Meet the Poems: 'Listening to Ash' from Happy Hour, 2012

Explore the context and get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how Andrew wrote some of his most popular poems.

Hear Andrew read the poem and introduce it here.

Background

This poem is taken from my first collection, Happy Hour, published in 2012 by Gallery Press. I don’t make a habit of going back over my books and reading my poems closely, but this Meet the Poems thread on my blog is really a way of giving you, dear reader, a bit of an insight, in the unlikely event that you should want one, of how and why I wrote some of my poems. In fact, I’d say the emphasis of these posts is more on the ‘how’ than the ‘why’. For me, at any rate, whenever we ask how a poem was written we’re also, by default, asking why the poem was written. The method of a poem’s construction is inextricably linked to its reason for existing, whatever that may be.

Publication of the Poem

When I look back at some of the poems from Happy Hour or even Stay, and maybe even some of the poems from Swans We Cannot See, I can’t help but be greeted by a feeling of what my teenage self would call pure cringe, but I’ll continue. This poem was published in issue 100 of Poetry Ireland Review, edited by Paul Muldoon. I can vividly remember getting the email telling me it was accepted. I excitedly told my father who was in the house at the time, only to be greeted with a ‘who?’ - what a way to put things into perspective and come back down to earth (but, in no way was this a bad thing, and looking back I’m grateful for such reality checks as this, I dread to think of the alternative). At any rate, it felt like an achievement at the time and at that time I was on a bit of a roll with getting poems published in places like Poetry Review and Poetry London to name two - it was a bit of a giddy time to be writing and publishing and feeling a sense of what Heaney refers to as the ratification of publication, a sense that it would be possible to do this. 

The Opening Line

As I’ve mentioned before, I think the opening line of a poem is essential to get right and I’d always been impressed with the way Robert Frost was able to write opening lines that were so finely crafted yet effortless, as if you’d just bumped into him in the street and he was telling you about something that happened earlier that day. This natural, conversational effect, also achieved by Muldoon and Heaney, was something that drew me in and I wanted to try and replicate or master in my own writing. I wanted to write with a sense of abandon when I wrote this, and channel some of the rock attitude of the music I’d grown up listening to as a teenager and loved so much – I wanted to see if that devil-may-care sensibility was possible in poetry, hence the first line ‘Hardly Mozart but I can’t beat it…’ 

The Sonnet

I’ve written here before about my love for the sonnet (in simple terms, a 14-line poem) and its possibilities, and this poem is a good example, I think, of me getting to grips with the sonnet. I think I’ve come to work my way around a sonnet with a bit more craft since this one and my most recent collection, if I may say so, would bear testament to this in poems such as ‘In Praise of Artisans.’ But, it’s a decent stab at the form even if there are no rhymes. But, in my defence, I do think the sonnet form (octet and sestet) can be a very useful vessel for blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) at times, despite not rhyming, and there are many great 14-liners that don’t rhyme, and that’s a testament to the form of the sonnet, and how, perhaps, forgiving it is as a poetic form. Anyway, this poem arrived as a 14-line poem in lines that are largely in iambic pentameter. The poem which is on the opposite page to this in the book ‘The Curzon’ is another example of my experiments with the 14-line poem. 

The Book

Happy Hour was shortlisted for no prizes and won no awards, and, weirdly, in some ways looking back I’m pretty glad about this. I think there are parts to this book which are a bit rough and ready, and it maybe lacks a proper, stand out poem or sense of distinctiveness from other poetry, or a hook for people to buy into. But, not winning an award, or even being shortlisted has done me no harm, I think – and I’m certainly not complaining about it. It’s challenged me to reflect on my craft, my subjects, my tone, and, well, the whole pursuit of why I write. And I’m proud to say 13 years on from the publication of this poem and book, I’ve remained undeterred in the face of this, and remain grateful to those who encourage me and give me another chance to go to the page again. 

The Bridge of Poetry

In this poem I talk about the Quoile bridge (pictured above) which I used to cross daily on my way into school on the bus. The image of that bridge over that river in that beautiful tree-laden pocket of county Down is etched into my mind, bound up with the music of Ash, as rough and ready as that may be. I used to cross that short, ancient bridge daily, rain, hail or shine, and it makes me think of poetry, itself, as a bridge, surpassing, high above it, the river of status and recognition which ebbs and flows and changes course constantly, beneath.

You read about my top ten tracks by Ash here.

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Andrew Jamison is a poet and teacher, and you can read more articles on his blog here or get a paid subscription and access all previous and future posts here. You can also browse his poetry collections and buy signed, first editions of each of them here.