Ian Parks, award-winning poet, discusses the reasoning and process of putting together a selected poems, and is contributing a new, as yet unpublished poem, for LWH readers…
There comes a time in every poet’s career when they feel the need to pause, to take stock, to look back on what’s been done and forward to what’s left to be done, to consolidate and make sense – for themselves and for their readers – of poems which have probably appeared out of the blue, randomly, and with no clear rationale. One way of doing this is by selection. Individual collections might bring together poems that are connected thematically or formally, or have some indefinable quality which makes them cohere. A selected, on the other hand, gives the poet an opportunity to evaluate and present something which is hopefully considered and representative; an introduction to their work as a whole.
In many ways I’ve reached that stage and am in the process of putting together a selected poems. Several important questions surface: Which poems should be included and which excluded? How is the whole to be ordered and organised? And should the selection seek to reprint simply the best poems or should it aim to be representative?
Looking back over the last thirty years or so (I began writing seriously when I was about twenty and my first collection was published when I was twenty five) I see there are some poems that float quite naturally to the surface and they seem to be either the ones that did best for me, the ones that have been included in anthologies, and the ones – on a personal level – that I still like myself and feel able to relate to. After that I’ve had to give some thought to trying to represent the variety of what I’ve done. In 1999 my LOVE POEMS 1979-2009 was published and proved to be something of a selected in that it drew poems from five previous collections. The content, however, was already decided in that it was a collection of the love poems I wanted to preserve. A collected should cast a wider net. In the end I tried to find a balance between poems that worked and poems that showed a range of tones, forms and approach to content.
Putting together a selected also allows the poet to give some thought as to how they want their work to be ordered; the sequence in which they want to be read. The logical approach is chronological, including poems in the order in which they were written or in the order in which they first appeared in individual collections. This makes its own sense, but there’s also a very strong case for approaching the matter from an entirely different angle.
At first I considered grouping poems thematically so poems ‘about’ love or politics or history or philosophy were grouped together irrespective of when they were written. The process was useful but in the end I decided I wanted to show any development that was there; to show where I started and the sort of journey the poems took me on as they were encountered and written and published. So, in the end, the selected (which is still in preparation) tries to reflect that journey.
This approach raises problems of its own. What, for instance, is the poet supposed to do with an early poem that they would improve or write differently if they were confronted with it now? W H Auden famously rewrote the poems he’d written in his twenties when he reprinted them. In doing so he brought them in line with what he’d learned technically; but he also edited the opinions and beliefs of his younger self. Which, then, is the ‘official’ version of any given poem? Some of the poems in my selected fit into that category. There are some early pieces that appeared in GARGOYLES IN WINTER (1986) which I would approach differently now. I can see all sorts of mistakes I wouldn’t make now and problems I’d be able to resolve. But you can’t disentangle the poem from its formal aspects. In the end, I decided to include flawed poems because, quite simply, they were flawed. You can’t go on revising for ever. As Verlaine said, ‘No poem is ever finished, only abandoned’.
And then there’s the question of a title. Should the poet go simply for SELECTED POEMS? Should they use the title of one of their better-known poems? Or should they go for an all-embracing title, giving some idea of the scope or mood of the collection. I tried all sorts of alternatives: THE QUIET STORM, ATLANTIC HOUSE, THE RULE OF LOVE AND POLITICS only, in the end to come back to SELECTED POEMS 1978-2011. It seems to say more by saying less. Along the line I looked at selected poems that I admire. These would include collections by Douglas Houston, Thom Gunn and R S Thomas. Robert Graves quite simply delegated the task to an editor he trusted who simply made the decisions for him.
My feeling (and I’m still pretty much involved in the process of selecting) is that a selected is probably the most important book in a poet’s career. It gathers together the best and most representative of the poems they’ve published without gathering everything together into a collected which can be daunting for anyone but the most dedicated reader and admirer. It looks backwards and forwards at the same time, representing the best of what a poet has achieved to date and hinting at what might be still to come. It is, in itself, a creative act: frustrating, rewarding, thought-provoking, exasperating, fulfilling. Putting a selected together is a bit like writing an individual poem.
THE BOWL
I never think of visiting
her grave: she isn’t there.
Instead I take her favourite fruit
and place it in a bowl,
examining each crimson fleck
until the impulse fades.
In Athens once I came across
a beggar with no eyes,
making a shallow cradle
with his hands; his hands
containing nothing but the air.
I stare and think of nothing.
If the cradling hands
are the will to life
the bruised fruit is the soul.
Ian Parks’ poetry has received numerous accolades and awards, including the Royal Literary Fund 2003, the Oppenheim Award 2001 and 2002 and the John Masefield Award 2001. Ian is consultant editor for Dream Catcher, serves on the judging panel for the TMA theatre awards and reviews contemporary poetry for Poetry Quarterly Review. Ian was one of the Poetry Society New Poets in 1996. His collections include SHELL ISLAND, THE CAGE and LOVE POEMS 1979-2009. Poems have appeared in POETRY REVIEW, THE LIBERAL, THE LONDON MAGAZINE. POETRY (Chicago), THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY, THE OBSERVER and STAND. He has taught creative writing at the universities of Oxford, Hull, Sheffield and Leeds. THE LANDING STAGE, his latest collection, is out from Lapwing, Belfast, and is available from good bookshops or online and will be reviewed on the LWH website shortly.
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IAN PARKS will be headlining at WORD SOUP on Thurs 28th July, along with ANDREW OLDHAM, a WORD SOUP live literature night special not to be missed! Joining Ian and Andrew will be co-performers Norman Hadley, Ron Scowcroft, and David Cooke, plus an Open Mic slot.
Word Soup – Thursday 28th July 2011 at The Continental, South Meadow Lane, Preston PR1 8JP, 8pm start.