Meg Peacocke Interview

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WriteWords talks to poet Meg Peacocke

Tell us something about your background.

I seldom write anything but poetry. I’ve three collections from Peterloo Poets: Marginal Land, 1988, which is out of print, Selves, 1995, and Speaking of the Dead, 2002 reprinted a couple of times. At present I’m working on a “new and selected” and slowly putting together poems which I hope will be accessible to young people but still be real poems.

I’ve done a good deal of tutoring; I enjoy giving readings and running workshops; at the moment I’m judging a couple of poetry competitions. I wish I had two heads, though, one for the public things and one for my own writing, because the processes are so different and the first often gets in the way of the second.

How did you start writing?

I started when I was very young – four or five – and my father encouraged me; but he knew nothing about modern writing: I only began to find out something about that in my teens, looking in bookshops. I had a good apprenticeship in rhyming and metrical writing, which I don’t regret, though I wish I’d had other models. I think I wanted to write because I loved rhythm. I loved to sing, and it seemed the same kind of activity.

Who are your favourite writers and why?

It varies. I have read some poems, and some poets, over and over again, and then not looked at them again for years. Among the poets: George Herbert, Herrick, Milton, Tennyson, Yeats, Zbigniev Herbert, Rilke (these last in assorted translations), Edward Thomas. I read the Bible a lot, and collections of myths and fairy tales. Recently I’ve been reading mostly American poetry:
Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens, C.K.Williams, A.R.Ammons, Lisel Mueller.
Difficult to say why I make the choices that I make at any one time: it’s as though I lacked a trace element and was looking for it there. By my bed at the moment: Don Paterson and a translation of Rumi.

How did you get your publisher?

I won a few decent prizes. On the strength of that, I wrote to Harry Chambers at Peterloo Poets because I liked the way he produced things and he didn’t seem averse to publishing middle-aged poets. He told me to send a full manuscript when I had one.

What's the worst thing about writing?

The superstitious fear that overcomes me, when I’ve finished a poem, that I may never make another. I don’t believe it, but I still can’t stop the fear kicking in.

And the best?

The absolute involvement in the writing process once a poem has got underway.

Tell us what kind of responses you get from audiences\ readers.

There seems to be a small but quite convinced kind of readership to whom my work speaks, and I am grateful to them, but I don’t believe they influence me. There’s always this paradox about needing an audience but writing for oneself.

What was your breakthrough moment?

I don’t think there’s been a breakthrough moment in the writing, but now and then I’ve made changes in my life which have brought me nearer to an understanding of the way I need to write.

A longer version of this interview is available to WriteWords Full and Community Members.
Click here to learn more about becoming a member.

Comments by other Members

EmmaD at 20:41 on 02 July 2006 Report this post

that kind of steady physical activity, which seems to override the busy part of my brain.

Dorothea Brande in Becoming a Writer talks about the value of physical, rhythmical, non-verbal work for a writer, and it's so true.

I’d hate to have a writing job!

I think more writers should recognise that the best thing for their writing may not be earning a living from it, but feeding it from a life spent otherwise.

Came to this late, but it's a wonderful interview. Thank you.

Emma

Read the WriteWords interview with Emma Darwin (EmmaD)