Saturday 7 March 2020

Hilary Sideris : part four

How important is music to your poetry?

I like the free verse possibilities of the sonnet form, with its volta or turn toward the end. I like the way a poem can unwind in couplets or tercets over time, against white space,  like a thread that breaks and mends, a shape becoming three dimensional, a sculpture on the page. A poem can’t do that without music.

I enjoy formality that surprises me, the subtle power of half or partial rhymes. There is also a lot to be gained from juxtaposing lyrical language with anti-poetic words and phrases. I enjoy the tension between jargony or pseudo-scientific language and purely lyrical phrasing. It’s like the tension between the Anglo-Saxon and Latin words and phrases in Shakespeare. In English we’re lucky to have so much doubleness to draw on.

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