Meet the Poems: The Party

Discover the inspiration behind my poem 'The Party' from my second collection Stay

This is the collection of short stories I purchased at the Oxfam bookshop in Belfast.

I was back in Northern Ireland for a short visit to see my family, and I found myself in Belfast and needed to kill some time before meeting a friend. I walked into the Oxfam bookshop on Botanic Avenue and happened to pick up a copy of Chekhov’s short stories. I started reading the first story entitled ‘The Party’ and was instantly carried away to 19th century aristocratic Russia.

Blank Verse

The poem is written in blank verse which in many ways is (and forgive the modern parlance ) my “go-to” writing style. I’ve written about blank verse here, but the reason I love it is because it’s so versatile and can manipulated for rhythm and I felt like it lent itself well to this poem which is a flight of fancy, which takes many turns and changes in time.

Inspired by Fiction

I’ve written before here about my love of fiction and how some of my poems are inspired by novels, and the same can be said of this poem. In fact, this was the first poem I’d written to be inspired by fiction, and really opened the door for me in terms of using fiction as a point of departure. I’d also had a feeling that I wanted to shake things up a bit with my own approach to poetry and move away from poems that were situated in the real world. This allowed me to open up new vistas, or in the case of this poem, new verandahs. 

Olga

The first line of the story in my version of the text translated by Ronald Hingley is: ‘After the eight-course banquet and interminable conversation Olga Mikhaylovna went out into the garden.’ As soon as I read this line I was sold. I wanted to know more about her and why she was uncomfortable in this situation. I found her character fascinating and had much sympathy for her as I read more of the story and her relationships. In the poem I imagine not only walking through the garden with her as she shuns the party, but asking her questions and having a conversation with her, or at least trying to, as she’s presented as quite laconic in the story and in my poem. There has been a lot said about muting the voice of women in poems written by men, and I’m always conscious of trying not to do that. There are a lot of political issues bound up in men taking the voice of women, however I’ve tried to do this fairly here and paint a sympathetic portrayal of Olga - she is character i admire after all, for her bravery in not conforming to societal expectations, and having the guts to simply walk out of the tedious dinner party in which she finds herself. 

The Last Line

I suppose with the last line I was trying to bring the poem back to the idea (and it’s quite a simple idea really) of escaping through fiction. The poem is about the speaker and the protagonist meeting in the world of the  imagination, and how just as Olga has escaped for her fictional dinner party, the speaker has also escaped from reality to meet her there. 

How it Fits the Collection

The collection this poem is from is entitled Stay, which was largely inspired by Robert Frost's notion that poetry is a 'momentary stay against confusion.' There are many imaginative flights of fancy such as this one throughout the book, and what I've always been interested in as a writer is how we can occupy two places at once: the real world and the imagined one. In fact, I'd maintain that is one of poetry's unique features, whether in the eyes of the writer or the reader. The ambiguity of language - saying one thing but meaning two - and, let's call it, the ambiguity of experience (being in two places at once) are two threads which weave themselves throughout this book and indeed my writing from the start, and this poem, inspired by Chekhov, is a good example of that.

You can buy signed copied of Andrew's second collection, Stay, here:

STAY (Signed) Paperback

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STAY (Signed) Hardback

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