In honour of Poetry Writing Month, I decided to interview a few poets that I enjoy reading. This is the first in a series of four interviews.



April 12, 2008

Claire Askew, a.k.a. *TheObviousChild, is a 22-year-old poet from Edinburgh, UK. She joined deviantART in early 2005 and has since gathered an admiring audience on the site. Her poetry has been published in magazines such as the roundtable review, Pomegranate and The Beat, and is forthcoming in The Edinburgh Review, The Delinquent and others. Claire was recently awarded the Grierson Prize 2008, the Sloan Prize 2008 and the Lewis Edwards Award for Poetry 2008. Aside from teaching English and furthering her education, she is editor-in-chief of Read This Magazine.

In this interview, she talks about her writing trajectory, the magazine she edits, and her work to help young poets.



^lovetodeviate: Tell us how you started writing. What has your writing career been like?

Claire Askew: I began as a reader, which is how all writers should start out. When I was a small child, my father used to read poetry to me, and as I got older I began reading it for myself. I started out like any other kid – writing stories in which my sister and I were kidnapped by pirates, that kind of thing. Then I think I just missed out the phase most kids have where they stop doing that. My writing ‘career’ has just developed from those first little baby-steps into the writing world.

LTD: How long does it usually take you to produce a polished poem and what stages does it go through before getting there?

CA: It varies from poem to poem, but mostly I will be struck by a phrase – something will come to me, overheard on the bus or glimpsed on the TV. I'll put that on paper and then sometimes before I know it I’ll have put four or five stanzas down. Other times it takes longer, I have to grab my thesaurus, or leave things to simmer for a while. Recently, my poems have started taking longer to birth themselves – but it’s always a dreamlike process. I have very little control, the poem just works its way out – it sounds crazy, but that's how it feels. And when it comes to editing, I’m lazy. I edit a little as I go along, but then I like to leave a poem to ferment for a couple of weeks at least before doing a re-read. It gives me a chance to become a stranger to the piece, to become ‘the Reader’ – that’s my lazy excuse anyway.

LTD: Your poem, First child, to father is a wistful, delicate piece. It appears to be autobiographical. The Edible Woman could be your real grandmother. Does family life influence much of your poetry? Where do you get your material?

CA: First child, to father was a strange poem to write. I decided I wanted to write a poem about Alzheimer’s, and put pen to paper to get down to it. Then a few stanzas in I realised I was writing about my own father (who does not have Alzheimer’s) and that scared me a little – I still find that poem quite morbid, as if it has the power to make the events it describes come true. As for The Edible Woman – that really is my grandmother. She passed away a couple of years ago and I think she’s appointed herself my muse, somewhere in the afterlife.

My ideas come from all over, though. The last poem I posted on dA, My daughter speaking, was inspired by a TV commercial (oddly, as I watch hardly any TV). I meet a lot of interesting characters and do a lot of people-watching, so I like to write people’s stories, real or imaginary. Mostly my ideas are stolen, though – from other poetry or from popular music. I probably owe Tom Waits and Liz Lochhead millions for artistic copyright infringement!

LTD: Do you have a favourite poem online that we can read? Tell us a bit about the poem and how it came to be.

CA: This is tricky, as I don’t have a great relationship with my own work. The more I read my own stuff the more I see cracks and flaws. However, one that I've never had the heart to hate is The last cigarette, which you can read if you visit this and scroll down.

I am obsessed with smoking and smokers (though ironically, I do not smoke myself). I love to watch people smoke – the language of their hands is fascinating, the way they punctuate sentences with their draws. The faces of smokers too – you can tell so much about someone from their smoking style! This poem is about my partner, Leon, who was trying to give up smoking when we met. He decided to hold a ‘swansong cigarette ceremony’ in order to mark the event... and of course, he was back to his old ways within a week! We've been together nearly three years now but this poem has been in the back of my mind that whole time, and it finally made it to the page a few months ago. I think because it’s been incubating for so long, I haven’t the heart to be critical of it.

LTD: Who would you say are your influences?

CA: This could be a very long list indeed – I read a lot of poets and discover new, inspiring voices all the time (most recently, the wonderful Sharon Olds, and a Welsh poet called Judy Brown). However, there are some old favourites who I can always turn to, to get my creative juices flowing. As a teenager growing up in Scotland, I read a lot of Carol Ann Duffy, Liz Lochhead and Edwin Morgan, and they still influence my work hugely. My absolute literary idol is the late, great Allen Ginsberg, though I don't really write in his style – and I have been known to take notes from the music and spoken word of the lovely Tom Waits, particularly his Asylum recordings.

LTD: “If I go for too long without writing something, I start to get crabby and feel anxious.” Those are your own words. How do you deal with the conflict between this constant urge to write and the demands of everyday life?

CA: It's very annoying! Right now, in a good period, I average about one decent poem a week, because I'm studying for a literature degree, teaching literature and editing a literary magazine – I think that makes for far too many other voices in my head! I’m also plagued by self-doubt, which of course facilitates writer's block, so I’m not desperately prolific. It’s something I plan to work on though – I’m hoping to make a daily schedule in which I'll allocate blocks of time to getting something – anything – down on paper. It might not be good but it'll be progress!

LTD: You have an impressive list of writing credits. What would you say is your biggest writing achievement so far?

CA: I don’t think I’m very conventional in my ‘credits’ – I run a small underground magazine, I read small underground magazines, and I like to submit to small underground magazines. They’re run by cool people, and they don’t adhere to the poison and snobbery that you get so often as you move higher up the poetry ladder. So I’ve had a lot of ‘small gigs’, and only now am I starting to get prodded into sending my stuff to bigger publications. My biggest publication so far has been The Edinburgh Review – it’s the biggest literary journal in Scotland, so that’s pretty exciting. But my biggest achievement came recently, when I won ‘the big three’ Scottish literature prizes in the same year (Grierson Prize, Sloane Prize, Lewis Edwards Award). It’s not often they all go to one person, so I was really very pleased – and shocked!





Claire (*TheObviousChild) was a poet in residence at the 4th London Poetry Festival 2008. In her article, Why I write poetry, she says, “I live in Edinburgh , which I love, but breaking into the literary circle here is a little difficult. […] Poetry in Edinburgh can be incredibly oligarchic – going to a poetry reading here sometimes feels like straying into someone’s private dinner party.” I asked her to talk a bit about her experiences with the business of writing – publishing, readings, getting your name out there.



LTD: What advice do you have for someone who is trying to get published? Is there a way to get your name known or is it all luck and talent?

CA: I'd say it’s 50% talent, 30% hard work and 20% who you know. I hate that last 20% and wish it didn’t exist, but unfortunately it does, thanks to the many poets who schmooze their way through the industry, relying on blogging and back-patting. I’d plead with anyone who wants to ‘make it’ not to do that – yes, it’s an easy way in, but it feeds the horrendous clique-mentality that’s killing off poetry audiences. Instead, I’d say: read, read, read, read and read some more, to improve your knowledge and your work – this is the ‘talent’ part (a huge number of the poems that land in Read This’ inbox come from people who don’t read poetry – you can tell non-readers immediately and they’re almost always bad writers). Then, send your work off to magazines, diligently. Read up on the magazine first, write a polite covering letter, only send 3 - 5 pieces, and don’t send simultaneous submissions. Do not let rejections get you down – get back on the horse. This is the ‘hard work’ part. Also, remember that poetry will probably never make you a millionaire, or even pay the bills. Sadly, that’s just a fact of life.

LTD: Who should we be reading in the contemporary scene? Any favourite poets or literary magazines?

CA: A magazine which does a huge amount of great work is Poets Letter, run by poetic vigilante, Munayem Mayenin, who is a truly lovely man. The monthly magazine/e-zine encourages totally unknown writers, organises festivals and events and dishes out literary prizes, whilst all the time remaining down-to-earth and friendly. They’re awesome. Dash is a new publication, but I expect great things from them, and NewLeaf hardly ever feature a piece that I don't obsessively love.

When it comes to individuals, deviantART is harbouring a few rising stars – *a-random-quigle will go stellar, I am sure; she certainly deserves to, hers is the best poetry I've ever read here. I'd also love to see a book by *queenhrosie – she's the kind of poet editors might sneer at, and that's a tragedy; her work is poignant, beautiful and original. One other poet I want to mention is a friend of mine, Ryan Van Winkle, who shares my attitude towards the bigwigs of the poetry industry, and who has never received the recognition his work deserves. And beyond poetry, check out the short fiction of ~SlideBeneathTheCity – he's the next Alan Warner, or deserves to be.

LTD: Read This Magazine is your own publishing project. Tell us a bit about how it began and what it aims to do. Do you have an editorial policy that potential submitters should know about?

CA: RT is run from my home city, Edinburgh, which is the World UNESCO City of Literature. I’ve lived here for five years now and love the place, but recently I began to realise that it wasn’t living up to its title – because there are no small magazines for emerging writers here! Edinburgh has heaps of big posh academic journals to its name (things like Chapman and The Edinburgh Review) but I realised that there was a gap in the market for something more approachable. So I gathered four friends who’d taken an Honours creative writing course with me, and we joined forced to create Read This – a not-for-profit monthly publication.

Our editorial policy revolves around helping emerging writers improve their work, and as a result we do a lot of stuff that just isn’t done in normal poetry circles. We welcome work from absolutely anyone, and we read every single piece that we receive (currently we get around 75 - 100 submissions per month, sometimes more). We also respond to everyone individually, and provide feedback if requested, so that the writers we reject can work on their weaknesses and hopefully re-submit and be published! We do have one rule – because of the number of submissions we get, we ask people to limit themselves to four pieces per submission. But otherwise, our submission guidelines are basically ‘ALL WELCOME’.





Poetry in often a misunderstood genre. Popular opinions vary from it being only about rhymes and emotions to it having to use archaic or ‘formal’ language; this often results in newcomers being rejected from the poetry scene. The impression is that the literary world is closed and ‘elitist’. Claire (*TheObviousChild) has a particular interest in helping newcomers in an industry that can be difficult to understand, and even harder to be a part of.



LTD: What misconceptions about poetry do you think need to be broken before a person can begin maturing as a poet?

CA: I’m afraid the reading thing is an issue which cannot be ignored. If you don’t read poetry, chances are you will never be a good poet, end of story –lus, would you go into investment banking if you couldn’t do maths?! Reading makes sense. And if you ask me, that’s one of the only ways to really change and grow as a poet. But luckily, it’s easy and it’s fun! I just wish poetry books were cheaper, and that there were more of them!

There are misconceptions which need to be beaten down, however – poetry is dying out because of them. So many people won’t read poetry (and literature in general nowadays, alarmingly) because they think it’s intellectual, stuffy, boring and difficult. As well as being facilitated by poetic cliques and snobbery, these attitudes exist because of the way poetry is perceived in the media and taught in schools, and this should not be allowed to continue. I firmly believe that there’s a poem out there for everyone, and that everyone can enjoy poetry on some level, but people are so unwilling to shake off their past experiences. Schools need to stop teaching Keats and start teaching Ginsberg – so I guess we should all become English teachers and screw up the system!

LTD: Creative writing degrees are becoming more and more popular these days. As someone who is about to pursue an MSc (Hons) in this subject, do you think it necessary for poets to go through such courses?

CA: I would say that a formal qualification is absolutely NOT a requirement. If you can’t pay through the nose for a degree or if you’d just rather not give up years of your time to study, you have other options. Get your literary-minded friends together and start a writing group. Attend workshops. Just get together with other poets and bounce your work off each other, then find places to read your work to audiences. Sadly, I think poetry is becoming more and more academic and very few non-academics read it seriously anymore. But that doesn’t mean that academia is the only way in... go out there and find an audience – drag readers back to poetry!

LTD: Does being an editor and a published poet push you to help others in their writing?

CA: Yes, absolutely – it’s really something I’m passionate about, and I find it even more rewarding than getting my own work ‘out there’. RT is all about giving people the kind of early writing experience I wish I’d had, the kind of advice I wish I’d been given. When I was fifteen, I put together a manuscript of my god-awful poems and sent it to Faber and Faber, because I didn’t know any better (they were actually very nice and sent me a personal letter back, which I treasure now)! And as an individual, I like to be able to help emerging writers on a one-to-one basis – sometimes I get notes here on dA with questions about writing, cover letters, magazines etc, and I'm always happy to answer them. I wish I got more, in fact! So if anyone feels I’m worthy, and wants some advice...?

You can read more of Claire (*TheObviousChild)’s poetry in her deviantART gallery, and her journal shoutboard has links to her work published online. But before I end this, I asked Claire what her plans for the future would be. This is what she said:

CA: The only thing I know for certain is I’ll write until I die. What I’ll write, and what I’ll make of my writing, remains to be seen. A lot of people are suggesting I put together a manuscript, but I’m waiting to feel totally ready myself. Most of the good things that have happened to me writing-wise have kind of snuck up on me, so to be honest, your guess is as good as mine! Watch this space, I suppose.



Thank you for letting me interview you, Claire, and good luck in all that you do!

Look out for more interviews with some of my favourite poets on deviantART. Cheers and happy writing, everyone!

April Contests and Projects: This news article should keep you up-to-date about all the activities happening this April. If you have any poetry month-related enquiries (or just poetry enquiries), feel free to note me (^lovetodeviate).