Thomas McColl : part five

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

I always find myself returning to the first poet I ever got into, Stevie Smith. I’ve always loved how her free verse poetry is quirky and light in tone but, at the same time, very profound and moving. 

In terms of a particular poem, my favourite of Smith’s is I Remember, where the narrator is an old man, during the Second World War, on his bridal night, in bed with his young bride (‘a girl with t.b.’), listening to German bombers flying overhead when, just at that moment, British bombers have chosen to set out for Germany. The young bride asks him, ‘Harry, do they ever collide?’, to which he answers, ‘I do not think it has ever happened / oh my bride, my bride.’ The two sets of bombers never colliding appear to be a metaphor for this couple’s relationship and generational difference, and it’s an 11-line poem that says so much, and made a lasting impression on me in showing what could be achieved in just a few lines.  

Thomas McColl : part four

How do you know when a poem is finished?

I wouldn’t say I’m a great judge of when a poem is finished, but then I don’t think many poets are, and that’s why it’s good to have an editor. 

In terms of my latest book, Grenade Genie, it was the title poem that needed an editor’s input the most. By the same the manuscript was accepted for publication by Fly on the Wall Press, the poem, Grenade Genie, had already gone through dozens of drafts over a number of years, and each time I’d think it was finished and send it out to magazines, and then, each time it was rejected, I’d belatedly realise it needed further editing but, still, I couldn’t get it quite right or sometimes simply made it worse. So, having Isabelle Kenyon, the book’s publisher and editor, look over it, and identify what she thought was the crux of the problem, helped immensely. She came up with various suggestions regarding the poem’s middle section, and once we sorted that out between us, everything else then came together. At any rate, since the book’s publication, the poem Grenade Genie has turned out to be the one that people often mention as being the piece they like very much or even the most, and alongside that, the poem has now, finally, got published in a magazine – the legendary counter-cultural publication, International Times, no less – so I guess I can say, with a fair degree of certainty, that the poem, Grenade Genie, is, at last, after many years, finished. 

Thomas McColl : part three

How does a poem begin?

For me, it’s usually some unusual, arresting image that provides the spark. For instance, the origin of a poem from my book, Grenade Genie, called The Evil Eye – that’s about how controlling social media is – can be traced back to when I saw a cobweb stretched across the amber signal of a traffic light (a cobweb that could only actually be seen, complete with captured insects, when the amber light was momentarily lit).

On seeing that, I was inspired to write the following section, which employs the word ‘amber’ twice, in one sense representing something fleeting and in the other representing something that preserves – to illustrate how social media gives the impression that our lives will be preserved forever but, instead, is simply creating an illusion which is actually a very sophisticated trap:  

You’ve made a pact with the digital devil,
not even to be an insect preserved in amber,
but simply an insect that’s landed on a cobweb
stretched out directly in front of an amber signal
and as soon as you’re lit up, no-one hangs around.

You’ve allowed yourself to get caught in a cobweb
spun by a social spider that sucks you dry of information,
then leaves your hollowed-out exoskeletal frame
to rot on its website.

Anyway, like a lot of the initial sparks that begin my poems, that section ended up in the middle of the finished piece. But that’s the thing: once I’ve got that first bit written down, I’m usually on my way, and wherever it ends up getting placed, will very soon have a finished poem of sorts built around it.

Thomas McColl : part two

What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t?

It’s the ability of a good poem to get to the emotional core of something in just a few lines. A good poem can essentially say as much (or maybe even more) in 40 lines than some novels can in 400 pages, and that’s why poetry will always retain its value as an art-form (even if it increasingly appears to be the case that less and less people are consuming it in any kind of sustained and meaningful way). 

Thomas McColl : part one

Thomas McColl lives in London, and has had poems published in magazines such as Envoi, Iota, Prole, London Grip, Atrium, The Poetry Shed and Ink, Sweat and Tears, and in anthologies by Hearing Eye, Eyewear and Shoestring Press. He's had two collections of poetry published: Being With Me Will Help You Learn (Listen Softly London Press, 2016) and Grenade Genie (Fly on the Wall Press, 2020).  

How did you first engage with poetry?

There were only two books of poetry in the McColl family household when I was growing up: ‘Poetic Gems’ and ‘More Poetic Gems’, both by William McGonagall, so unfortunately, I had no choice but to first engage with poetry via an author widely regarded as being the very worst poet in the English language. But despite (or maybe because of) me being exposed at a very young age to McGonagall’s unintentionally funny dreadful doggerel, I got into writing poetry myself, and at first it really was even more dreadful than McGonagall’s and not even unintentionally funny. Eventually, though, my writing began to get good enough that, by my mid-twenties, I was starting to get poems accepted in reputable poetry magazines, such as Iota, Purple Patch and Psychopoetica, and though no-one was prepared, at the time, to publish my work as either a pamphlet or collection, I persevered, and now, 42 years on from when I first discovered William McGonagall’s books of poetry, I have a book of poetry out with Fly on the Wall Press, called Grenade Genie, that even includes a poem which references McGonagall by name, a poem ironically called The Greatest Poem, and while I do regard it as very possibly being my greatest poem to date, it’s actually about writing the worst ever poem.