INTERVIEW: Glyn Maxwell
'You can't beat that, living creature'
I met Glyn Maxwell the first day of my Masters course with The Poetry School. It was my first ever workshop. I was nervous. Assuming what followed the close reading of my work would be humiliating as I fumbled to explain myself. It’s terrible I know! I shouldn’t even be here!
I waited to be torn apart by a master of form. Sweaty palms. Butterfly throat. But, (thank god there was a but) the first word he said in response (and I remember this distinctly as any nervous writer would) — ‘fantastic, so!…’ and what followed was insight only a poet like Maxwell could provide.
We would all be nervous, (though we shouldn’t be, he is very cool) Glyn has seen phenomenal success with his work that any writer would dream of. His astounding poetry collections such as The Breakage, Hide Now, and Pluto, have all been nominated for the T.S Eliot and The Forward prize.
On Poetry, (my bible) a guidebook On Poetry for the general reader, was published by Oberon in 2012. The Spectator called it ‘a modern classic’ and The Guardian’s Adam Newey described it as ‘the best book about poetry I’ve ever read.’
(You’d be nervous too, right?)
Many of Maxwell’s plays have been staged in London and New York, including Liberty at Shakespeare’s Globe. And if thats not enough, Glyn is also a librettist. The Firework Maker’s Daughter (composer David Bruce) was shortlisted for ‘Best New Opera’ at the Oliviers in 2014.
It sounds like he needs a lie down, instead Glyn currently dispensing his wealth of knowledge on his own Substack — ‘Silly Games To Save The World’.
PHEW! And you lucky lot get to get inside Glyns head today! I interviewed him on a sunny Friday morning in Islington a while back. We spoke about the writing life, having Derek Walcott as a mentor, and what tools us budding writers can use to enrich the future landscape of poetry.
Enjoy!
Hey Glyn, so, I’m going to start by asking you, how did you get into a life of writing?
I think like a lot of writers, I just had this sense since I was a teen, feeling different. You know, we all have that, and I thought, what is it? I thought maybe I’m an actor, maybe I'm an athlete? There were three things that began with A, the last one was ‘Author’. I didn’t know what kind of author, but then I started writing poetry, (and crap stories as well.) By then I'd done a lot of poetry at school, a lot of the Romantics, and that was the only thing that made sense to me. I wanted to sound like that, so it’s all rhymes and sunsets I started with.
Then I started a Masters degree at Oxford and I quit. I realised I didn’t want to be a scholar. And I quit while walking home after the first meeting.