John Tranter spent his youth on a farm on the South-east coast of Australia, attended country schools, and took his BA in 1970 after attending university sporadically. He has worked mainly in publishing, teaching and radio production, and has travelled widely, making reading tours of the United States, Britain and Europe. He has lived at various times in Melbourne, Singapore, Brisbane, London, Florida and San Francisco, and now lives in Sydney where he is a company director. He has received several senior fellowships and other grants from the Literature Board of the Australia Council, and a visiting residency at Cambridge University, England, in 2001 and 2002. Twenty collections of his verse have been published, including The Floor of Heaven, a book-length sequence of four verse narratives (HarperCollins 1992 and Arc, UK, 2001), Late Night Radio (Polygon, Edinburgh, 1998), Different Hands, a collection of seven experimental prose pieces (Folio/Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1998), Heart Print (Salt Publishing, UK, 2000), Studio Moon and Trio (both Salt Publications, UK, 2003). His work appears in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. In 1992 he edited (with Philip Mead) the Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry, a 470-page anthology which has become the standard text in its field, published in Britain and the USA as the Bloodaxe Book of Modern Australian Poetry. He is the editor of the free Internet magazine Jacket. Buy his books here. 1. What is the first poem you ever loved? Why? A teacher called Brian Stibbard taught me (and my class of thirty country town boys and girls) Matthew Arnold’s Sohrab and Rustum, a long heroic narrative poem first published in 1853, at school when I was thirteen or fourteen. It’s taken me years to realise how important the poem was to me. It’s the story of a Persian warrior who has a son, but is not aware that the son survived childbirth. In late life, at the head of his army, he faces a young challenger and slays him in single combat, only to discover just as the young man dies that it is his own son he has killed. The narrative is tragic, the tone noble yet doubting and self-aware, and the ending is almost pure Cinemascope. He invented the long rising crane shot before they’d invented the movies! What I learned from the poem was how to manage blank verse, which is built on iambic pentameter, the most basic English meter, and make it sound varied and natural and thus almost invisible. I also liked his use of Homeric similes in this poem, where he will turn aside from the main narrative to explore, sometimes for a dozen lines, a far-fetched yet vivid simile or parallel. (You can see an example here.) And essential to the poem’s success is the way the blend of tone and technique, severe yet passionate, loose yet restrained, contains the powerful emotions that threaten to overwhelm it, the way a steam boiler contains and utilises the power to drive a steam train forward. 2. What is something/someone non-“literary” you read which may surprise your peers/colleagues? Why do you read it/them? I enjoy reading computer magazines and photography magazines. I am interested in the technical side of things. I grew up on a farm, miles from the nearest town, and if a machine broke you had to fix it yourself, so you develop that interest. I’m half Scottish, and the Scots were the great inventors of machinery, from steam power to the telephone, television and the fax machine. I sometimes read about dog breeds. I like dogs. They so much want to be part of human life, yet sadly — and it’s fortunate they don’t know this — their lives are so short. You always outlive your dogs… except perhaps for the last. 3. How important is philosophy to your writing? Why? I used to think it was important to writing, or to thinking about writing. When I was young I studied Philosophy and Psychology at university and on my own initiative studied everything from Spiritualism to hypnotism to Buddhism to Relativity Theory. But I have come to the conclusion that philosophy is not of any help at all in the art and craft of writing; to the contrary, it gets in the way. Philosophy gives rise to theory in the same way that the process of procreation gives rise to the institution of marriage. Theory should always come after writing — a long way after writing — the way art theory and art history should always come after the making of art. Van Gogh certainly needed to learn how to paint, how to mix and use colours: his palette, which had been horribly muddy, came alive after he took lessons in Paris. But he didn’t need to know any theory. Most contemporary theory is a high-order verbal dance built on categorisations and discriminations, meant to dazzle and paralyse your rivals for fame. It can be an interesting way to pass the time if you have nothing better to do, but qui bono? Ask who benefits from theory: certainly not writers. 4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why? Rimbaud, Li Bai, Tu Fu, Yasunari Kawabata, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Callimachus, Robert Desnos. Why? Each of them delivers the full orchestra of a different culture and its long cultural history in every fragment of their work. Conversely, they are each strongly individual. 5. Do you read a lot of poetry? If so, how important is it to your writing? Not so much these days as I used to. I’m a poet, and you can only know what poetry is and what your own poetry might be, by exposing yourself to a vast range of different poetry, which I have done for over forty years. Now I need less of that; the fuel tank is full enough for the journey I still have in front of me. 6. What is something which your peers/colleagues may assume you’ve read but haven’t? Why haven’t you? 1) Pound’s Cantos. I love Pound up to the Cantos, but they go on for far too long, and the tone becomes bullying. 2) Finnegans Wake. Life’s too short. 3) William Carlos Williams. I’m sure he’s a good poet — everybody says so — but his work has never interested me. I don’t know why. 7. How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old? That question is too hard. 8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet? If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen? No, I don’t. Do you believe in a Role for the Dentist? My dentist is more important to me than any poet. 9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest): Lemon**vodka Chiseled**Whipsnade I**Ionic, as an architectural order. Of**random numbers Form**cement 10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing? 1) The way my old silver fountain pen makes a persistent indentation on the left side of the first joint of my third finger, right hand. I sometimes wonder if it will become permanent. 2) Why can’t I learn to touch type without making errors? I’ve been trying since 1982. You think I’d get it eventually.