Interview | Joan Hambidge talks to Stephen Symons (2018)

1. The title Landscapes of Light and Loss, your second volume of poetry published by the Dryad Press reminds me of Milan Kundera's novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and the incessant interplay between opposites / contradictions. The paradoxical nature of poetry grief, frailty, loss reverberate in strong poems. 

How do you write about loss? Uncertainty?

In some instances the poems do oscillate between seemingly contradictory themes. 

I say seemingly, because if for example you’re writing about happiness, a pinch of grief allows one to destabilise the poem in an interesting manner, particularly if a poem feels too comfortable. In this way, I think the poem can offer challenges to both the poet and the reader. As human beings we cannot ignore those contradictory relationships, specifically in instances where the human world manages to infiltrate the natural world, which is often the case in my work.

2. You use concrete metaphors and similes. I was taught by my erstwhile mentor D.J. Opperman that poetry should steer away from the abstract or philosophical. Do you agree? Comment.

over the green gossip

of sunbirds and white eyes

*

A body never knows its destination,

a heart is more memory than muscle —

pulling at cantankerous drawers

bulging with photos that were never taken.

*

Night is a destination dipped in cobalt.

If you mean direct metaphorical references to the natural world, then yes my poems rely heavily on the concrete world. There’s undoubtedly a form of concreteness to my use of metaphors and similes. 

The Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, employed so-called concrete metaphors when  referencing the real world, but what I think makes Tranströmer’s use of metaphors so compelling is the manner in which he “defamiliarises” the world through his choice of new metaphorical connections. This is what I attempt to achieve in my work. For example, here’s a line from a Tranströmer poem that illustrates that sense of defamiliarisation, which I’m drawn to as a writer.

The moths settle on the window pane,
small pale telegrams from the world.

There’s also the work of the Czech poet, Miroslav Holub (1923 - 1998) where science and poetry enjoy an "uneasy relationship" and very contradictory alliance. These  uneasy associations  appeal to me on many levels.

3. Please comment on your use of form.

Outside, night runs,

pulsing,  flowing,   femoral,  silent,

   beyond us—

       bleeding out.

I’m trained as a graphic designer, so in some respects I’m a visual person first. For me, the visual shape a poem assumes on paper is critical to the creative process. 

I think the physical structure of a poem affects so much of the nature of the poem, be it the way it’s read, by both the reader and the poet. For me at least, the choice of typeface and leading (that’s the line-spacing for non-designers), the manner in which one employs white space, indents, tabs and line breaks allows a poem to enter a different, and distinctly more visual environment. I believe, as a poet, one can also offer challenges to a reader by means of experimenting with form, but not to a point where it becomes a crutch or cliché. Ultimately, I think the poem has a way of persuading its formal outcome.   

Charles Olson’s notion of Projective verse and units of breath have been very influential, including William Carlos Williams and Robert Creeley’s notion that “form is never more than an extension of content”, and here I’m indebted to Kelwyn Sole, my mentor, for exposing me to a number of poets, for whom visual form, or a poem’s physical structure is of great importance.

4. You dedicate a poem to Yehuda Amichai. Are you influenced by his poems on children?

I would add it’s not only Amichai’s poems about children, but his entire oeuvre that has had a tremendous influence on my writing. Amichai remains one of the most mercurial of my favourite poets. 

He’s like a quantum particle – the instant you try to pin him down he eludes you. He’s accessible, but there’s a multi-layeredness to his work, and beyond his poetic persona he remains a contradiction on so many levels. Amichai was a soldier, teacher, poet and parent. During World War II he served in the British army, but he later fought the British as a guerrilla prior to the formation of Israel. He also was involved in the Arab-Israeli conflicts of 1956 and 1973, and taught for several years at secondary schools. 

Many have tried to claim and position Amichai, but the genius of his poetry always allows his work to transcend labels. He’s one of the poets I always travel with.

5. You write you "stole" a title from a poem? 

The phrase the conferences of birds is borrowed from the title of The Conference of the Birds (1177) by Persian poet Farid ud-Din Attar. Is this thievery or intertextuality? Can a poet write without referring to other poets, for instance Blake or the implied references to Wallace Stevens?

I think if you read widely you cannot avoid the work of other writers permeating your work, and sometimes it’s successful and other times it can be dangerous. I do think on one level it’s simply unavoidable. 

Like Picasso said, “Talent borrows, genius steal”, but that was more than likely Picasso’s ego talking. As far as the Attar phrase goes, I was always drawn to the title of his book, The Conference of the Birds, and employing it as a collective noun in the poem at that juncture just seemed to work. You could call it intertextuality, but I’m loathe to go that far…

6. How do you experience the English South African poetry scene? For instance, the few reviews, the lack of intellectual debates or polemics – or is poetry finally the ultimate intellectual debate?

I would say given the nature of our largely divided and insular history, by means of race, culture and language I don’t think there’s a singular type of South African poetry. English poetry is, I think, even further subdivided. 

It’s a strange landscape. Polemics, if you could call it that, sometimes verges on the prescriptive, and at other times seems rather conservative. 

Kelwyn Sole speaks of “An ambience of insecurity and instability” within SA Poetry which points to that sense of insularity. 

I try as a writer, to simply get on with the act of writing, but one does certainly feel the presence of a sense of insularity in English poetry.

7. In "The Physiology of Fear" you reflect on the violence (and paranoia) of our society – and the uncertainty of the future. Comment.

I can only speak for myself, but I do get the impression that post post-apartheid South African society has become increasingly wary and polarised on many levels. 

The threat of violence, whether in the bedroom, suburbia, the township or on a farm is pervasive and “The Physiology of Fear” grapples with that sense of paranoia that has become part of our national psyche.

8. In a letter to Amichai Paul Celan writes: “What really belongs to you in your poems comes through with the most convincing, most conspicuous force. You are the poem you write, the poem you write is ... you yourself. — Right away I loaned the English selection of your work to my friend André du Bouchet, who writes poems as well, and to my great joy what had struck me came through to him too. Now this book is going round to other contributors and editors of the magazine L'Ephemere (I'm also among them). We'd be delighted to bring out a book of yours in French translation”. (Letter to Amichai, 7 November 1969 — Are your poems autobiographical or not?)  

I think all poetry is autobiographical and political to some degree. 

We can only really write from what we know, but in the same breath I sometimes, as all writers do, incorporate imagined content into my poems.

I would say that the majority of my poems have their origins in the real world but they inevitably journey elsewhere – and sometimes it works, and at other times it fails miserably.

9. What is the "meaning" of the lovely cover?

Firstly, the cover photograph was taken by Patrick Ryan a well-known photographer and life-long friend. The cover photograph was chosen from part of a series of coastal scenes, and this particular image of a lonely beacon on a rocky outcrop, set against pounding surf, seemed to dovetail perfectly with the title of my book. 

The desaturated colour and shallow depth of field lent itself to my notion of landscape in my book. Patrick’s photograph alludes to a “de-peopled” landscape, a natural space that has been emptied of people, but still bears the traces of human intervention, so it seemed to be an ideal choice.

An act of forgetfulness

Last night I left the TV on
and on reaching morning
it was playing music videos
that broke like small waves
over the green gossip
of sunbirds and white eyes

dream songs

still foamed by sleep

half-remembered tides

from a long-remembered love

that required an act of forgetfulness
to be heard once more.

(Two poems by Stephen Symons – Type/Cast)