Mark Antony Owen : coda

I’ll pose then answer two questions by way of a coda to this interview: ‘How did you develop your poetic forms?’ and ‘Why don’t you submit to journals/publishers or enter competitions?’

The answer to the first question is rather unimpressive – it was entirely arbitrary! I imposed some syllabic patterning on the first nine poems I plucked from a pile (all of which had been free from form previously), and nine forms duly emerged. I’ve been wedded to these, with a little variation, throughout all of my work ever since.
 
As to why I don’t submit my poems or go in for gongs, the answer’s two-fold. While I write poems that can, of course, be read in isolation from one another, I prefer to think of these as individual details on a large canvas; one that can only be properly apprehended once you step back. That stepping back reveals the construct behind Subruria. To submit single poems to journals or group various poems into traditional collections seems to me to dilute the concept lying back of my writing. When it comes to art competitions, I dislike the fact that these produce clear winners and losers – as though it’s simply a question of crossing some finish line ahead of others in your field. It’s meaningless to argue, beyond a certain quality threshold, as to whether or not one work of art is objectively ‘better’ than another of equal standing. If it were up to me, I’d recognise or commend all those on an award’s shortlist, but never declare an overall winner.

Mark Antony Owen : part five

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

I’m going to cheat a little in answering this. Technically, Jeanette Winterson is a poet. But it’s for her novels that she’s better known. And it was her Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit that hit me like a truck when I first came to writing. More – it made me a writer. In her debut, Winterson fed autobiographical detail through fable and flights of imagination. She could easily have told her story straight. She didn’t. This blew my fucking mind. In fact, it was because of this novel that I came to understand (after several failed attempts at a novel of my own) that even though my poetry is always rooted in truth, it’s okay to incorporate some fiction.

Mark Antony Owen : part four

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?

Absolutely. I used to insist poetry had to rhyme (it doesn’t). That poems must use accepted forms (a nonsense). That … well, many other ridiculous things besides. All of which changed once I started reading poets like Robin Robertson, Connie Bensley, Hugo Williams and half a dozen others. Work that led me on to that of scores of younger, newer writers. So when I’m asked now what advice I’d give to aspiring poets, I usually suggest they unshackle themselves from what they think they know – and possibly also, from what they were taught in school.

Mark Antony Owen : part three

How do you know when a poem is finished?

Many of my poems begin and end several years apart – so clearly, I’m unqualified to answer this. I often start a piece knowing roughly what I want to achieve. What takes me the time is trying to perfect the stuff sat between the opening and closing lines. It’s easy enough to see what needs doing; much harder to know when to stop. So my general rule is that if I leave a poem for six or twelve months, come back to it and find I no longer want to tweak it, it’s done. However, as gaps of four, five and even six years between inception and completion prove, poems typically take me a lot longer than a year to finish.

Mark Antony Owen : part two

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

Finding the time to write or revise! I’m a father to five, commute long distances for work, and am very hands on domestically. So being able to snatch 30 minutes here and there to work on my poetry feels like a luxury. Even more so if that half hour arrives when I’m not tired, hungry or simply uninspired. Because to tell the truth, writing and revising poetry – once I’m in the zone – is an utter joy (including when it’s difficult). What poet wouldn’t want the ‘agony’ of deciding whether or not one word works better than another in a line; of spending two hours removing then retyping a semi-colon? Sounds like quality personal leisure time to me.

Mark Antony Owen : part one

Mark Antony Owen is a syllabic poet writing in nine self-developed forms (occasionally, with variations). Though he has a handful of publishing credits – five poems in three journals, two of these online – he’s chosen to self-publish his digital-only poetry project Subruria rather than look to be published by either a new or an established press. Mark has been writing poetry for many years, but only ‘returned’ to it in the autumn of 2010. You can follow him on Twitter at @MarkAntonyOwen and @Subruria, and read his work at markantonyowen.com and subruria.com. Longer term, Mark aims to launch Advocate Poetry – a new kind of digital-first poetry press.

What are you working on?

Good health permitting, I’ll be working on the same project for approximately the next 30 years: my ‘magnum opus’ (too grand a term by far), Subruria. Troubled by the conceit of writing lots of different collections, all with separate titles but essentially cycling around the same themes, I wanted a broad concept into which all my work could fit. As I’ve lived most of my life in what I call ‘subrural’ places – areas where town and countryside meet – it made sense to me to write about what I knew. Further galvanising my resolve to do this, and to do it as a long-term, self-published project, was a Twitter chat with Adrian Slatcher and J T Welsch about Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. This flicked on a green light in my head. History seemed to be saying it was okay for me to do my ‘collection’ my way. The first release of Subruria would later appear online from April 2018.