Caroline Gill : part five

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?

May I be greedy? The truth is that I return to several poems and poets when I feel in need of a lift. 

Perhaps I can begin with George Herbert, whose marriage of craft and content seems to me to be exemplary. I admire the concrete nature of ‘Easter Wings’. As a child I was fascinated by the final verse of ‘The Elixir’ (‘This is the famous stone ...’). As an adult, I find myself returning to the poem we know as ‘Love’ (‘Love bade me welcome ...’).

I have already mentioned ‘The Lady of Shalott’ in an earlier question, but I feel I must include Tennyson’s classic poem here. I can recite parts of it by heart and am often drawn back to this poem by the narrative, the fairytale element, the imagery of the mirror and the web, not forgetting the wonderful ‘soundscape’ evoked by the shivering aspen and the quiver of raindrops in the stream. 

I have known and loved Cornwall all my life, and would like to mention two poems here that I read over and over again. There are, in fact, many poems about the county that I could mention, written by a variety of authors ranging from Betjeman to Ursula K. Le Guin, and Hardy to W.S. Graham; but for the purpose of this interview, I will restrict myself to ‘Cadgwith’ by Lionel Johnson and ‘Zennor’ by Anne Ridler. Cornwall was home to my elderly relations when I was a young child. It was the setting for family visits, and later for holidays on the Lizard. I chose a verse from the Johnson poem as my epigraph at the front of Driftwood by Starlight, my first full poetry collection, and I nominated ‘Zennor’ as a favourite poem for the BBC’s Poetry Please programme some years ago. ‘Cadgwith’, it seems to me, evokes in a few short lines something of the sense of wonder that I have experienced on the occasions when I have stood under the stars, listening to the waves breaking on the shore of a Cornish cove. ‘Zennor’ fascinates me with its ever-shifting coastal perspectives. The mention of the rocky, sloping hamlet of ‘Amalveor’ in the final stanza seems for a moment to ground the poem, before the sea forces its way back in again in the final line. I find the very name, ‘Amalveor’, evokes the rugged landscape of Penwith, a place that means so much to me.   

Caroline Gill : part four

What are you working on?

I am in the final stages of preparing my crown of sonnets for publication in 2023. It is entitled Polar Corona and was awarded First Prize in a Hedgehog Poetry Press Competition earlier in the year. The interlinked sonnets that comprise the crown concern Antarctic exploration and penguins. Driftwood by Starlight (The Seventh Quarry Press, 2021), my first full poetry collection, included poems that touched on conservation issues and the climate crisis. These are themes that will surface once again in Polar Corona. 

Homer continues to be a source of inspiration, and I have a file in which I place my Odyssey- and Iliad-inspired poems as they appear. Perhaps one day they will be published in a pamphlet. And meanwhile, I have enrolled on a Poetry School course on Robert Frost, so I look forward to studying his work and responding with poems of my own in the coming weeks. 

Caroline Gill : part three

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

I had the chance to explore John Clare’s cottage and garden in Helpston, UK, a few years ago and was enchanted with the setting. The visit made me keen to engage with Clare in a new way, so when I heard about The Gypsy and the Poet (Carcanet, 2013) by David Morley, I was delighted to be able to do just that. I have read Professor Morley’s collection several times and have discovered something fresh on each occasion, often in terms of the characterisation and dialogue between John Clare and Wisdom Smith. How wonderful it would be to sit outside in the firelight, joining in the colourful conversations between the protagonists.   

When I saw an advertisement for The Craft of Poetry: A Primer in Verse (Yale University Press, 2021) by Lucy Newlyn, I knew at once that the book would appeal to me. Newlyn, a poet and Emeritus Fellow in English at St Edmund’s Hall, Oxford, set herself the fascinating and ambitious task of ‘building a bridge between academic and practical methods of instruction’ in poetic techniques by writing new poems to illustrate the points she hoped to make. Curiously (in the light of my previous paragraph), the resulting volume is hailed as ‘a masterpiece about poetic process’ by David Morley. Poems, notably ‘The Thought Fox’ by Ted Hughes, about the writing of a poem, are not hard to source; but who would have thought of writing a Villanelle to describe, and indeed to show, the actual process of writing a poem in this form? Newlyn employs the same ‘verse-form specific’ approach when she tackles other forms, such as the Terza Rima, the Found Poem and the Sestina, in a seamless ream of words.  

At this point I would like to mention poetry collections by two poets who live in South Wales. What the Turtle Taught Me (Cinnamon Press, 2018) by Susan Richardson was Shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and was written during the poet’s residency with the Marine Conservation Society. Each of the thirty poems concerns a threatened marine species. These poems are often witty and wistful at the same time. They are accompanied by an excellent essay entitled ‘Thirty Ways of Looking at the Sea’ in which the reader encounters not only the poet’s wonderful dexterity with words, but also her wildlife activist’s heart. 

The other collection with strong South Wales associations is Garden of Clouds, New and Selected Poems (Cross-Cultural Communications, New York, 2020) by Peter Thabit Jones. The poems range from lines that invite us into the poet’s childhood home, where he lived with his grandparents on the edge of Kilvey Hill in Swansea, to verses that whisk us across the Atlantic to California. Peter has enjoyed many two-month residencies in the famous Cabin at Big Sur above the Pacific Ocean. In ‘Edward Thomas in Swansea’, one of the poems in this collection, Peter (or the voice of the poet) explores the sense of dissatisfaction experienced by Thomas prior to the unleashing of his poems. 

The Leaping Hare and the Moon Daisy (Matador, 2021) by Jill Stanton-Huxton is a delightful book, and one that has left its mark on me. It was composed, at least in part, as a personal response to The Lost Words (2017), which was written by Robert Macfarlane and illustrated by Jackie Morris. Like me, Jill was saddened to learn that the editors of the Oxford Junior Dictionary had removed a significant number of ‘nature’ words to make room for ones that were felt more suitable for a technological and digital age. Jill’s enchanting poems were inspired by a chance meeting with a hare. They will appeal to adults and children alike. 

I have also been enjoying a couple of mini-anthologies in pamphlets produced by Candlestick Press. These exquisite pamphlets come with an envelope and a bookmark and are intended to be sent ‘instead of a card’. My choices, Ten Poems about Wildlife (2022), selected and introduced by Pascale Petit, and Ten Poems from the Coast (2022), selected and introduced by Miriam Darlington, come highly recommended, with their characteristic blend of the best of the old and the best of the new. 

Caroline Gill : part two

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

Perhaps the simplest way in which to address this question is to list the poets and their individual influences on my own poetry journey. 

To begin at a point close to the beginning, my initial instincts were to emulate to one degree or another the forms of the poems I encountered. This meant largely writing rhyming quatrains in ‘abab’ (following the form of ‘The Cow’ by Robert Louis Stevenson) or in ‘aabb’ (after ‘The Tyger’ by William Blake); and indeed the first two poems I entered in competitions, at the ages of nine and ten years old, adopted the ‘abab’ pattern. It appealed to me that one could bring an animal, seascape or situation to life on the page. 

I may have been a reserved child in real life; but in its flights of fancy, my imagination often transported me to Lear’s ‘land where the Bong-Tree grows’, to the ‘many-tower’d Camelot’ of Tennyson’s ‘Lady of Shalott’, and to Shakespeare’s dreamworld of ‘spotted snakes’ and ‘thorny hedgehogs’. 

I studied Classical Studies as an undergraduate and went on to teach Greek texts and poetic playscripts in translation. During this time, I began to appreciate the concepts of structure and sound. It intrigued me that Pope had composed his own poetic version of Homer’s Iliad, and I began to write a mock-heroic epyllion of my own, complete with epigraph written out by hand in the Greek language. If Homer’s Odyssey showed me the power of narrative, Virgil’s Georgics demonstrated the importance of observation, particularly in writing about rural life, and (in his case) bees in particular.  

My husband and I moved to Tyneside in 1986, where a tutor at a WEA Creative Writing course mentioned that one of my poems reminded her of some poems by Tony Harrison, which she thought I might like to read. She also pointed out that that some of Harrison’s stanzas followed an ‘abba’ rhyme scheme, which I might like to try. Harrison’s poems were an education in language itself, causing me to think about linguistic issues such as the matter of received pronunciation and the value of local idiom. 

Fast forward through five years in Cambridge, when I was working and finding it hard to find a writing group, to the early 1990s when we moved to Swansea, hometown of Dylan Thomas. I took some classes in the Welsh language and soon became acquainted with simple greetings, mutations, and popular words such as ‘hwyl’ and ‘hiraeth’.

A few months later, Peter Thabit Jones introduced me to some English versions of the Englyn. Thanks to poems in English by Gerard Manley-Hopkins, I came to understand something of Cynghanedd, the Welsh notion of ‘sound-arrangement’ or harmony within a single line, achieved by following one of four set patterns involving rhyme and alliteration. I would recommend Listening to Welsh Verse by Mererid Hopwood (Gomer Press, 2005) for those who are interested in learning more.

I have a deep love of poetry forms. This was nurtured by The Book of Forms: a Handbook of Poetics by Lewis P. Turco. Little did I expect to have three of my own sample poems, a Clang, a Folding Mirror poem and a Bref Double with Echo, published in the turquoise-covered 2012 edition, which included odd and invented forms. 

During my Swansea years, I came to love the poetry of Edward Thomas, whose four grandparents hailed from Wales. I was already familiar with ‘Adlestrop’, but was unaware that Thomas had written so many poems in such a short space of time before his untimely death in the Great War. ‘Swedes’ may not be a ‘typical’ Thomas poem, but it immediately caught my eye and made me realise how powerful metaphor can be and how the smallest details can transform a text. In ‘Swedes’, the discovery of an ancient Egyptian tomb is compared to the opening of a swede clamp. David, my archaeologist husband, and I became so intrigued by the detail in the poem that we undertook some research and wrote a short paper, ‘Leaving Town’ and ‘Swedes’: Edward Thomas and Amen‐Hotep (Notes and Queries, Volume 50, Issue 3, OUP, September 2003, pp. 325–327).  

The Imagist poems of William Carlos Williams, perhaps notably ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’ and ‘Spring and All [By the road to the contagious hospital]’ made a marked impression on me some years ago when I was taking a Poetry School 1-2-1 course with Heidi Williamson as my tutor. I became more aware of the importance of image in the context of creating what I might call poetic impact. A poet is often juggling several balls at once (and here I am thinking of form, metaphor, line-endings, alliteration etc.); and if one is not careful, the key image can become overshadowed by other elements.  

Back in 2008, David and I began to take our holidays in Scotland. I bought a copy of The Tree House by Kathleen Jamie and was immediately captivated by the Scottish wildlife encounters the poet evoked in language (largely English, occasionally Scots) that was crisp, succinct and compelling. I may not have Jamie’s knowledge of Scots as a language, but I would like to feel that her work has made me aim for concision and precision in my own poems. Jamie’s whales in ‘The Whale-watcher’ continue to ‘breach’ through my poetic consciousness. 

Caroline Gill : part one

Caroline Gill’s poetry has been published in Driftwood by Starlight (The Seventh Quarry Press, 2021), her first full collection. The Holy Place (2012), Caroline’s Poet to Poet chapbook shared with Californian-based poet, John Dotson, was published by The Seventh Quarry Press, (Swansea, Wales) in conjunction with Cross-Cultural Communications (New York). Polar Corona, a prize-winning poetry pamphlet about Antarctic exploration, is due to be published by the Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2023. 

Caroline’s poems have been published widely, both in the UK and abroad. Three sample poems by Caroline were included in The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics Including Odd and Invented Forms by Lewis Putnam Turco (4th edition, UPNE, 2012). ‘The Figure at the Phoenix Mine’, a sestina, was awarded First Prize in the General Section of the international Petra Kenney Poetry Competition (2007). ‘Raft Race’ took Overall First Prize in the ZSL ‘Conservation’ Poetry Competition (2014). ‘Penwith Fingerstone’ was awarded Third Prize in the Milestones Competition (2017), judged by Brian Patten. ‘Preseli Blue’, Caroline’s poem about the Stonehenge bluestones, was included in a BBC Poetry Please programme in 2008. Caroline has read her poems at the Hay Festival, the First International Poetry Festival in Swansea, Poetry in Aldeburgh, the Festivals of Suffolk Poetry and Winchester Poetry Festival. Her outlook is shaped by her Christian faith. Many of her poems reflect her concern for the planet.

Caroline, who currently lives in Suffolk, UK, with her archaeologist husband, David, graduated in Classical Studies from Newcastle University in 1982. She gained a PGCE from the University of Exeter, followed by a TEFL Certificate from the Bell School of Languages in Norwich. Caroline has worked as a teacher, an EFL tutor in Oxford, Cambridge and Rome, and as a Cataloguing Assistant in a Cambridge archive.

Photo credit: David Gill

www.carolinegillpoetry.com

https://linktr.ee/carolinegillpoetry

How did you first engage with poetry?

I grew up in a home full of books. My paternal grandfather would read aloud to his children when my father was a boy, and my father carried on the tradition, introducing me to a range of poems from a young age. I remember reciting fun little rhymes like ‘Incy Wincy Spider’ at nursery school. One of my favourite picture books was Pear-shaped Hill by Irving A. Leitner. The story, which featured a boy named Jack and a girl named Jill, was told in rhyming couplets, which were easy to remember. I attended Sunday School from a young age, and enjoyed learning choruses, especially the ones that had accompanying actions. As a family we sometimes composed ditties to sing or recite on long car journeys. One of these was a tongue-twister about the recovery of injured seals in a seal sanctuary. 

If my father shared his love of English poetry with me, my mother was responsible for introducing me to the world of Homer. She selected a child’s version of the Odyssey from the shelves of our local library for me to borrow; I very quickly became entranced by this epic and poetic tale of adventure. I was also captivated by the bold illustrations. Who could have foreseen that I would grow up to study and teach Classical Civilisation and marry a Mediterranean archaeologist?  

My childhood town had an annual Three Arts Festival which included a themed poetry competition. My father won the Grove Poetry Trophy (a silver inkstand) two years in a row, and I followed suit at the age of eleven, with a free verse poem about a koala.