STEPHEN CLAUGHTON

Stephen Claughton

​WHY I WRITE

 I write poems and reviews – the reviews for pleasure, the poems more as a compulsion. Reviewing a book helps me get to know it properly and if the poet has published other collections, I’ll read those as well to get the context. It’s broadened my appreciation of contemporary poetry, as well as taking me back to my schooldays, when I enjoyed the practical criticism exercises we were set. It was disappointing to find that they didn’t figure much in my university course, which was more historically based. I wouldn’t try the reader’s patience by analysing a poem in full, but learning the discipline has been useful. In a review, I try to provide a flavour of the book, so that people can decide for themselves whether they want to read it. For the same reason, I include a lot of quotations (we were always taught to back up our assertions).
 
I started writing poems in my early teens, but despite some early success (perhaps because of it), I didn’t really get going again until I was in my fifties. It was mainly a lack of confidence: poetry was too important for me to risk failing at it. I tried, off and on, to get things published and even when I was effectively silent, I still planned poems in my head. For me, a life without poetry would be very empty. I see it as a way of capturing something alive. What you do with it once you’ve caught it is up for debate, but a dead poem is no use to anyone. For me, it’s mostly about finding meaning and structure in an increasingly crazy world.
 
I like the concentration needed for any kind of writing and I’m sure that being a practising poet helps me review other people’s poetry, but it doesn’t seem to work the other way around. I can see things in my poems after I’ve written them that I might have commented on in a review, but these are post-hoc rationalisations. My critical faculties aren’t engaged when I’m actually writing a poem. I proceed mostly by ‘feel’ and – as people often say – I’m not satisfied unless a poem has surprised me in some way.
 
Stephen Claughton
Stephen 's collection 'The 3-D Clock ' was published by Dempsey & Windle in 2020.