeth) the poem came together.
You have published a number of short stories in magazines and have written a radio play for Radio 4. Do you consider yourself a poet first and foremost?
I’d hesitate to call myself a poet, that’s a title that has to be earned over many years, but in some loose fashion I’m a writer and I write whatever appeals. Writing poems alone might very well send me a bit bonkers, so I work best when there are various pieces of writing to turn to. I enjoy narrative and character, and I think there’s an interesting connection between short stories and poems, something about the limited space and the fact that stories, like poems, don’t always seek to explain themselves. I probably enjoy reading poetry over anything else and in that sense it’s my abiding passion.
Could you tell us of two poets you admire, one from the past and one from the present?
I love George Herbert. His only subject was his relationship with God, but he is never pious or sentimental, instead he presents all the sorrows and joys of his faith with a complete lack of self regard and in poems such as ‘The Pulley’ or ‘The Flower’ you can experience that struggle. He was also a superb versifier. Sometimes I think Herbert’s great subject is missing from contemporary writing, perhaps because poets don’t know how to approach it in an increasingly secular age, and I think that’s a pity because it is such a rich subject and one that seems uniquely suited to poetry.
There are so many excellent contemporary poets, it’s difficult to settle on one. But in contrast to Herbert I might pick Selima Hill, I admire her inventiveness and sense of fun.
What works can we expect from you in the near future?
That’s tricky, I wish I could tell you but I don’t know myself. I’ve been working on more ideas for stories so perhaps one or two may bear fruit.
Any burning ambitions?
I’d love to stand on stage in a West End theatre and belt out a tune from one of the big musicals, but unfortunately I can’t sing so I guess that won’t be happening. Other than that I’d like to try and write a decent stage play one day.
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The Literateur, 28 April 2009
If you ever watched the '90s cartoon show Animaniacs, you probably saw a segment in the program called "Good Idea/Bad Idea." If you've never seen Animaniacs, here's a two-minute compilation of some of the Good Idea/Bad Idea sketches (courtesy of Youtube). Hilarious!
Since all white people consider themselves to be “creative,” they are constantly in need of products and accessories that will allow them to capture their thoughts. One of the more popular products in recent years has been the Moleskine notebook. This particular type of notebook is very expensive and was quite popular with writers and artists in the olden days. Needless to say, these are two properties that are highly coveted in the white community. In fact, it’s a good rule of thumb to know that white people like anything that old writers and artists liked: typewriters, journals, suicide, heroin, and trains are just a few examples.
Much like virtually everything else that white people like, these notebooks are considerably more expensive yet provide no additional functionality over regular notebooks that cost a dollar. Thankfully, since white people only keep their most original and creative ideas in the Moleskine, many of them will only be required to purchase one per lifetime.
But the the growing popularity of these little journals, is not without its own set of problems. One of the strangest side effects has been the puzzling situation whereby a white person will sit in an independent coffee shop with a Moleskine notebook resting on top of a Apple laptop. You might wonder why they need so many devices to write down thoughts? Well, if a white person has a great idea, they write it by hand, if they have a good idea, it goes into the computer.
Not only does this help them keep their thoughts organized, but it serves as a signal to the other white people in the shop that the owner of both instruments is truly creative. It screams: “I’m not using my computer to check email and read celebrity gossip, I’m using it to create art. Please ask me about it.”
So when you see a white person with one of these notebooks, you should always ask them about what sort of projects they are working on their free time. But you should never ask to actually see the notebook lest you ask the question “how are you going to make a novel out of five phone numbers and a grocery list?”
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By clander, Stuff White People Like, February 24 2009
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