Five Questions for Peter Coghill
JA
November 19
Peter Coghill is a Sydney poet whose work has appeared in Blue Dog, Rattle, The Flea and Cordite. He’s also the winner of this year’s Dorothy Porter Poetry Prize, for his wonderful poem ‘Aubade’ (Vol 69.3). Spike caught up with him over the digital divide to chat about scrap notes, finding the right form and the intersections between science and poetry.
What’s a typical day spent writing for you? Can you describe your routine?
When such a day occurs it’s usually Saturday. I make Cynthia coffee and try to get her out the door of our apartment, usually to go and print photos, as soon as possible. After that I mull around the scraps I have, usually notes made earlier during the week, or an incomplete poem I’m working on. Sometimes I read some poetry, or play music that seems in the right mood. Often if I’m getting nowhere I will start revising old or discarded work. Very rarely will I finish a draft in one session. Some mixture of these activities occurs till around 4 in the afternoon.
If we made a surprise visit to your workspace what would we see?
The writing desk faces the wall. There’s a row of books and a dictionary across it, and usually three or four [note]pads. Around me in the second bedroom is the vacuum cleaner, exercise bike and a couple of boxes. This spot is alternated with the computer, the couch or pacing around the living area.
How did ‘Aubade’ start for you, with an image, a sound, a phrase?
‘Aubade’ began as a meld of two or three separate notes. It probably began with an image of the bedroom in the early morning, and really took on life when this became embodied in the form of the envelope stanzas. That’s how metered poetry works for me: the material comes alive when it finds the right form.
Does your work as a physicist interest with your poetry at all? If so how?
It has both positive and negative effects. On the positive side a lot of topics for poems and images come from my life long interest in science. Not to mention the prevailing attitude of wonder in a lot of my poetry. About 1/5 of the poems in my first book “Rockclimber’s Hands” (new from Picaro Press) would have scientific inspiration. On the other hand I sometimes think that I only have so much creativity and what is used at work is not used in poetry and visa-versa. One of the things that is attractive about poetry to me is to take the creative impulse and combine it with the emotional, musical life. At work it is largely only combined with intellectual endeavour.
Finally what was the last poem you loved and why?
Views of ‘La Leggenda della vera Cruce’, by Jaqueline Osherow in her book “Dead Men’s Praise”. This is a long poem in terza rima about the speaker trying to rationalize her love of European culture, especially painting, her Jewishness and the strain of persecution running through European culture. It succeeds in sweeping the reader along with her perspective though its attractiveness, intelligence and lively rhyming verse.
The last Australian poem was from ‘Bark’ by Anthony Lawrence “What the Executioner Means”. It is intriguing in it’s renunciation of the desire to understand in this case.
Our Friends
- Overland
- Alien Onion
- Ampersand Duck
- Andrew McDonald
- A Pair of Ragged Claws
- Arts Victoria
- Australia Council for the Arts
- Ben Eltham
- Bookshow blog
- CAL
- City of Tongues
- Crikey
- darkly wise, rudely great
- David Astle
- Elmo Keep Does Stuff
- The Ember
- Fly the Falcon blog
- Going Down Swinging
- Griffith Review
- Hackpacker
- Harvest
- HEAT
- Island
- Killings blog
- Literary Minded
- Lorraine Crescent
- Lynden Barber
- Mandy Ord
- Marcus Westbury
- Matilda
- Meanland
- Melbourne University Publishing
- Mel Campbell
- The Monthly
- Musings of an Inappropriate Woman
- Oslo Davis
- Paul Callaghan
- Read, Think, Write
- Sleepers Publishing
- Sorrow at Sills Bend
- SPLOG
- Tom Cho
- Virgule
- Wet Ink
- Wheeler Centre