Output details

Greenhouse

One poem in the pamphlet, 'Florida', shares an epigraph with my critical book on Elizabeth Bishop - 'Your scenery comes and goes, half- real and half language all the time'. This particular poem was written with Bishop very much in mind but the whole book explores themes to do with memory and landscape and the relation between them, and the instability that relation produces. I've used my own travels, sometimes connected with my researches into Bishop, and other research I've undertaken into memory. 'Cherries' was an attempt to incorporate ideas I might employ in critical writing into poetry and I refer to Walter Benjamin at the end of 'Passages' and the title is of course a nod to him too. Writing poetry is an opportunity to try to distil ideas and to use silence and shape, and to be aware of affect as an aspect of meaning. I want my poetry to be simple - or seem simple - but to produce echoes.