Lessons from the School of Night

Lessons from Stanza 2018: Sinéad Morrissey

In a guest episode of the podcast, Suzannah V. Evans interviews Sinéad Morrissey, who won the Forward Prize for best collection for her 2017 book, On Balance. Morrissey was delivering the keynote lecture at this year's Stanza Poetry Festival, where the interview was recorded, in St. Andrews in the spring. They discussed the importance of form, the development of On Balance, and Les Murray's influence on Morrissey's work. She discusses and reads her poems 'On Balance' and 'The Rope' at 9m30s and 13m43s. On Balance was reviewed in Issue 3 of the Scores. Photo by Lukas Becker on Unsplash.

Lessons from the School of Night: Paul Muldoon

Pulitzer Prize winning Irish poet Paul Muldoon discusses everything from the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland to Rudy Giuliani to what people expect from poetry. Muldoon is the author of over thirty collections and the recipient of numerous awards, including the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Griffin Poetry Prize. Muldoon, born in County Armagh in Northern Ireland, has been teaching in the U.S. for the past thirty years, most recently at Princeton University. He is also an honorary Professor at the University of St Andrews. "Even though we read no poetry, as a culture, we do know that it may have some power in the world, and we turn to it in times of crisis." Paul Muldoon

Lessons from the School of Night: David Harsent

I don't feel any such responsibility at all, because I can't help being white and I can't help being male, any more than I can help being working class — David Harsent Sean Robinson met with David Harsent after his reading at Toppings in December, where he was promoting his twelfth collection of poetry, 'Salt'. In this interview David urged young writers to take their own risks, to 'sacrifice good for unsafe'. He talked about his preference for poetry which uses fictional constructs as opposed to confession. Sean and he also discussed the pressures of making money alongside poetry; the need to read omnivorously; and poetry's political role, or lack thereof. This episode of the podcast was  produced with Stephen Sacco.

Lessons from the School of Night: Douglas Dunn

In this interview I met with Douglas Dunn, who spoke candidly about the experience of growing old as a writer; discussed teaching and playwriting as ways for a poet to make ends meet; and reminisced about the publication of his first book Terry Street, and Phillip Larkin's role in getting it published. Dunn reads two of his new poems: 'The Teacher's Notes' at 10m02s, and 'Thursday' at 24m10s. Apologies for the poor sound quality at points.

Lessons from the School of Night: Eric Langley

Lessons from the School of Night "I generally find that language will just open up again every time you hit a wall" — Eric Langley Sean Robinson met with Eric Langley at the Topping bookshop, before Eric's appearance at the School of Night, where he read from his first book of poetry, Raking Light. They discussed Eric's childhood holidays with J.H. Prynne, the influence of the Elizabethans on his work, and the role of the words themselves in the process of composition. Eric also read his poem 'Puncture' for us (at 26m50s). Eric Langley's first poetry collection, Raking Light, was published by Carcanet earlier this year. His work has previously appeared in New Poetries VI, Blackbox Manifold, and PN Review. Eric works in the English department at UCL, where he teaches both Renaissance and contemporary literature, and he has published scholarship on Shakespeare in a variety of contexts, particularly in relation to developments in medical and scientific thought of the period: his first academic monograph is Narcissism and Suicide in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (OUP, 2009), and he is in the final stages of a second book to be called Ill Communications: Shakespeare' Contagious Sympathies. He was born in the Midlands, went to university in Leeds, lived in St Andrews, and has now settled in London. Sean Robinson is studying for an MFA in poetry writing at St. Andrews under Don Paterson. An erstwhile policy wonk, he graduated in 2013 from Oxford with a bachelors in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and worked for some time with the Civil Service, until deciding to chuck it all in to do something useful, and write poems. He is from London. Lessons from the School of Night are an irregular series of video or audio interviews and tips from poets and writers who visit St Andrews. The School of Night – inspired by the group which included Christopher Marlowe and Sir Walter Raleigh – is Topping & Company Booksellers' Year-Round Poetry Festival in St Andrews. Curated with the help of Don Paterson and playing host to poets as varied as Paul Muldoon and Lorraine Mariner, Simon Armitage and Annie Freud, it is anchored to a regular fixture on the last Tuesday of the month. The School of Night offers the chance to explore and discuss the work of some of the best poets on the contemporary scene. For more details on these and other events, please visit the Topping & Company website. Music: Luvva by Heman Sheman. Image: Johnny Adolphson