|
|
RML: I have several collected and selected poems by David
Miller on my shelf. What's different about Reassembling Still?
DM: It's easily the largest and most comprehensive collection of my poetry.
Some people said to me in the past, why are you leaving so much out? I came
to agree with them.
RML: You've spoken before about arranging these volumes by affinities, and I
notice many of the groupings of texts in Reassembling Still are identical or very similar to those in In
the Shop of Nothing, your 2007 new &
selected.
DM: In the Shop of Nothing is
the best of those previous collections. I think I got it right, in terms of
the affinities, resonances, etc. But it was indeed a new and selected poems,
not a collected.
RML: I've always wondered about the endless revising and editing you do of
your work. Can you explain that urge, and why you're not willing to accept
texts as finished at a certain point in time? Perhaps of that certain timeÉ
DM: I'm not concerned with the idea of perfection, but I do want my poetry to
work as well as possible, within its own terms. If I see a way to achieve
this, then that's what I do - at whatever stage.
RML To quote: 'so is this image poetry?'
DM: I think someone asked me that once, and I said 'No'. And that's what's
said in the poem. There are images in my poetry, but I don't believe in
making a fetish of the image. I think I was probably reacting against someone
like Robert Bly, who did make a fetish of the image. (I thought he was a
dreadful writer.)
RML: You've talked about this before, but more and more there seems slippage
and leeway between your prose and poetry. Several of the texts in The
Waters of Marah, a book of selected
prose, turn up in Reassembling Still!
|
|
|
DM: I included the prose poems, or poems in prose, from The
Waters of Marah in this new book, because
it seemed like a mistake to go on separating my poems in prose from my poems
in lines. I didn't include one piece from The Waters of Marah, Tesserae, which I think of as fiction.
RML: Can you talk about your other artistic practices, your music and art, in
relation to your writing? Do they stem from similar creative urges or
processes? Do you see them as in relationship to your writing?
DM: I think it all exists in some sort of relationship, the poetry to the
music, the music to the art, the art to the poetry. But the music and the art
are very much improvised, created on the spur of the moment, whereas the
poetry is created much more slowly and with much rewriting.
RML: Your notes and conversation are always full of references to spiritual
writers, artists, musicians and people. Can you share whose work you are
reading, looking at and listening to at the moment?
DM: The composers Gloria Coates and Andrezej Panufnik, the poet Guy Birchard,
the fiction writer S Y Agnon, the cut paper work by Matisse I've just seen at
Tate Modern. J S Bach, always. Ali Akbar Khan, always. Jimmy Giuffre, always.
(I seem to be listening to music more these days than reading or looking at
art, to be honest.) This probably only makes sense to me! Trying to
synthesise these people's work would be a nightmare. I like complexities and
contradictions, in some respects and in some contexts at least. Though I'd
have to admit that simplicity has a strong attraction for me, as well, as I
think is evident from some of my more minimalist work.
|
|
|
RML: How is your Spiritual Letters coming along? Can you talk about any perceived
trajectory there, a long-term plan? And why more recent installments are
lengthier prose than the early volumes; and why the work seems so separate to
your other writing?
DM: The sixth series is to be published by Like This Press in Manchester,
sometime this year, and I'm very happy about this. I've never had any overall
plan for the work. It happens as it happens, and that includes whether
individual pieces are longer or shorter. At a certain point I seemed to need
that greater length. It might not be the case in future. When I started the
series, I had it in mind that it could potentially be endless, and that
within each individual piece I had to keep things moving. That's really all.
Well, maybe not all, but hopefully it will do for now, if that's OK.
RML: Like myself (and I say this to assure you it is not a criticism) you
have a prolific publications record, but how do you see pamphlets, postcards
and chapbooks in relation to the more substantial paperback publications of
your work?
DM: Smaller publications, of whatever size/format, can be as interesting in their
way as larger publications - and they can be in a sense ÒtruerÓ to certain
pieces of writing. The way that writing is presented materially is of
considerable interest to me.
© David Miller & Rupert Loydell 2014
|