Poetry Group

A Writing Life

Sophie Hannah

Wednesday, March 2^nd 2.30 2005

Poet in Residence at the Bath Literature Festival, who kindly supported this event.

A small audience gave opportunity for a very informal approach, which Sophie Hannah clearly prefers.

In view of the title of the talk, Hannah began by reading some poems about being a writer – though that is not, she said, her usual subject.

When her first book came out she was surprised to discover that poets are expected to ‘do things’ to promote their work. She is not a shy or retiring person, and did not mind giving readings, but also has had to judge competitions, act as poet in residence in various places, teach, and lead workshops. Having written a good deal about relationships which go wrong, she sometimes finds people in tears at a workshop, looks for the teacher to deal with the situation, then realises it is herself.

Most of the poems she read, however, looked at the lighter side, such as the relief she felt when a difficult event was cancelled at the last minute, or a protest against the tendency to put people and things into categories (as she was, at the beginning of her writing life, compared to Wendy Cope) A visit to Wells next the Sea led to a poem omitting the word ‘to’ whenever it might be expected. This brought a comment from the audience on keeping metre. She said the question she is most frequently asked is whether it is difficult to keep, as she does, to regular rhythm and rhyme - but she would find it harder to write without them. Another poem was based on a sentence regularly used by teachers when she visits schools, ‘Show Sophie Hannah how good you can be’. After a few more poems on some of the social aspects, and comic hazards of being a travelling poet, Sophie said she would take questions.

She was asked about the process of moving from not being a poet, to being recognised as one. She said she had always written verses. At University, she submitted some serious poems, and a few comic, rhyming ones to a creative writing course, which had just started. To her surprise, the serious ones were considered pretentious and bad, but everyone liked the comic ones, and some were accepted by a magazine. She then sent poems to a wide range of magazines. Some rejected her work because it rhymed, while others liked it for the same reason. She was approached by a publisher who brought out a pamphlet of her work, and then by the editor of Carcanet who asked if she would like to submit work for a book. So in fact, she said, her progress to being regarded as a poet had been surprisingly easy, whereas it had been much harder with her fiction writing – contrary to what is usually assumed.

Asked if she had a source or model among published earlier writers, she said that her great favourite was George Herbert. His subject matter was totally unlike hers, but she admired his handling of metre and inventiveness in the matter of form. His poems all look different, and the forms appear natural and simple, but are often his own invention. The same questioner asked if her own poems looked different on the page. Sophie Hannah said, Yes, she did vary the appearance, and did think the shape of a poem on the page was important.

Did she write in known forms, such as sonnet or villanelle? She said yes, but the sonnet is the more adaptable. You can write anything in sonnet form, whereas the villanelle tends to draw attention to itself. She had written rondels, and a Persian form, the ghazal. She read an example. She likes to try the unusual, such as the rondeau redouble – but the sestina has so far defeated her.

There was a question about the current prejudice, in some quarters, against rhyming poetry. Sophie Hannah said, at the risk of sounding crotchety, that it was partly rejected because rhyming is more difficult. She felt there was a prejudice nowadays against what is accessible and easily enjoyed. She agreed, however, that good poetry can be written without rhyme or regular metre, and fine writers have done so, but she felt that if rhyme is generally rejected it is too easy to say that just anything is a poem. It was suggested that the original rejection of rhyme marked a break from a tradition which had become a strait-jacket, but that this in itself had become a tyranny of fashion. Hannah agreed, saying that she enjoys using contemporary language and ideas in a strict traditional form. She never, personally, felt restricted by the discipline of rhyme. She acknowledged that a need to rhyme could force the sense of a poem, but she had not found this a difficulty herself, as a line can be rewritten if necessary. There followed further technical discussion, as several members of the audience have written – and published - poetry. One had been puzzled by an editor’s favourable response to what she felt was just a few words strung together. What makes it a poem? Hannah said it is common for other people to like work the writer does not think her best, and that some times apparently simple lines add up to more than the sum of their parts. She gave some examples, from the work of William Carlos Williams and others.

There was a question about writing fiction. Sophie Hannah said that there were things she could do, and wanted to do, in fiction that would not work as poetry. She writes fiction in a very different way. Another question was about writing for children. She has written a collection for children, and also written a book of poetry based on a literal translation of the work of Tove Jansson. This rhymed in the original Swedish, and Hannah said the commission had first been offered to Kathleen Jamie, who had turned it down, but suggested Hannah’s name as one who would use rhyme and be ‘jolly’. She agreed that rhyme could be very badly used, and that some children in particular think that if writing contains any kind of rhymes, however obvious or inappropriate, it is poetry. This has sometimes led to teachers banning rhyme altogether.

There was further informal discussion of the intensity added by rhyme, the differences between poems for the stage and for the page, the balance between specific detail and universality, and the place of the personal – how far poetry was or should be autobiographical.

Finally, Sophie Hannah read, by request, a more serious poem, and was thanked and applauded by a small, but very interested audience, who appreciated many of the technical problems of writing poetry.

Janet Cunliffe-Jones