Interview with Patience Agbabi

Patience Agbabi has written three books of poetry, RAW, Transformatrix and a new collection, Bloodshot Monochrome, from Canongate. A noted performer of her work, she neatly straddles page and stage. Her work is mostly formal, and inventively so. The new book deals with music and motherhood, contains a series of sparkling monologues, and ends with a lengthy corona (a sonnet sequence where the last line of each forms the beginning of the next).

In line with the book's title, there is lots of black and white in this book, but also a lot of redness. Where did all the red spring from?

I was four months pregnant, nauseous 24/7 and sitting on a tube when I thought, 'Bloodshot Monochrome'. That would be a good title for my book.’ The book had previously been called ‘Body Language’, a title that no longer inspired me. Bloodshot monochrome comes from a line in my film noir corona, ‘Vicious Circle’. The scene is being ‘filmed’ through the muzzle of a gun so bloodshot implies an eye, an eye distorting the monochrome to red. If original film noir had to introduce one colour it would be red: the blood of those who’ve been shot, the bright red lipstick on the cigarette holder, the passion, the anger. The colour is used to great effect in some of my favourite films: Roeg’s Don’t Look Now which plays with a red hooded figure against a backdrop of a fading Venice; Hitchcock’s Marnie whose heroine freezes at the word red in a word association exercise. The book sometimes plays with the wordplay on ‘red’ and ‘read’ – reading and writing is a major preoccupation of the book. And sometimes it’s tender – when babies are born they only see black and white. Red is the first colour they see.

Quite a few of the poems here started as commissions; what makes a good commission and what do you think the difficulties can be?

A good commission has to be in line with what you’re working on. You make it work for you e.g. North(west)ern: I was asked to do this during the Edinburgh Festival 2000 when I’d just started obsessing about sonnets. I took a train from Glasgow Central to Colwyn Bay via Wigan Northwestern and started making notes. Perfect. Similarly, The London Eye was commissioned whilst I was doing a Creative Writing MA at Sussex. I’d just written the corona and loved revisiting and responding to Wordsworth’s sonnet composed on Westminster Bridge. I like working to a deadline although I spend hours feeling physically sick with the adrenaline – it doesn’t suit all poets. If the deadline’s crazy, like the climate change commission I did last year – six poems in ten days – you know the standard of the poems will be uneven. I felt happy with all the poems but some were more ambitious than others. Sometimes you simply need more time than the commission allows. But I don’t take on crazy commissions unless I’m passionate about the form or content. A commission is only difficult if you take on something for money rather than love. I’ve done a couple like that in my time. It was literary prostitution.

One of my favourite poems in the new book is a monologue in the voice of a confused, bed-ridden Isaac. What inspired this one?

During the Sussex MA, one of my tutors, (a Christian who encouraged us to read the gospels), referred to Isaac and how he must have felt to have his father raise a knife to him. I filed this on the hard disc of memory. I hadn’t thought about the story since I was young. As a child I found it shocking a) that God could ask Abraham to kill his son and b) that Abraham had such faith he was prepared to do it. Three months later when Radio 3 commissioned a Proms poem on the theme Old Testament, it was the first story I thought of. Isaac had a raw deal from his father and his sons, Jacob and Esau. He deserved a voice. Though I was daunted writing a poem in the voice of an old man, I felt safe on the course to challenge myself. I transposed it into a gangster scenario because I’d just written the film noir corona and hadn’t got the mood out of my system. I still haven’t.

In your poem about Gwendolyn Brooks (one of my favourite poets), you mention 'the controversy about black poets using traditional white forms'... do you think this controversy still exists?

Throughout literary history there are fashions and fads. For black writers these tend to coincide with political history e.g. after Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave the Black Power salute on the Olympic rostrum in 1968, it was a signal for black people to celebrate black culture. In those days, if people were looking for past role models they were more likely to celebrate Langston Hughes whose poetry aimed to capture the way black people talked or sang than Claude McKay who wrote sonnets, albeit political ones. I can only speak for what I know of London Black British poetry and can happily say that for poets who like their work on the page as well as the stage, there’s no controversy. But I think black poets who identify exclusively as performance poets wouldn’t be seen dead writing a sonnet, sestina or ballad though a general black audience might enjoy one if the content addressed black culture. As for white poets, I don’t think there’s a controversy. I hope they don’t expect all black poets to be performance poets as they did ten years ago. It would be interesting to know what contemporary white editors think.

Your sestina 'Skins' was much admired when it appeared in a magazine - it often seems to me a tired form, but occasionally people breathe new life into it. How did you go about that?

I deliberately made it direct speech and a dramatic monologue i.e. there’s a sense of an audience within the poem. It was dynamic, it stood up off the page. Also, I used very short sentences, a departure for me. I’d already written other sestinas but never so minimalist. It was an attempt to capture the speech patterns of a man of few words who’s making the confession of a lifetime. When you’re writing a sestina, you have to repeat the six end-words so the words you choose are crucial. I made lists of words to make sure I could play with them. Mine are all monosyllabic, ordinary, unobtrusive and flexible: on, past, fit, eyes, to, skin. The flexibility gives you freedom in form e.g. ‘to’, ‘too’, ‘into’, ‘tattoo’. Modern sestinas allow you to slightly change the words so I chose to manipulate the word ‘skin’ so you get ‘skin’, ‘skinned’ and ‘skins’. From the outset, I knew the title would be Skins. It’s based on a true story.

You've been busy with motherhood and living outside of London where you were for many years. Do you miss the poetry scene?

Yes. I miss being able to hang out into the small hours and drink too much and talk shop, talk shit. When I first moved out of London, before the children were thought of, I’d go to the occasional gig and get the Vomit Express home. It was hell. Now I have two young children I still go to the occasional gig and get the Vomit Express home. It’s hell. Last week I went to the Apples & Snakes new venue party at the Albany in Deptford, Southeast London. It’s on the same line as Gravesend so easier to get back. But they cancelled the 22.19 and it was half an hour wait. Living outside London is more of a hindrance to going out than having children. Yes, I miss live gigs, live conversation. But sites like YouTube are helping me catch up with snippets of performances online. Even when I lived in London I’d sometimes wish I could see a gig but not have to leave the house. Now we have the technology. Also, I have irregular email conversations with other mums who are writers and chopped up poetry conversations with writers who manage to get out and so are always on mobile phones.

You're not Scottish, but you have a Scottish publisher. Scottish writing has been fairly strong in recent decades. What are some of your favourite Scottish books?

One of my all-time favourite books is The Adoption Papers by Jackie Kay. (I’ve just written about it in ‘Book of a Lifetime’ for the Independent). Off Colour – Jackie Kay – the virus running through the book is so clever –I prefer it to Irvine Welsh’s cancer eating the text in Filth though it’s a great idea. Newborn – Kate Clanchy, hit the spot before and after motherhood. The Acid House – Irvine Welsh is still one of my favourite books of short stories, he’s so inventive and very funny; The Tree House - Kathleen Jamie, I encountered when I was co-judging the Forward Prize in 2004. It turned me onto nature poetry. And I’ve just started reading Ali Smith’s Girl Meets Boy so watch this space.