Frances Thompson (pictured right with Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion), who won a Commendation Prize for Letter, speaks to Arvon about octopuses and more besides...
1. What inspired you to write the shortlisted poem, Letter?
I started the poem after returning from a writing week in Loutro, Crete. Everything that sets the poem's scene is actual: the child, what she's doing, and how I felt about it. Also the octopus - I even have a photo of it. I had no idea of where the poem was going, though I thought it might go somewhere. I put it aside for some days.
2. What were you hoping to say through it? Why did you choose the form
you did?
When I returned to the poem, it was clear that distress about the octopus was the way to go. Maybe the photo helped. Ruth Padel, our
tutor in Crete, talked about the emotional journey a poem makes, and I was mindful of that.
The poem took off at that point, rushing headlong, with chaotic punctuation, towards its banal last line, "How are things at home?" and
it was then that I stuck the title on the top. The 'interior shift' is the shift the poem undergoes, and in the penultimate line, "It is important that we communicate", the 'we' has an intentional double reference. I hope that the playing around with meaning in the last stanza makes the reader want to re-read, and discover another dimension.
Being a bit obsessive about how the thing looks on the page, I usually write in regular stanzas. This poem fell naturally into triplets, which happily admitted my enjambements in the right places.
3. Why did you enter the Arvon Poetry Competition?
I like Arvon. Big money. I've entered before.
4. What does Arvon mean to you?
Shortly after I took early retirement eleven years ago, from teaching (English, Communications, & Creative Writing at North Devon FE College), I did an Arvon course at Totleigh Barton. Tutors were Hugo Williams and Sarah Maguire. Andrew Motion came one evening as Guest Poet. Everyone else there had published something except me. I felt very inferior. But challenged. Things have looked up since then. Thank you, Arvon.
5. Why did you start writing poetry?
My mother loved poetry, and read to me before I could read for myself, "A Child's Garden of Verses", and so on. I knew many off by heart, and unfortunately, had to recite them for visitors! Raised as I was with Presbyterian hymns (Don't knock them, many of them are great!) rhyme and rhythm come easily.
I have always scribbled for my own purposes. In my teaching, I always wanted to infect my students with enthusiasm for poetry, so maybe it was a case of putting my money where my mouth was. I was in my fifties
when I started writing seriously.
Poetry liberates you into your other self, your writing self, the self that dares.
6. What sort of poetry or poets inspire you, do you have any topics/themes that you always return to in your work?
The big shining light throughout my adult life has been Seamus Heaney. He was a few years ahead of me at Queen's University, and was beginning to publish when I was a student there. I love the way he sounds the music of the vernacular, how he sees the miraculous in the everyday, how true he is, and how generous. His essays are a model of insight and instruction.
Otherwise, there are too many to mention, but I could say Paul Muldoon for his cleverness and fun, Carol Ann Duffy for her use of language and wise humour, Yeats, Larkin, Emily Dickinson, the Oulipo poets for their quirky challenges and the surprises they throw out, Robert Burns for his humanity and lyricism, too many, not enough time.
I want to get under the skin of things, events. I want to understand better. I write out of my childhood in county Tyrone, holidays in Donegal,
growing up in Belfast in the sixties. I have a body of work that could be (and has been) called 'women's poetry'. The natural world features strongly in my work, something I hadn't particularly noticed until a friend remarked on it.A recurring theme might be the meaning of 'home'. Since my father died
4 years ago my writing has included reference to him, and to the loss of him. Two of these poems are in the Cruse anthology, edited by Linda France.
I enjoy absurdities. I have poems in two OFF THE WALL anthologies (published by MIND) and several poems on lightenup-online.co.uk.
7. Have you ever won a prize, been a writer in residence, taught poetry, collaborated with other writers, etc.
In the past ten years I have done fairly well in competitions, and judged some. Here are a few examples:
Bridport Prize, 2001: runner-up
Wells Lit Fest Comp: runner-up 4 times
N Devon Faber/Ottakars Poetry Comp: winner 3 times, and judge twice
Strokestown Internat Poetry Comp: shortlisted Mslexia magazine: shortlisted twice, published once Bideford Festival Comp 2006: judge
There are many others.
My poem "Silence at the Big Top" was nominated by The Rialto magazine for he 2001 Forward Prize for best single published poem.
My work appears in several anthologies, including the Oxford Poets Anthology
2007 (pub Carcanet). I read at its launch in Oxford last year, and again this year at Shakespeare & Co, Paris. I am looking into a further reading by its poets, in Devon next year.
In my previous life as a teacher of English, I taught poetry to students of 16 and upwards. As a member of North Devon Arts, I have been invited to run workshops for adults and children. In 2006, ND Arts commissioned a
poem to accompany a woodland project, which appears here. I run an occasional voluntary workshop in Ilfracombe (where I live) for adults with physical disabilities.
In 2004 I achieved an MA in Creative Writing, with Distinction, at Exeter University. My dissertation was a collection of my own poetry,
with its accompanying essay. Exeter's School of English also awarded me a Special Commendation.
As a result of my connection with Exeter University, I have been Guest Poet at university conferences in Canada (Mount Allison, New
Brunswick), the USA (Marquette, Milwaukee), and Poland (Lodz).
I have read my work at Arts Centres, Libraries and festivals, at home and abroad. Examples are: Colerige Cottage, Somerset, the Oxford Poetry Festival, the Yeats Summer School, Sligo, Ireland. I read regularly in my home county of Devon. I have collaborated with a singer/song-writer for performance purposes locally.
I write occasional reviews and articles for Sam Smith's JOURNAL.
8. Are you writing at the moment, etc.
My first collection, THE LONG ACRE, appears on November 1st - a few hours away! It is a chapbook, published by HappenStance, editor Helena Nelson. Read about it here.
My longer, full collection, FEATHER IN THE GROUND, awaits the right publisher.
I am working on about 4 poems at the moment. When I grow tired of them, they are finished, for good or ill. I am also re-thinking the 'architecture of text' of FEATHER IN THE GROUND.
