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RK : You were born and brought up in Manchester, how do you think it’s shaped your work?
JW: Well I was born in Salford, although not brought up there. My Mothers family are all
Salfordians and to my mind that’s different. What I mean is, I think that Salfordians have certain
characteristics, it’s hard to explain, a sort of flavour of their own, and it’s the way they speak. I
was quite conscious of that, still am, but then so do Italians, they too differ from region to region.
Though I'd consider myself to be a Mancunian of sorts, I have an English Mother and an Italian
Father, which adds a different dimension to my upbringing, especially in the way I see things and
do things. Culturally and emotionally it was superbly rich.
I grew up on the outskirts of Manchester, not that far from Liverpool, it was semi- rural, near to
Barton Moss. I used to ride my bike up it to where Stevenson first ran his Rocket; there was a
network of drainage ditches, always full of water of unknown depth. The Moss as we called it,
was spongy damp peat and silver birch growing everywhere. In winter it was like being a kid in a
Klimt. But I wasn’t conscious of place as such as a kid, because I was always imagining I was
somewhere else and that’s why I wouldn’t say I wrote specifically about Manchester.
I was very conscious of being different from the other kids who I went to school with. I looked
different for a start and my family, at least on my Father's side also looked and sounded
different. I was also exposed to a different kind of living; festivals, ceremonies, stories, a variety
of geographic environments. My Mother kept a large suitcase beneath the bed, it was stuffed
with experiences with my father in Italy, she spent time in Sardinia, had Sardinian friends she
kept in contact with, together they travelled a lot throughout Italy, Rome, Vicenza... Northern
Italy is full of textiles, textile industry etc..
I was always aware as a child of passion of some sort or other, a passion for life I suppose, and
that you have to live your life like that, it didn't matter whether you were eating or listening to
music or playing , you had to throw yourself into it, I try to do this with my writing, I don't like
restrictions, better to have a go than not at all. I'm very adventurous . They nurtured that part of
me. Taught me to be true and not to be afraid, but be bold, I think its a great legacy and I have
passed this onto my children.
As an adult I’ve lived all over the place, and when you do that you tend to pick things up, stuff
clings. I’m a digestive sort of person, I tend to absorb then break it all down. I have to risk a bit
of myself when I live somewhere new, it’s like giving a peace offering. I think you enter into a
relationship with a place when you encamp, this means you have to take risks - simple.
RK: That’s interesting; don’t you worry about stepping on someone else’s… geographic
territory? For instance how can you write about say the Lakes after Wordsworth?
JW: I don’t see it like that. This idea of the stake out, metaphorically that is. I mean just because a
person, or poets like Wordsworth or Heaney lived in a place, wrote about a place doesn’t mean
they own it or have exclusive rights over it. People, poets, everyone sees things, experiences life
differently – they are more likely to bring startling or different perspectives if they’re free to
write. I don’t believe that something’s untouchable - especially in poetry. In a way that idea of
ground, territory being owned, occupied in the canon by particular writers is a sort of silent
censorship. I’m a free ranger; I‘m not big on enclosure.
RK: You lived in Belfast in the 80’s, that was full of boundaries, demarcations, and full stops –
was that free ranger territory?
JW: I lived in a mixed community and this helped. But yes, you’re always conscious, aware - how
can you not be when you get up in the morning, go to get the milk in and find a couple of
squadies in your front garden pointing SLR rifles at a pensioner, or a woman taking her kids to
school - and it’s all part and parcel of patrol practice. You’re powerless, what can you say- hey
your crushing the plants in the bed! I wouldn’t say it scared me, just shocked me at first, the
erosion of civil liberties. But my husband's Irish and knows the score; there are complex codes,
semiotics in peoples daily interactions in divided communities – like you said multiple boundaries.
It's very difficult to convey what it's really like to live in that kind of environment, but its not
unlike the drainage ditches – there is constant danger and you sometimes do and sometimes don’t
know how close it is.
What did scare me was when I realised I was getting used to it. From the house I lived in you
could see the top of the Cavehill from the upstairs window, it loomed like an island from the sea,
it was like that opening passage of Stevenson’s short story the 'The Beach Of Falesa' Something
like … The land breeze blew in our faces, and smelt strong of wild lime and vanilla… it was
somewhere else to go.
Now if I was scared, I couldn’t even think of going there. I think its important to have courage as
a poet, sometimes you need to fire a few shots over the canon, to see if it breaks rank or holds the
line, and it’s the same with place; that can also be canonised, be made saintly. It's also important
to be generous, poetry is a difficult place to work in. I'm a designer, and I work with lots of
different people, folk who have no connection with poetry, and I think this is a blessing, a gift for
my work as well as personal life. I don't mix with other poets very much, I have a couple of ' poet'
friends I trust, but to be honest I don't get involved in the scene. On the whole I think its much
healthier, as it can be very incestuous and damaging for you as an individual and as a writer,
especially if you're sensitive, so for me its best avoided. Its hard to explain what the scene is like
but it can be vicious. The writing is all that matters surely?
RK: So what do you think about the way Northern Irish poets have dealt with the ‘Troubles’?
JW: I don’t like calling it that, its too marshmallow, too soft a word, it’s too evasive. Its not for
me to say, they deal with it in their own way - It's often cited that Seamus Heaney refused to
write political poetry, or should I say, was reluctant to be defined in that way, and I can see why,
though the word 'political' I think has to be unpacked...It's a bit of a minefield, if you'll excuse the
pun... The late James Simmons wrote a shocking elegy, ‘Claudy’, about a terrible explosion in an
Ulster town. I’m not Irish so I come to it from a different perspective, although I don’t think that
it excludes me from writing about it - if I want to I will, you have to get shot of your self
consciousness. I like the poem ‘Smoke’ by Medbh McGuckian; a different way of telling, also
Ciaran Carsons 'Belfast Confetti ' his collection The Irish For No...but to be honest it’s the novelists
writing today, Robert McLiam Wilson, Glenn Patterson that I go back to. I think McLiam's novel
Eureka Street was groundbreaking and raised the bar in terms of Irish fiction.
RK: So who are your influences, your poetic forbears?
JW: I think its important to say that its not just poets I read, I’ve said this a couple of times and
received criticism for doing so. I’ m not sure why… maybe it’s perceived as not towing the party
line or something… Of course I read other poets! And there are some specific poets, individual
poems I admire, epics that have affected me; you can see it in my work.
I was brought up with Christina Rossetti and Browning, Shelley, the Romantic poets. I adored-
still do ' Goblin Market' and 'Pied Piper of Hamelin'. The Italian in me loves 'Winter Is My Secret',
all of Rossetti , the games and puzzles and secret shades in her work. My Father liked Browning
especially his Italian stuff. I'm fascinated by the English abroad...My favourite poets are Charlotte
Mew and Christina Rossetti, and there are so many, Eavan Boland, Carol Ann Duffy, Eugenio
Montale, lots of Italians, Magrelli , Raboni, Rossana Ombres, Patrizia Cavalli ...In terms of fiction,
Tim Parks is brilliant, a great novelist, thinker and critic, also Calasso, Moravia, Carlo Levi, D. H.
Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia, Twilight In Italy , also Edith Wharton, Henry James , Patricia
Highsmith, Giorgio Bassani, The Garden of the Finzi - Continis, Lampedusa's The Leopard, all of
Collette I could go on... I read fashion and design books because of my work and I like to
alternate as much as possible...
But I also like adventure, enjoy ‘cross dressing’ disciplines, using the language of other genres, be
it fashion, art, food, history and so on. A lot of my poems are narrative driven or scenarios. I
think one of the most important things a writer can do is learn to read widely and read well;
makes for better criticism.
Take Katherine Mansfield for instance, the short story writer, she did write some poetry. But I
think her best poetry is in the stories themselves, in the psychology she unravels, in the objects-
the props if you like, I like her theatricality. She has a huge handbag. I like poems that can switch,
that are multiple, not just a poem, if you see; they have to have more than one string, they have to
have a set.
The Irish writer, filmmaker Neil Jordan’s good at this too. His collection of short stories
A Night In Tunisia is full of huge possibilities; I like that in poems too. Maybe some people are
scared of that, they feel comfortable with it placed on the page alone. I prefer mine to have legs.
RK. A lot of your poems seem not fixed in time or viewpoint. I was thinking of your poem
‘Hat’, you almost get the feeling that what’s being said is not really what’s being thought by
the people in the poem.
JW: It’s the way my mind works. I think this gives an added dimension to the poem, its not a
trick, its real, conscious, and anyway life is like that isn’t it, constantly moving on. Language
moves swiftly, changes tack. Sometimes time overlaps and I’m fascinated by that, especially what
the imagination can do with it.
RK: Many of your poems are multi- sensory explosions…
JW: It’s about the way you relate to the world. I have a dyslexic son, he’s taught me a lot, there’s
not one way of going about things- in a way I’m suspicious of text as the road to all knowledge,
how many people does that exclude? I’m not into illiteracy, don’t get me wrong but sometimes
you can come at words, in a different way, through all the senses- not just exclusively one. For
instance I found song lyrics helped my son learn to read, helped his sequencing and phrasing- we
heard, sang, danced, acted the words out. I believe in combinations, makeup. Poetry is like that
too in the end, it’s the physiology of word not just its skeleton that does it.
JW: Well I was born in Salford, although not brought up there. My Mothers family are all
Salfordians and to my mind that’s different. What I mean is, I think that Salfordians have certain
characteristics, it’s hard to explain, a sort of flavour of their own, and it’s the way they speak. I
was quite conscious of that, still am, but then so do Italians, they too differ from region to region.
Though I'd consider myself to be a Mancunian of sorts, I have an English Mother and an Italian
Father, which adds a different dimension to my upbringing, especially in the way I see things and
do things. Culturally and emotionally it was superbly rich.
I grew up on the outskirts of Manchester, not that far from Liverpool, it was semi- rural, near to
Barton Moss. I used to ride my bike up it to where Stevenson first ran his Rocket; there was a
network of drainage ditches, always full of water of unknown depth. The Moss as we called it,
was spongy damp peat and silver birch growing everywhere. In winter it was like being a kid in a
Klimt. But I wasn’t conscious of place as such as a kid, because I was always imagining I was
somewhere else and that’s why I wouldn’t say I wrote specifically about Manchester.
I was very conscious of being different from the other kids who I went to school with. I looked
different for a start and my family, at least on my Father's side also looked and sounded
different. I was also exposed to a different kind of living; festivals, ceremonies, stories, a variety
of geographic environments. My Mother kept a large suitcase beneath the bed, it was stuffed
with experiences with my father in Italy, she spent time in Sardinia, had Sardinian friends she
kept in contact with, together they travelled a lot throughout Italy, Rome, Vicenza... Northern
Italy is full of textiles, textile industry etc..
I was always aware as a child of passion of some sort or other, a passion for life I suppose, and
that you have to live your life like that, it didn't matter whether you were eating or listening to
music or playing , you had to throw yourself into it, I try to do this with my writing, I don't like
restrictions, better to have a go than not at all. I'm very adventurous . They nurtured that part of
me. Taught me to be true and not to be afraid, but be bold, I think its a great legacy and I have
passed this onto my children.
As an adult I’ve lived all over the place, and when you do that you tend to pick things up, stuff
clings. I’m a digestive sort of person, I tend to absorb then break it all down. I have to risk a bit
of myself when I live somewhere new, it’s like giving a peace offering. I think you enter into a
relationship with a place when you encamp, this means you have to take risks - simple.
RK: That’s interesting; don’t you worry about stepping on someone else’s… geographic
territory? For instance how can you write about say the Lakes after Wordsworth?
JW: I don’t see it like that. This idea of the stake out, metaphorically that is. I mean just because a
person, or poets like Wordsworth or Heaney lived in a place, wrote about a place doesn’t mean
they own it or have exclusive rights over it. People, poets, everyone sees things, experiences life
differently – they are more likely to bring startling or different perspectives if they’re free to
write. I don’t believe that something’s untouchable - especially in poetry. In a way that idea of
ground, territory being owned, occupied in the canon by particular writers is a sort of silent
censorship. I’m a free ranger; I‘m not big on enclosure.
RK: You lived in Belfast in the 80’s, that was full of boundaries, demarcations, and full stops –
was that free ranger territory?
JW: I lived in a mixed community and this helped. But yes, you’re always conscious, aware - how
can you not be when you get up in the morning, go to get the milk in and find a couple of
squadies in your front garden pointing SLR rifles at a pensioner, or a woman taking her kids to
school - and it’s all part and parcel of patrol practice. You’re powerless, what can you say- hey
your crushing the plants in the bed! I wouldn’t say it scared me, just shocked me at first, the
erosion of civil liberties. But my husband's Irish and knows the score; there are complex codes,
semiotics in peoples daily interactions in divided communities – like you said multiple boundaries.
It's very difficult to convey what it's really like to live in that kind of environment, but its not
unlike the drainage ditches – there is constant danger and you sometimes do and sometimes don’t
know how close it is.
What did scare me was when I realised I was getting used to it. From the house I lived in you
could see the top of the Cavehill from the upstairs window, it loomed like an island from the sea,
it was like that opening passage of Stevenson’s short story the 'The Beach Of Falesa' Something
like … The land breeze blew in our faces, and smelt strong of wild lime and vanilla… it was
somewhere else to go.
Now if I was scared, I couldn’t even think of going there. I think its important to have courage as
a poet, sometimes you need to fire a few shots over the canon, to see if it breaks rank or holds the
line, and it’s the same with place; that can also be canonised, be made saintly. It's also important
to be generous, poetry is a difficult place to work in. I'm a designer, and I work with lots of
different people, folk who have no connection with poetry, and I think this is a blessing, a gift for
my work as well as personal life. I don't mix with other poets very much, I have a couple of ' poet'
friends I trust, but to be honest I don't get involved in the scene. On the whole I think its much
healthier, as it can be very incestuous and damaging for you as an individual and as a writer,
especially if you're sensitive, so for me its best avoided. Its hard to explain what the scene is like
but it can be vicious. The writing is all that matters surely?
RK: So what do you think about the way Northern Irish poets have dealt with the ‘Troubles’?
JW: I don’t like calling it that, its too marshmallow, too soft a word, it’s too evasive. Its not for
me to say, they deal with it in their own way - It's often cited that Seamus Heaney refused to
write political poetry, or should I say, was reluctant to be defined in that way, and I can see why,
though the word 'political' I think has to be unpacked...It's a bit of a minefield, if you'll excuse the
pun... The late James Simmons wrote a shocking elegy, ‘Claudy’, about a terrible explosion in an
Ulster town. I’m not Irish so I come to it from a different perspective, although I don’t think that
it excludes me from writing about it - if I want to I will, you have to get shot of your self
consciousness. I like the poem ‘Smoke’ by Medbh McGuckian; a different way of telling, also
Ciaran Carsons 'Belfast Confetti ' his collection The Irish For No...but to be honest it’s the novelists
writing today, Robert McLiam Wilson, Glenn Patterson that I go back to. I think McLiam's novel
Eureka Street was groundbreaking and raised the bar in terms of Irish fiction.
RK: So who are your influences, your poetic forbears?
JW: I think its important to say that its not just poets I read, I’ve said this a couple of times and
received criticism for doing so. I’ m not sure why… maybe it’s perceived as not towing the party
line or something… Of course I read other poets! And there are some specific poets, individual
poems I admire, epics that have affected me; you can see it in my work.
I was brought up with Christina Rossetti and Browning, Shelley, the Romantic poets. I adored-
still do ' Goblin Market' and 'Pied Piper of Hamelin'. The Italian in me loves 'Winter Is My Secret',
all of Rossetti , the games and puzzles and secret shades in her work. My Father liked Browning
especially his Italian stuff. I'm fascinated by the English abroad...My favourite poets are Charlotte
Mew and Christina Rossetti, and there are so many, Eavan Boland, Carol Ann Duffy, Eugenio
Montale, lots of Italians, Magrelli , Raboni, Rossana Ombres, Patrizia Cavalli ...In terms of fiction,
Tim Parks is brilliant, a great novelist, thinker and critic, also Calasso, Moravia, Carlo Levi, D. H.
Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia, Twilight In Italy , also Edith Wharton, Henry James , Patricia
Highsmith, Giorgio Bassani, The Garden of the Finzi - Continis, Lampedusa's The Leopard, all of
Collette I could go on... I read fashion and design books because of my work and I like to
alternate as much as possible...
But I also like adventure, enjoy ‘cross dressing’ disciplines, using the language of other genres, be
it fashion, art, food, history and so on. A lot of my poems are narrative driven or scenarios. I
think one of the most important things a writer can do is learn to read widely and read well;
makes for better criticism.
Take Katherine Mansfield for instance, the short story writer, she did write some poetry. But I
think her best poetry is in the stories themselves, in the psychology she unravels, in the objects-
the props if you like, I like her theatricality. She has a huge handbag. I like poems that can switch,
that are multiple, not just a poem, if you see; they have to have more than one string, they have to
have a set.
The Irish writer, filmmaker Neil Jordan’s good at this too. His collection of short stories
A Night In Tunisia is full of huge possibilities; I like that in poems too. Maybe some people are
scared of that, they feel comfortable with it placed on the page alone. I prefer mine to have legs.
RK. A lot of your poems seem not fixed in time or viewpoint. I was thinking of your poem
‘Hat’, you almost get the feeling that what’s being said is not really what’s being thought by
the people in the poem.
JW: It’s the way my mind works. I think this gives an added dimension to the poem, its not a
trick, its real, conscious, and anyway life is like that isn’t it, constantly moving on. Language
moves swiftly, changes tack. Sometimes time overlaps and I’m fascinated by that, especially what
the imagination can do with it.
RK: Many of your poems are multi- sensory explosions…
JW: It’s about the way you relate to the world. I have a dyslexic son, he’s taught me a lot, there’s
not one way of going about things- in a way I’m suspicious of text as the road to all knowledge,
how many people does that exclude? I’m not into illiteracy, don’t get me wrong but sometimes
you can come at words, in a different way, through all the senses- not just exclusively one. For
instance I found song lyrics helped my son learn to read, helped his sequencing and phrasing- we
heard, sang, danced, acted the words out. I believe in combinations, makeup. Poetry is like that
too in the end, it’s the physiology of word not just its skeleton that does it.
| Interview |