David Bircumshaw: I was born, ambiguously, and in 1955, in one of three possible descriptions of a part of North Warwickshire and raised poor, a condition which I have largely succeeded in maintaining since, along with an indelible Birmingham accent and a ghost for a brother. I was an autodidact, which was fortunate, as the teaching I received ranged from the perfunctory to the sadistic and spent much of the first quarter of a century of my adulthood in unattractive jobs while explaining to people why I'd never been to university. Nowadays I am impeccably unemployed, as far as statistics determine reality, and live in social housing in Leicester not far from the lost bones of Richard the IIIrd and King Lear. My book publications are 'Painting Without Numbers' (Phantom Rooster Press, 2001) available from robinhamilton2@btinternet.com, and 'The Animal Subsides' (Arrowhead Press, 2004). E-publications include the magazine 'A Chide's Alphabet' (2001 - ) which I edit and a sequence 'Parousia' (2003) both of which are available via my homesite along with a version of 'Painting Without Numbers' which predates and differs from the print version. Issue #1 of 'A Chide's Alphabet' is also available in print from Phantom Rooster Press. 1. What is the first poem you ever loved? Why? That's among the most difficult of these questions, in the first place I can't remember which poem was first, there are a number of them floating about in memory, but free of the anchor of serial time. I recall 'Tyger, Tyger', the Keats odes and the Shelley of the West Wind, believe it or not Philip Larkin's 'At Grass' and a poem 'Your Attention Please' by Peter Porter about the possibility of nuclear attack (I was 8 when the Cuban missile crisis happened so I grew up in the shadow of Dr Strangelove) and too Prospero's farewell speech from the Tempest and a variety of ballads and anonymous mediaeval snippets 'When Adam delved and Eve span' or 'Sumer is i-cumen in'. etc. So there you have several 'why' combinations - the transports of the romantic imagination, the musicality of most and the sharp eye for social detail of some. But before that obviously there were nursery and older rhymes - 'Ding, dong bell' and playground snatches and chants. So I can't give a single answer. 2. What is something/someone non-“literary” you read which may surprise your peers/colleagues? Why do you read it/them? Um, 'non-literary'? Health warnings on cigarette packets?! Does science-fiction count? I read a lot of that but I'd say that the appellation 'non-literary' is scant justice to people like Bester, Lem, Gibson, Delany, some of Philip K.Dick or Ian Watson or Greg Egan. If they are non-literary well I read them for a certain imaginative brio that I don't always find in 'mainstream' writing. I read a lot of the old 'general reader' style non-fiction: works historical, climatological, studies of evolution, of flora and fauna and, for the star-dust in my hair, much astronomy. 3. How important is philosophy to your writing? Why? I like my philosophy in fragments. Grand systems, be they St Thomas or Aristotle or Marx or Spinoza or Kant or whoever are not for me entire, give me a pre-Socratic or an enigmatic Chinese anyday. Anyoldhow, I've always had a sneaky suspicion of philosophy as being an undeclared runaway from poetry that should be hauled back to where it belongs. The attempt at meaning, that seemingly always doomed bid to make coherence of inchoate lives, that is important to me, but I don't feel the need for a wisebeard, be it of the Athenian grove, a Scholastic bent, a nineteenth century synthesiser or theorist a la francaise. Now, theology, that interests me, it's as good and unverifiable as hypotheses about the Big Bang. Meaning sitting upon the without meaning, like the rules of cricket. 4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why? Vallejo, Neruda, Machado, Ungaretti, Montale, Saba, Cavalcanti, Rilke, Celan, Morgenstern, Herbert, Rosewicz, Blok, Mandelstam, Khodasevich, Seferis, Ritsos, Cavafy, Rimbaud, Mallarme, Ponge, Basho, Buson, Issa, the whole shoal of the late T'ang dynasty poets. And I've left out many there, kept to poets only, and deliberately missed the Very Big Names, the Dante's & Goethe's & Ancient Romans & Greeks. They go without saying, as given, just as Shakespeare is in English. I've also excluded non-Anglo-American writers in English, just to keep the list manageable. (I take it that Irish, Scots and Welsh poets were implied by the phrase Anglo-American here, but I'd advise not to tell them so!) And the why of it all? I like hearing different voices, different registers, particularly as dear old Anglo Lit is (ahem) rather suffocated at times by the nuances of class in voice. 5. Do you read a lot of poetry? If so, how important is it to your writing? I read an awful lot of poetry in manic bursts, in between these Muse-crazed frenzies I manly read prose except for what I encounter at workshops or on the web or e-mail lists. But of course the poems one knows stay with one, echoing in the bewitched head. Sometimes other peoples poems can kick off a piece of my own, but that applies too to all I encounter in my existence. I value keeping my rhythms trim and reading poetry helps, as well as being conducive to the washing of metaphors, rinsing of epithets and mediations on form. 6. What is something which your peers/colleagues may assume you’ve read but haven’t? Why haven’t you? Um, er, eek. I really don't know what people may assume I've read but haven't. Lemme see now - I've never read much Tennyson. And, sorry, only a 'selected' Whitman. Ah, I know, I've only ever tackled extracts from the Maximus poems (it's literally that I've never seen a full copy). But I've done most of the famous fossils - Paradise Regained, the Shepheardes Calendar, the Ring and the Book. Of course, like almost everybody, I've never read Polyolbion (only one 20 line section). I must confess I've never read the Complete poems of Robert Service too but I expect I'm not unique in that. Most of what I haven't read comes from lack of availability rather than disinclination though, I'm particularly starved of much of the new writing that comes from the US and from avant-circles even in the UK as public libraries don't stock 'em and my current poverty and lack of living space precludes me from buying many new books. 7. How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old? Ding-dong bell daddy's got a smell 8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet? If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen? I used to have mildly vatic aspirations which excused me the Role of the Citizen (when it suited me) but latterly I've become very aware of the role of the poet in reclaiming language for the human unpoeticule citizenry. In making language space 'ours' again just as public spaces and institutions need to be reclaimed. So there's a secret merger going on there. My current project, a long poem called '4940' is very much to do with using avant techniques (and some not so avant) from the 'bottom up' in social and linguistic aspects. writing from the top from the fringe, as one of that fringe, not by reason of being a poet, but as one of the disempowered among others. 9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest): Lemon**St. Clements Chiseled**dovetail I**Ching Of**cabbages Form**Chaos 10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing? Breath and movement. That's succinct, isn't it? I can't read aloud and stay stock still. Nor can I not modulate mah voice. Or moy voice.