WEBVTT - Read This: Michael Ondaatje Is Learning Everything Again 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:03.520 Hey there, it's Ruby Jones. Each Sunday, we're sharing one 0:00:03.560 --> 0:00:07.280 of our favorite episodes from Schwartz Media's other podcast, Read This. 0:00:08.080 --> 0:00:10.799 The show features conversations with some of the smartest and 0:00:10.960 --> 0:00:15.040 most beloved writers from Australia and around the world. Today, 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:17.439 we're going to hear from Booker Prize winning author and 0:00:17.520 --> 0:00:21.159 poet Michael and Dacci. Michael Williams is the host of 0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:25.720 Read This, and he's with me now. Michael Williams, Hello again, 0:00:25.760 --> 0:00:26.280 old friend. 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:27.240 Hi Ruby. 0:00:27.840 --> 0:00:31.120 So, the writer on this episode of Read This might 0:00:31.160 --> 0:00:34.519 be most famous for his novel The English Patient, which 0:00:34.600 --> 0:00:38.120 of course became the even more famous film. But I'm 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:40.839 curious about when you first started reading his work. 0:00:41.479 --> 0:00:44.080 I have been an on dutchy nerd for pretty much 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:46.320 as long as I can remember being a reader, and 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:49.320 so I was a bit star struck in his company 0:00:49.360 --> 0:00:52.080 for this interview. I reckon The first one of his 0:00:52.200 --> 0:00:54.040 I ever read was called In the Skin of a 0:00:54.120 --> 0:00:57.200 Lion and it's a story of kind of workers in 0:00:57.320 --> 0:01:01.040 nineteen thirties Toronto. There is no reason why my little 0:01:01.080 --> 0:01:04.039 nerdy self in the inner city Melbourne should have found 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:06.760 it so resonant, and yet I did, and It's a 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:09.720 book that I returned to every few years. It's just 0:01:09.920 --> 0:01:13.600 this enduring masterpiece. And as a consequence of my love 0:01:13.640 --> 0:01:16.880 for that book, I'm a completist. I read his poetry 0:01:17.120 --> 0:01:20.440 and I read his fiction like so many others. As 0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:22.840 you said, the English Patient when it won the Booker 0:01:23.120 --> 0:01:25.560 became one of those books that everyonem obsessed about. But 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:29.160 his other novels like Annal's Ghost or The Cat's Table 0:01:29.319 --> 0:01:34.279 or Warlight all great. I mean, the man is a genius, and. 0:01:34.640 --> 0:01:38.120 You spoke to him about his latest poetry collection. But 0:01:38.200 --> 0:01:41.920 you also include something a little bit different in this 0:01:42.000 --> 0:01:43.039 episode as well, don't you. 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:45.480 Yes, we did go for a bit of a departure. 0:01:45.560 --> 0:01:48.920 Because episodes are relatively short, kind of twenty to thirty minutes. 0:01:49.160 --> 0:01:52.000 We normally don't ask writers to read from their own work, 0:01:52.240 --> 0:01:54.160 just because we can to get as much of the 0:01:54.280 --> 0:01:57.680 chat in there as we can. But when it comes 0:01:57.720 --> 0:02:00.280 to poetry, there's something a bit different. This collection called 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:04.080 A Year of Last Things, and it's really beautiful, but 0:02:04.120 --> 0:02:07.320 it has a very distinctive kind of almost a note 0:02:07.320 --> 0:02:10.799 of elegy. This is a book of poetry from a 0:02:10.840 --> 0:02:14.200 man later in his life, later in his career, and 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:17.240 there's this kind of wonderful, melancholy rhythm to it, and 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:20.480 the privilege of getting to hear him read from it 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:23.400 really was kind of next level. I nerded out in 0:02:23.440 --> 0:02:24.320 a very big way. 0:02:27.240 --> 0:02:30.320 Coming up in just a moment, Michael and Ducci is 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:31.600 learning everything again. 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:45.120 A Year of Last Things is a stunning book. As 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:47.080 I've explained, I was already well and truly in the 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:50.959 tank for Michael Bondacci, but this one completely bowled me over. 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:56.560 It's delicate and so so precise, and its meditations on memory, grief, 0:02:56.919 --> 0:03:01.600 and an emotional history spanning decades. At eighty on, Dharci 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:04.320 speaks with the wisdom of his age, but with the 0:03:04.480 --> 0:03:08.200 enthusiasm of someone much younger, someone who's still deeply in 0:03:08.240 --> 0:03:12.919 love with and energized by discovering his craft. For someone 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:17.480 with such an illustrious career, awards at Accolades International, acclaim, 0:03:17.639 --> 0:03:20.160 even a breed of spider named after him, I was 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:23.920 surprised that when our conversation began with me praising this 0:03:24.120 --> 0:03:26.880 latest gem of a book, Michael and Dauci was not 0:03:26.960 --> 0:03:31.240 only modest, but actually quite tentative about the response the 0:03:31.320 --> 0:03:34.840 collection might receive. So that's where I wanted to begin. 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:38.800 I would have hoped you would have the luxury of 0:03:38.840 --> 0:03:41.680 being through the nerves being racked at this point of 0:03:41.720 --> 0:03:42.680 your ridly career. 0:03:43.280 --> 0:03:46.200 Yeah, I hoped I would be easier, you know. But 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:49.800 it was a very different kind of book, more personal 0:03:49.920 --> 0:03:56.360 and more intimate and self studying to a certain extent. So, 0:03:56.920 --> 0:03:58.880 I mean, while that is always there in any book 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:02.280 you write, whether it's a not or book of poems, 0:04:02.880 --> 0:04:05.280 I hadn't written a book of portray for about twenty years. 0:04:05.320 --> 0:04:06.640 I think that was a big problem. 0:04:07.360 --> 0:04:09.640 I wanted to ask about that because it was handwriting. 0:04:09.840 --> 0:04:12.400 Was what ninety eight or thereabouts. 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:16.200 Yeah, But then I'd also written a book with a 0:04:16.240 --> 0:04:20.359 poet in it, in the book Divisadero, So I was like, 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:24.520 had my poet as a kind of the understudy or 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:28.520 something like that, and so be allowed me to kind 0:04:28.560 --> 0:04:31.520 of live aside another poet for a while, you know, 0:04:31.880 --> 0:04:32.599 in a novel. 0:04:33.160 --> 0:04:36.160 So did a year of last things? Did you sit 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:38.680 and write it as a book or does it represent 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:43.640 twenty years of fragments and poems that you have corralled 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:44.800 together into a book. 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:49.400 No, there were no fragments to depend on. But I 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:52.080 think what happened was when I finished Warlight. And this 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:54.599 tends to happen a lot with my books. If I 0:04:54.640 --> 0:04:57.720 finished a book like Warlight, where I felt I'd written 0:04:57.720 --> 0:05:01.760 as much as I knew about the novel, I realized 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:03.599 I had to do something else, like it couldn't be 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:06.480 another novel, you know, in the same way that when 0:05:06.480 --> 0:05:09.520 I finished another book of poems and I felt that 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:11.600 was as far as I could go, then I had 0:05:11.600 --> 0:05:14.880 to try and write a novel, you know, and change forms. 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:19.120 So I just felt I really wanted to change the language, 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:22.760 to change my language, I think, and it allowed me 0:05:22.839 --> 0:05:25.920 to kind of really leap into something I hadn't done 0:05:25.920 --> 0:05:28.599 for a long time, so really for about four years. 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:30.719 But the beginning of COVID. 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:33.520 Is that the sequence for you generally, you know the 0:05:34.160 --> 0:05:37.080 mode or or the form that you want to work in, 0:05:37.720 --> 0:05:40.400 and then that takes you where it takes you, or 0:05:40.480 --> 0:05:42.719 do you do you have a kernel of a story 0:05:43.440 --> 0:05:46.440 or an idea that then finds its form. 0:05:46.720 --> 0:05:48.559 I wish I had any of those, but I don't 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:52.320 have those things. I didn't have any poems. I just 0:05:52.440 --> 0:05:55.080 decided I wanted to write poetry. I wanted to change 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:58.560 my voice. You know. It's like another discovery of oneself. 0:05:59.160 --> 0:06:02.760 And I was very close to Wallight, but I just 0:06:02.839 --> 0:06:06.200 wanted to do something else. And so I've already spent 0:06:06.279 --> 0:06:08.240 about four years, three and a half years to four 0:06:08.320 --> 0:06:11.040 years trying to write a book of poems. I then 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:14.039 began to write these. You know, I felt very new 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:17.360 poems and very personal poems about me at this point 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:20.240 in my life as opposed to twenty years ago whenever 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:23.640 it was. And so it wasn't a kind of archival 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:28.880 book for me. I guess it's a rediscovery of myself, 0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:32.360 you know, in some kind of way. And I had 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:36.039 characters like you know, the poet and one of the 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:39.160 other books, and you know, a lot of happened for 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:42.880 me in the last while, so I felt I could 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:44.240 investigate all of that. 0:06:44.520 --> 0:06:47.920 You know, returning to a film like poetry, is it 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:51.080 like an actor returning to a role. I mean, do 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:53.640 you have certain things that you knew for yourself when 0:06:53.680 --> 0:06:56.520 you sat down to write that first poem for this 0:06:56.560 --> 0:07:00.400 book where you said, I know this is where these 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:02.480 are the muscles in my brain I need to exercise, 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:04.560 or this is how open I need to be on 0:07:04.600 --> 0:07:06.279 the line. Did it come back to you or was 0:07:06.320 --> 0:07:07.360 it learning it afresh. 0:07:08.200 --> 0:07:11.640 It was really learning everything again. I had no idea 0:07:11.640 --> 0:07:15.160 what the first line of poem was. Let alone you 0:07:15.200 --> 0:07:17.120 know the last line, you know, and of course rober 0:07:17.200 --> 0:07:19.480 Quidy has that line. If you know what the end 0:07:19.480 --> 0:07:22.600 of the poem is, you make that the first line 0:07:22.640 --> 0:07:25.680 of the poem. So you're not traveling towards something you 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:28.480 already know. And I think that's a very important remarking 0:07:28.560 --> 0:07:30.880 made for me, that you begin the poem not having 0:07:30.920 --> 0:07:35.360 a clue where you're going. So that was why it 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:38.320 was a bit nerve wracking, I think as well. And 0:07:38.360 --> 0:07:41.080 I hadn't shown the poem any poems to anyone. I 0:07:41.080 --> 0:07:43.320 didn't really talk about the fact that I was writing poems, 0:07:44.000 --> 0:07:48.600 so it was this sort of secret sharer situation. But 0:07:48.800 --> 0:07:52.480 it was energizing, you know, in that that sense. 0:07:53.560 --> 0:07:58.480 What's that relationship between not knowing where the poem's going 0:07:58.480 --> 0:08:02.400 it letting it be a process of discovery and writing 0:08:02.520 --> 0:08:06.000 poetry as so much of this book seems to me 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:10.480 to be about memory, about revisiting things in the past 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:14.360 and kind of excavating those and understanding them through poetry. 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:17.080 Except you know, there's a lot of fiction in here 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:20.280 as well. I don't think this is an archive of 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:23.280 what happened to me for the last fifteen years at all. 0:08:23.920 --> 0:08:28.320 And there's a poem in their definition, you know, which 0:08:28.360 --> 0:08:32.000 begains with looking at a Sanskrit dictionary and then just 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:36.079 wanders around all the possible fictions that are in a 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:40.760 Sanskrit dictionary, which was very exciting, you know. Coin washes 0:08:40.920 --> 0:08:46.560 about strange professions and so forth of a Sanskrit dictionary 0:08:47.920 --> 0:08:51.440 with its verbs for holy obsessions. The name for an 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:57.040 alcove of coin washers whose fingers glint all night with 0:08:57.240 --> 0:09:04.560 dark lead grains of soul. Here, root vowels take an 0:09:04.640 --> 0:09:11.840 accent at high altitudes, the way dictionaries speak over mountains, 0:09:13.080 --> 0:09:16.559 a single word to portray light from that distant village 0:09:17.200 --> 0:09:22.160 reflected in a cloud, or your lover's face lit by 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:26.480 the moonlight on a stage. That poem ends with a 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:33.240 sort of heartbreaking love form of loss. The ancient phrases 0:09:33.320 --> 0:09:37.560 give you the coin of escape. That epithet for those 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:43.160 who return to broken relationships repeatedly, will row you away 0:09:43.240 --> 0:09:50.600 from confusion or remain only for remembrance. This is how 0:09:50.920 --> 0:09:57.880 deep I was lost, my darling, And it wasn't even 0:09:57.880 --> 0:10:00.400 the fact that I was moving towards something that was 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:03.719 had happened to me. It was the only place I 0:10:03.760 --> 0:10:06.520 could exit the poem, you know, And there were two 0:10:06.559 --> 0:10:09.160 or three places where I could have gone somewhere else 0:10:09.200 --> 0:10:13.000 with the poem. And I think that kind of, you know, 0:10:13.160 --> 0:10:15.120 going back to Creeley, that was a kind of real 0:10:15.240 --> 0:10:20.040 excitement to find and guide the poem somewhere that I 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:20.880 hadn't been before. 0:10:21.440 --> 0:10:23.920 Well. I was looking at my copy of The Cat's 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:28.000 Table again last night and thinking about the way in 0:10:28.040 --> 0:10:32.199 which you use fiction and memoir, and then I was 0:10:32.200 --> 0:10:34.680 thinking about the way that you used poetry and fiction here, 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:37.760 and it seemed to me that you seem to find 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:39.800 stories in unlikely places. 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:43.160 Yes, I mean, I think in some ways Cat's Table 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:46.200 and this book are very similar. You know. It is 0:10:46.280 --> 0:10:49.320 like an autobiography of a life, and you know, the 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:52.320 young boy getting on a ship and then by the 0:10:52.360 --> 0:10:54.840 end of the book he's you know, he's bearing on 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:59.320 the BBC or something like that. Yeah, And I feel 0:10:59.400 --> 0:11:01.600 very close to book still, And in fact, some of 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:05.440 the characters in that book turned up here with the 0:11:05.480 --> 0:11:08.280 Barnabas and so forth. But it was like going back 0:11:08.320 --> 0:11:11.320 and saying, you know, but that book was about a ship, 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:13.600 but this is, you know, a different kind of more 0:11:13.640 --> 0:11:18.080 intimate loss or discovery, you know. So I think that 0:11:18.240 --> 0:11:21.760 was a pleasure to return to that place. I feel 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:24.839 very close to that book. And I mean a friend 0:11:24.840 --> 0:11:27.520 of mine wrote to me after the book came out 0:11:27.520 --> 0:11:30.559 and he said, you know, I always loved Running the Family, 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:33.840 and I always wondered why the hell you didn't write 0:11:34.000 --> 0:11:37.000 your sequel to that book, And here it is. 0:11:38.360 --> 0:11:42.679 I so love the way you talk about that relationship 0:11:42.679 --> 0:11:45.640 between writing and discovery. That there is clearly a real 0:11:46.280 --> 0:11:51.600 joy in letting it unfold and not operating on a schematic, 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:54.560 not operating on a kind of any preconceived idea. 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:57.840 Right. I think that's that's very essential. I mean, that's 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:01.640 not something I am conscious of, but obviously this is 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:05.439 something that I'm I will enter a novel, whether it's 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:08.520 Wallight or something else. We have no idea where it's going, 0:12:09.080 --> 0:12:12.160 you know, and rather like the crearly poem thing, the 0:12:12.240 --> 0:12:16.440 excitement is the discovery of the fiction much more than 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:19.360 getting it right. You can always go back and rewrite 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:22.520 the damn book, you know, the act of writing the 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:25.599 first draft and then writing the seventh draft, because I 0:12:25.720 --> 0:12:30.080 do a lot of drafts. It is really constantly exciting 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:33.520 to me, you know, in removing something and or having 0:12:33.600 --> 0:12:36.640 to put something back in again. I began this book 0:12:37.040 --> 0:12:41.480 very naively and very innocently, you know, nakedly, I think, 0:12:41.640 --> 0:12:43.720 because I didn't know where I was going to go. 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:48.360 So it has a lot of rediscovery as I'm writing. 0:12:53.400 --> 0:12:57.520 When I return, Michael discusses the physicality of writing poetry 0:12:57.760 --> 0:13:01.840 and reveals his one real weakness, illegible handwriting. 0:13:02.480 --> 0:13:14.280 We'll be back in a minute. 0:13:14.520 --> 0:13:16.840 I can't resist kicking off the second half of this 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:21.000 episode with another reading from Michael Londacci, firstly because there 0:13:21.000 --> 0:13:24.320 are few pleasures more acute than hearing a poet read 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:28.880 their work, but secondly because this poem, Last Things, gives 0:13:28.880 --> 0:13:32.600 the collection its name and beautifully captures the note of 0:13:32.679 --> 0:13:34.600 elegy that runs through the book. 0:13:36.280 --> 0:13:42.040 Three Below Dante. I had been alone for weeks when 0:13:42.080 --> 0:13:47.000 we met There Below Dante, the three of us lounged 0:13:47.280 --> 0:13:51.280 in a poncion. I was writing a book about a 0:13:51.360 --> 0:13:56.080 dying man. Twenty years later, you were in a bed 0:13:56.400 --> 0:14:01.679 on Brunswick Avenue and I kissed your feet. Conny. One 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:07.120 of my shy farewells it was your year of last Things, 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:14.559 but you were luminous within those final fires. Earlier, alone 0:14:14.559 --> 0:14:18.160 in that city, I had dreamed the statue falling brutal 0:14:18.600 --> 0:14:22.920 from its noble height, and the poet crawling through plaster, 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:27.720 so near to where we met in that piazza those 0:14:27.800 --> 0:14:35.120 years ago. Now we gather our days together, the countless meals, 0:14:35.920 --> 0:14:41.920 laughter and argument four of us at vicious Canaster, those 0:14:42.000 --> 0:14:49.120 small and essential faints, Marguerita's the dancing, and once drunk 0:14:49.160 --> 0:14:53.520 in a car on some island or other, all those 0:14:53.560 --> 0:15:00.120 small recalls of this and that before our walk a 0:15:00.200 --> 0:15:03.120 bus circus into the dark. 0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:13.600 You mentioned before that when you were writing in this book, 0:15:13.680 --> 0:15:15.920 I think you were saying the poem definition was the 0:15:15.920 --> 0:15:18.480 one that you had in mind, that it became clear 0:15:18.480 --> 0:15:21.080 to you as you were writing it that this moment 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:23.320 of grief and loss was the only way you could 0:15:23.520 --> 0:15:26.480 get out of the poem, that that was the natural 0:15:26.520 --> 0:15:30.800 culmination of the rest of kind of the work in there. 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:34.520 Grief and loss play a huge part in this book. 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:39.800 It is a book in no small way of those 0:15:39.880 --> 0:15:42.680 kind of themes and ideas, and in fact, in the 0:15:42.720 --> 0:15:46.400 poem that gives the collection its name. Last Things there's 0:15:46.480 --> 0:15:51.120 the beautiful line when you're reflecting and I kissed your feet, Connie, 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:54.840 one of my shy farewells, And it's a beautiful line. 0:15:54.880 --> 0:15:57.640 But in particular, one of the things that struck me 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:00.880 is that it's one of your shy farewells. You know 0:16:00.960 --> 0:16:05.440 that these goodbyes are clearly, if not common, then at 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:08.720 least lived again and again, right. 0:16:09.600 --> 0:16:12.640 Yeah. I mean in fact that that was a very 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:15.200 close friendship that Linda and I had with Leon and 0:16:15.240 --> 0:16:19.600 Connie Rooke, and we've not had known it for a 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:22.120 long time, and then she died of cancer. So I mean, 0:16:22.120 --> 0:16:25.000 it was the kind of how do you It's more 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:28.440 about the loss of that friendship within the four of 0:16:28.520 --> 0:16:32.440 us than anything else, and I just wanted to deal 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:34.160 with that, But I also wanted to try and deal 0:16:34.160 --> 0:16:36.720 with it intimately, you know. And the only thing I 0:16:36.720 --> 0:16:38.760 think was that the last time I saw her, I 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:43.520 kissed her feet as a farewell. It's just very intimate 0:16:43.720 --> 0:16:45.920 in a way. I'm not quite sure how to say this, 0:16:46.080 --> 0:16:50.200 but there was a real need to celebrate that kind 0:16:50.200 --> 0:16:53.040 of friendship as well as a love story and something else. 0:16:52.880 --> 0:16:57.040 You know, Also that idea that for the poet memory 0:16:57.080 --> 0:17:02.640 and Losser tied up with that communion between writing and 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:06.719 being read that the showing of the energy to someone 0:17:06.960 --> 0:17:10.080 is is the act of loving them and remembering them. 0:17:10.080 --> 0:17:14.680 If they're gone, then it's a kind of unclosed circle. 0:17:15.640 --> 0:17:17.600 Yeah. I didn't really think of all this as as 0:17:17.800 --> 0:17:20.280 an ellergy, but I mean, the element of energy is 0:17:20.960 --> 0:17:23.399 very central in this book. You know, even with someone 0:17:23.440 --> 0:17:25.520 you are still with, you know, it is a kind 0:17:25.560 --> 0:17:28.760 of a relief that when it's still with them, you know. 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:32.439 And there work poems that were also fictional because I 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:36.320 think that there's one point that takes place in a 0:17:36.400 --> 0:17:39.840 in a museum, and in fact it's not about any 0:17:39.960 --> 0:17:42.720 anybody I know, But it was just the idea that 0:17:42.720 --> 0:17:45.440 I was told to go to the Triassic period. I 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:47.640 had to go downstairs, and you know, it's suddenly that 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:51.320 that became a that became a plot. But it seems 0:17:51.440 --> 0:17:55.280 very personal and so forth. But in an odd way, 0:17:56.400 --> 0:17:59.840 the landscape suggests a possibility. 0:18:00.640 --> 0:18:02.920 One of the great joys of this book is about 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:05.600 the role of language itself. I mean, you mentioned the 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:09.639 exploration of the Sanskrit dictionary before, but even in a 0:18:09.680 --> 0:18:13.000 poem like Estuaries, where it's about language refusing to meet 0:18:13.040 --> 0:18:16.280 a reader. The poems, the form of poetry, the kind 0:18:16.320 --> 0:18:19.199 of interplay of language, is as much a theme of 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:20.960 this book as it is a feature. 0:18:21.800 --> 0:18:25.080 Yeah. The thing about poetry, especially after you we spent 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:29.560 about fifteen years on novels, is it allows you that 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:34.439 kind of quiet intricacy, you know, that can occur in 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:39.840 describing a very simple moment that you're not concerned with 0:18:39.960 --> 0:18:43.440 plot or the advance of the story or the introduction 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:46.560 and the character. It's very difficult to say, but I 0:18:46.560 --> 0:18:48.600 mean the pleasure of doing this book for me was 0:18:48.960 --> 0:18:53.800 I felt very intimate in the act of writing. And 0:18:53.840 --> 0:18:57.639 we are writing a novel, who are dealing with you know, 0:18:57.920 --> 0:19:01.480 Act one should end pretty soon, or or this character 0:19:01.520 --> 0:19:03.359 had to go to Asia at some point, you know. 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:07.159 And I mean, the novel allows you all kinds of 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:11.119 little sideways and to side turns and so forth, but 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:14.080 the poem can slow it down to just down to 0:19:14.119 --> 0:19:18.160 about three words, and that that is actually kind of wonderful, you. 0:19:18.119 --> 0:19:22.480 Know, Given the ways in which characters recur or stories 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:26.960 circle back in on themselves, do you return to earlier poems, 0:19:27.040 --> 0:19:30.719 earlier novels, or do you finish them and move on? 0:19:30.840 --> 0:19:33.520 Because you've already been surprised by that book. 0:19:34.040 --> 0:19:38.440 I do move on from having written that persona or personality, 0:19:39.240 --> 0:19:43.199 but I always continue to change that. You know, I 0:19:43.359 --> 0:19:46.600 really do a lot of drafts, and I then try 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:48.880 it on three or four people and I get the 0:19:49.119 --> 0:19:51.920 sense of it. I mean, I trust editors. I don't 0:19:51.920 --> 0:19:54.760 always agree with them, but I do trust them, and 0:19:54.800 --> 0:19:57.119 they will say, well, there's too much of this, and 0:19:57.880 --> 0:20:02.360 you modify or you clarify. The act of writing is 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:05.760 such a pleasure. You know, it's exhausting, but you know 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:09.359 you are really kind of inventing a story which you 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:11.560 didn't have. I have no idea what the plot is, 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:15.080 and that happens a lot in these books, in the 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:18.200 way that in the poem, Okay, I've got written four 0:20:18.240 --> 0:20:20.960 lines in this poem, and where's it going to go 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:28.639 from here? And that sense of surprise and discovery in 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:32.160 the poem is really a surprise and discovery of yourself, 0:20:32.920 --> 0:20:36.359 as opposed to you're not kind of putting on a 0:20:36.400 --> 0:20:41.480 play or a scene. You are really kind of intricately 0:20:41.920 --> 0:20:44.639 trying to know something about what you're trying to do 0:20:44.760 --> 0:20:45.200 right now. 0:20:46.280 --> 0:20:48.960 Has that changed as you've gotten older as a writer 0:20:49.200 --> 0:20:51.000 or has that been a kind of constant. 0:20:51.920 --> 0:20:54.640 It's been a constant. I mean, I think what's interesting 0:20:54.680 --> 0:20:57.639 to me was that the structure of the book became 0:20:57.680 --> 0:21:01.800 something very very important later on. That is, I'd written, say, 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:05.520 but forty or fifty poems that made up the book, 0:21:05.600 --> 0:21:09.080 but not in that order, so I had to do 0:21:09.119 --> 0:21:14.359 something else. So the chronology is not a pattern. The 0:21:14.440 --> 0:21:20.760 chronology has to be altered so that you can reveal 0:21:20.920 --> 0:21:23.960 more so that for instance, in this book, And it 0:21:24.040 --> 0:21:27.400 was something I discovered that I've listed all the titles 0:21:27.760 --> 0:21:31.400 on little index cards on a table. There's a lock 0:21:31.520 --> 0:21:35.000 poem the first poem, and there's a lock poem near 0:21:35.040 --> 0:21:38.080 the end, and then there was a lock poem somewhere 0:21:38.080 --> 0:21:41.080 in the middle. And I had no awareness of even 0:21:41.119 --> 0:21:44.800 the repetition of talking about locks. But suddenly, by placing 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:49.000 them there, it became adding a you know, act one, 0:21:49.040 --> 0:21:52.200 Act two, three, you know, having that kind of effect 0:21:52.400 --> 0:21:58.040 of by going back, and that was the pattern kind 0:21:58.080 --> 0:22:00.159 of helped I think the readers were. 0:22:00.080 --> 0:22:04.600 As me, and and that kind of sense of surprise 0:22:04.720 --> 0:22:10.199 that comes from the unlikely juxtaposition or the wilfully jarring transition, 0:22:10.760 --> 0:22:13.720 or the kind of elegant parallels. I mean, if I 0:22:13.720 --> 0:22:16.600 think right back to your first book, Coming through Slaughter, 0:22:17.280 --> 0:22:20.879 the ways in which you have written about music in 0:22:20.920 --> 0:22:24.840 general and jazz in particular, about that relationship between things, 0:22:24.840 --> 0:22:28.960 and that relationship between structure and play. Structure and play 0:22:29.960 --> 0:22:33.280 have a very intimate relationship in poetry, it seems to. 0:22:33.240 --> 0:22:36.840 Me absolutely, you know, it's just reputation of one word 0:22:36.920 --> 0:22:40.520 will also everything you know, and that's real pleasure of 0:22:40.600 --> 0:22:44.199 writing that you can kind of you're like from mad scientist, 0:22:44.359 --> 0:22:46.960 you know, with a load of game, and no one 0:22:46.960 --> 0:22:49.520 can come in the door until you've got that balance 0:22:49.600 --> 0:22:52.199 or something you know, And writing a poem is very 0:22:52.240 --> 0:22:56.439 physical for me. The voice, a tone, the loudness of 0:22:56.480 --> 0:22:58.480 a word as a huge effect. 0:22:59.119 --> 0:23:01.439 Do you read it loud as you write? Do you 0:23:01.760 --> 0:23:04.160 pace the room or is it? Is it all an 0:23:04.200 --> 0:23:04.960 interior thing? 0:23:05.400 --> 0:23:08.400 It's very interior. I mean, I don't have to say 0:23:08.400 --> 0:23:11.040 it out loud. But there was a time when I 0:23:11.160 --> 0:23:14.840 was especially if it's a novel, because no one could 0:23:14.840 --> 0:23:17.840 beat my handwriting, and I'm a very slow typist. I 0:23:17.840 --> 0:23:21.000 would have to read the whole novel onto a tape 0:23:21.040 --> 0:23:23.240 recorder and someone would type it out. But even in 0:23:23.280 --> 0:23:28.080 that last act of fixing things. I was changing things around. 0:23:28.640 --> 0:23:31.040 Your handwriting is so bad that you have to record 0:23:31.080 --> 0:23:35.840 it into a tape that people can transcribe it. Yes, 0:23:36.560 --> 0:23:40.080 I love that that it's wilfully obscure. The magic of 0:23:40.320 --> 0:23:42.600 the kind of the words that you create. The idea 0:23:42.640 --> 0:23:44.440 that on the page there in a form that only 0:23:44.480 --> 0:23:46.639 you can see seems kind of nice. 0:23:46.800 --> 0:23:50.639 I know. And the handwriting is genuinely bad, so but 0:23:50.760 --> 0:23:53.359 you know that it gives me a last chance. You know, 0:23:53.400 --> 0:23:56.399 it's like a dress rehearsal, so you can, oh, we 0:23:56.400 --> 0:23:58.240 can know there's too much of that going on here 0:23:58.280 --> 0:23:58.960 and take it out. 0:24:00.040 --> 0:24:00.879