12 or 20 (second series) questions with Ian Seed
Ian Seed's recent collections of poetry and prose poetryinclude Night Window (Shearsman,2024), Operations of Water (Knives,Forks & Spoons Press, 2020), and New York Hotel (Shearsman, 2018) (a TLSBook of the Year). His most recent translations are The Dice Cup, from the French of Max Jacob (Wakefield Press, 2022),and the river which sleep has told me,from the Italian of Ivano Fermini (Fortnightly Review Odd Volumes, 2022). See www.ianseed.co.uk
1 - How did your first bookchange your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? Howdoes it feel different?
My first full-length collectionwas Anonymous Intruder. I was already 52 years old when it was publishedby Shearsman in January, 2009. Finally I could begin to believe that I was notan imposter after all, and feel much freer to make writing a real commitment.
My more recent work is on thewhole based more on narrative, while Anonymous Intruder revolved morearound association of images and sounds. Nevertheless, the voices in Anonymous Intruder are spookily similar insome respects to those in my most recent collection, Night Window(January 2024). Perhaps the main difference now (from Makers of Empty Dreams(2014) onwards) is that my writing is much more likely to make you laugh (inthe best sense, I hope), while remaining, in the words of Luke Kennard, ‘shotthrough with melancholy’.
2 - How did you come to poetryfirst, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I first came to poetry when Iwas 17, studying ‘A’-level English. One of our set texts was the Selected Poems of Edward Thomas(1878-1917). I was fascinated and haunted by the melancholy and sense of regretin his poems, as much as I was moved by his observations of nature, hislyricism, and his narratives of encounters. At around the same time, I began todiscover that there was a wide and eclectic mix of poetry out there. Forexample, my aunt had the Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot on her bookshelves,and I remember being drawn especially to ‘The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock’,while, much more radically, my mother owned a copy of Kenneth Patchen’s Loveand War Poems, which is where I discovered prose poems, although I didn’tknow the term ‘prose poem’ at that time. Kenneth Patchen’s work was also myfirst encounter with surrealism. Then there was the Poet Modern Poetsseries of the 1960s and 70s; I was drawn to the likes of Alan Jackson, Jeff Nuttall and William Wantling in PMT 12, and Charles Bukowski, Philip Lamantia and Harold Norse in PMT 13. I loved the more minor poems ofDylan Thomas, such as ‘To Others Than You’ or ‘Twenty Four Years’ (‘ With my red veins full ofmoney,/ In the final direction of the elementary town / I advance as long asforever is’); I was not so keen on ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’, which Ifound (and still do) overly ‘poetic’. Mark Hyatt (1940-72) was a poet whofascinated me; I am so pleased to see his work now, fifty years on, finallygetting some of the recognition it deserves, and I have recently reviewed his Selected Poems: So Much for Life (Nightboat Books, 2023) for PN Review. Thisis all very male and pale, I realise (reflecting what was mainly on offer atthe time, even in anthologies such as Michael Horowitz’s Children of Albion:Poetry of the Underground in Britain), but I also loved Sylvia Plath’s Arieland some poems by Rosemary Tonks that I discovered in an anthology editedby Edward Lucie-Smith. My favourite poems I would copy into an exercise book tocarry around with me.
Reading poetry made me want towrite. Most of what I wrote was pretty awful, of course, but I got better tothe point where an English teacher, David Herbert, who was a poet himself,introduced me to the world of ‘little magazines’ and encouraged me to send somepoems off. I would like to say I never looked back, but after having some veryminor success with publishing – poems in magazines of the time, two tinypamphlets published, one self‑published pamphlet featured on local radio(thanks to a contact of David Herbert’s), I more or less stopped writing at theage of 24 and didn’t come back to it in any serious way until two decadeslater, when I had a kind of mid-life crisis – I am glad that I did. (If you’reinterested for more details on my writing journey, see https://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2022/06/seed-penguin-poets/ , https://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2018/10/discovery-rediscovery/ and https://ianseed.co.uk/background .)
3 - How long does it take tostart any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly,or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their finalshape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I tend just to ‘turn up forwriting’, even if it’s only for a few minutes a day, and then I go from there. Sooneror later, poems or pieces of short prose start coalescing around certainthemes, which I may then develop into a collection over a period of around twoor three years. I tend to write quickly and quite copiously but around 90% ofwhat I write does not make it into a published piece. Like most writers, I do alot of editing and simply playing around with language, imagery and narrative. Ofcourse, there are those rare occasions when I get lucky and write somethingwhich I suddenly realise reads the way it is meant to be without me messing itup in a second draft.
4 - Where does a poem usuallybegin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into alarger project, or are you working on a "book" from the verybeginning?
Poems usually begin when I goback to all my messing around with words and images, and see if I findsomething which I can then tease into a poem. I am definitely an author ofshort pieces that end up combining into something larger. Nevertheless, inspite of the lack of deliberate plotting, my poems and prose poems are usuallyinterlinked in any one collection, and can be read as a kind of continuousstory, albeit a fragmented one. Georgia Matthews, reviewing New York Hotel(Shearsman, 2018) for Stride magazine, suggested that readers will findthemselves invested in the characters and narratives as they would in a novel.(Perhaps I am really a frustrated novelist at heart!)
5 - Are public readings part ofor counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoysdoing readings?
I love doing readings because Ican see in real time how people respond to my work. And it’s always good to seea few more books being sold.
6 - Do you have any theoreticalconcerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answerwith your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I remember recently comingacross an old note written in my early twenties saying that I wrote ‘to createsomething of beauty and to move people.’ That may sound a bit clumsy and naïve,but I think that even in my youth my ultimate aim was not one ofself-expression, but of doing something interesting with language, imagery andnarratives, and sometimes rhythm and sound. Which is not to say that thereisn’t a lot of self-expression and hidden confession in my writing – there is.
I tend to let my writing poseits own questions without looking for immediate answers; the questions cansometimes be political ones, such as an exploration of our attraction tostrongmen (e.g. ‘Tutor’ in New York Hotel), but more often they are acombination of personal, archetypal and aesthetic ones.
7 – What do you see the currentrole of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do youthink the role of the writer should be?
This is a monster of aquestion, rob, and any answer risks being a portentous one. There are a fewwriters who are able to capture the spirit of an age or the voice of ageneration. Clearly, I am not one of those. In any case, I would not wish to hoistany role onto a writer, though they should take responsibility for what they sayand not use language to spread hatred.
I see my own role more tocreate poem-stories and to take readers into a world which will make people notknow if they want to laugh or cry, or both at the same time. As James Tate famously said in aninterview with Charles Simic for ParisReview, ‘Ilove my funny poems, but I’d rather break your heart. And if I can do both inthe same poem, that’s the best. If you laughed earlier in the poem, and I bringyou close to tears in the end, that’s the best. That’s most rewarding for youand for me too.’
8 - Do you find the process ofworking with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
It’s always good to getsuggestions from an editor. Even if I don’t agree, it will make me go back to mywork with fresh eyes. I am grateful to all my editors.
9 - What is the best piece ofadvice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Turn up for the writing – everyday, if you can, but if not, then on a fairly regular basis. It’s easier forpoets – we can work in short spurts; much more difficult for a novelist.
Have faith in the poem orstory; trust in where it wants to go, not in where you want it to go.
10 - How easy has it been foryou to move between genres (poetry to translation)? What do you see as theappeal?
I see translation as being justas creative as my ‘own’ writing. When I translate poetry into English, I ammaking something new. The appeal and challenge of translation for me is tocreate a text which is as true to the spirit and letter of the original as itcan be, but also reads naturally in English while at the same time preservingthe otherness of the original.
11 - What kind of writingroutine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day(for you) begin?
I tend to wake early and justhandwrite while lying in bed. I build lots of notes like this to go back toevery couple of days – this is where the next stage of writing begins, assumingthere is anything in my early morning writing worth taking further; if not, nomatter: there will be the next day, or the day after that.
12 - When your writing getsstalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word)inspiration?
I like to reread authors I findliberating through their use of language, for example John Ashbery, Mark Ford,Sheila E Murphy, Jeremy Over.
Or I will return to authors whomay reflect the mood I’m in, such as Lucy Hamilton or Mark Hyatt (both of whosebooks I have reviewed recently for PN Review). Kenneth Patchen is alwaysgood to go back to.
Or I will write reviews –paying attention to another author’s work is enriching and refreshing for myown work.
Or I will cut up an articlefrom a magazine and work with the pieces. The great thing about cutup andcollage (although not a technique I use often) is that you never know whereit’s going to take you.
13 - What fragrance reminds youof home?
The smell of cat fur. I like todig my nose into the fur of our ancient cat, just as I did with cats we hadwhen I was a child.
14 - David W. McFadden oncesaid that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influenceyour work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
I think I am still influencedby different British 1960s TV series that I watched as a child, such as TheAvengers and The Prisoner: their zaniness, sense of menace, andsurreal quality, even if they weren’t strictly surrealist.
I’ve listened to blues, countryand rock ‘n’ roll since I was in my teens, and I’ve always had a bit of anobsession with Elvis. This makes its way into my work, for example ‘Country’ in
New York Hotel or ‘Inthe Anniversary TV Special, the Real’ in Makersof Empty Dreams. For more on Elvis, see https://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2019/01/building/.
Art also influences my work,and on occasion I have written pieces in response to artists such as JosephCornell, Edward Hopper and Giorgio de Chirico.
15 - What other writers orwritings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
So many writers have entered mybloodstream and remained. I will read almost anything and gain somethingfrom it. I suppose I am most drawn to ‘outsider’ literature; I read ColinWilson’s The Outsider when I was in my teens, and that set the terms formuch of my initial plunging into the work of authors such as Dostoevsky, Knut Hamsun, W.N.P. Barbellion, Blake and Kafka, especially the latter.
Imagism and Surrealism alsohelped shape my youthful world outlook, and I think this has very much stayedwith me.
In my early twenties, I readauthors such as Jean Rhys, Ralph Ellison, Aldous Huxley, James Baldwin, EM Forster and DH Lawrence. Oh, and I loved Anna Kavan’s Ice. Once myItalian was good enough (I worked in Italy for ten years), I got into Dante inquite a big way after reading TS Eliot’s essay on Dante (his own personalfavourite among all his essays). I also worked for two years in Paris (teachingEnglish as a Foreign Language), and after around a year, I felt confidentenough to read authors such as Ionesco, Gide, Sartre, Patrick Modiano, Simone de Beauvoir, and Annie Ernaux in the original French. And Pierre Reverdy, notimagining that thirty years later I would publish the first translation of Le voleur de Talan into English (see https://wakefieldpress.com/products/the-thief-of-talant ).
And languages are of immenseimportance to me. I should confess that I am entirely self-taught, and still sufferfrom imposter syndrome. I picked up Italian, French and Polish by living andworking in Italy, France and Poland (though I am rusty in all of them now thatI have been living in the UK again for the last twenty or so years). Even my personalitywill change according to which language I am speaking. When I have the rare opportunityto speak Italian, I feel as if I am my thirty-year-old self again living inItaly.
16 - What would you like to dothat you haven't yet done?
Learn German well enough to read Kafka in the original. I’ve recently started abeginner’s class.
17 - If you could pick anyother occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do youthink you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I only make a partial living as a writer and translator, so I have always had toearn my living in different ways, some more conducive to my character thanothers. I really just wish I hadn’t stopped writing for so long between myearly twenties and early forties. Apart from anything else, I believe thatwriting helps me to be a better person. Writing makes me listen to my own voices,and as a result helps me to listen better to the voices of others.
18 - What made you write, as opposedto doing something else?
That’s just the way the cookie crumbled.
19 - What was the last greatbook you read? What was the last great film?
I’ve just finished reading David Copperfield – very late on in life, Iagree. I have to confess that it is only in the last ten years that I havereally taken to much of 19th-century English literature, to authorssuch as George Eliot (especially Daniel Deronda), the Brontës (especially Charlotte Brontë’s Villette), and Wordsworth (especially The Prelude). I am notsure why it took me so long to properly enjoy some of the great literature ofmy own country.
A very powerful and distinctivebook of contemporary poetry I read recently is Lucy Hamilton’s Viewer |Viewed (Shearsman, 2023) – my review is just out in PN Review.
The last great film I saw: Anatomyof a Fall, directed by Justine Triet. A good one for writers to watch.
20 - What are you currentlyworking on?
My writing is a bit quiet at the moment. I don’t have anyparticular project going, but I expect one will emerge as long as I keep‘turning up’ for the writing.
Thanks so much for thequestions, rob!
