Besides my own life as a writer, I do like to use this blog as a forum for conversations with other writers. I’m amassing a terrific list of these dialogues which I have held and posted over the years. They use to be listed under interviews over there on the right of your screen, but I’ve changed the heading to Great Conversations because that’s really what they have all turned out to be.  Today’s is certainly no exception.

Ann Alexander is the first poet to have a collection published by Ward Wood and with the publication of Too Close she has set an exceptionally high standard.  Ann narrowly avoided the Second World War by being born in bombed-out Coventry in 1946. She worked as an advertising copywriter in London for many years before absconding to Cornwall, where she now lives. She has published two previous collections of poetry (Facing Demons, Peterloo Poets, 2002 and Nasty, British & Short, Peterloo Poets, 2007). She took first prize in the Frogmore, Bedford Open, and Mslexia competitions, came 3rd in the BBC’s poem for Britain (2003) and 3rd in the Peterloo poetry competition. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, on various websites including BBC2, in a wide range of poetry magazines and on Radio 4. She is married and has one daughter. After a working lifetime in advertising and journalism she admits to an obsession with news as it is reflected in the media, and the inspiration for many of her poems comes from there.
  I want to show you an example of her work, but first here is the conversation we recently had:
Sue: You used to live in London, but now you live in Cornwall – two very different environments. Has that change affected your poetry?
Ann: I lived in London for about 20 years, working as an advertising copywriter. All our friends lived similar lives. One day, almost on impulse, we decided to move to Cornwall – lo and behold, we found ourselves in a huge farmhouse in the deep countryside, a stone’s throw from the sea and 300 miles from our friends and family. The farm was in the heart of Iron Age country and I discovered standing stones, fogous (underground chambers), a roundago (a little round Iron Age field), a two-thousand year old track across the moor – all within five minutes of the house. Shortly after our arrival, I became pregnant with my one and only child, who seemed like a present from Cornwall, and helped us to integrate. These wonderful life-changing events released something in me and changed the way I looked at everything. I started writing seriously then, and have not stopped since. We have been here for many years, but I still don’t feel Cornish – just an incomer who loves living here. And I still love London, and find inspiration there, too.

Sue: You often take the news as your inspiration. But I find your poems very personal, almost like interior monologues. Do you find you would rather write about the personal life than about nature or politics, or does it just turn out that way?
Ann: My poetry is about connections. The personal, the political, the emotional, the abstract, are all intertwined. I write poems about those I love but I would never publish any of them, because I can’t believe it’s really interesting to anyone else. I love the wider world and what’s happening in the world and I love the media. There’s enough information in one edition of a decent newspaper to keep a poet occupied for years. But of course, it’s the world seen through my eyes, and so it’s all very personal.

Sue: How did you train? Did you study poetry in a programme or with one teacher, or are you self-taught?
Ann: My first published poem is best forgotten and happened when I was about 15. But it encouraged me to think I could be a writer. At first, I wanted to be a journalist, but by chance I was offered a job as a copywriter which paid twice as much, and I was stony broke. I think my copywriting years were great training to be a poet. Advertising writing is concise, never wastes a word, uses alliteration, word play, repetition, tries to make a direct connection with the reader and elicit an immediate response. On the other hand, of course, advertising has no soul: it is all about selling things, in the manner of a market trader. Poetry is, of course, the fine art of writing; copywriting is poetry’s wayward, streetwise younger brother.

Sue: You have been very successful in competitions. Do you like competitions and submitting to them, or do you see them as a necessary evil, or neither?
Ann: As soon as I began to write poetry seriously I entered competitions. I was very lucky and won a few quite quickly – I saw that for me, isolated as I was, competitions were a great way to get noticed. I also took out several subscriptions to leading poetry magazines, and entered poems for publication there. I found a publisher quickly. Peterloo would never have published me if I hadn’t won a prize or two, and one thing led to another. I became a little bit obsessed with competitions, and loved winning or being commended. This gave me an internet presence, and led to invitations to read. My third collection, Too Close, the first from our excellent new publishing house, Ward Wood, would never have happened without the internet and for this I am very grateful. My advertising background meant that I was never shy about marketing myself! Connections again.

Thanks to Ann for this conversation.  And now here’s a teaser.  If you love poetry, then I urge you to buy Too Close. It is a collection full of poems that make you drop the book into your lap, stare into space and nod with wonder and admiration.

Last meal

There will come a time
when they say in their kindly voices

What would you like for your last meal?
You can have anything, anything at all –

Trembling beneath the shadow
of the metaphorical rope, I will reply:

Best make it chicken –
a chicken’s life is short and pointless.
Like me, it spends its little time
pecking its neighbour, scrabbling in the dark,
without a thought for what the dark might be.

They will ask, anxious to please,
Breast or leg?

And I will say:
Give me the wishbone, only that –

and I will wish for all of it again,
the short and pointless life,
the neighbours with their claws and beaks
and the unknowable, unimaginable dark.