Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

Please note that italicized sections of the transcript reflect areas of uncertainty or unverified content.

[Interviewer Intro:]  

Good afternoon again everybody. Welcome to the third and final of our ‘Short Take’ events, where we find out what every serious poet needs to have in their toolkit. I’d just like to thank Smiths Knoll Magazine for their support of this event and of all the ‘Short Take’ events that we’ve had here at the gallery. I’m sure you’re aware by now that, unfortunately, Selima Hill was ill and not able to come, but we are delighted and indeed privileged to have Imtiaz Dharker to join us this afternoon. So, perhaps actually, adaptability is one of the things that should be in a poet’s toolkit that could be important. So do welcome Imitaz Dharker. 

 

00:0050 

[applause] 

 

Imtiaz Dharker: 

Thank you. Thank you for all being here on a lunchtime, a Sunday lunchtime like this. I admire the dedication and that, perhaps, is one first part of a poet’s toolkit. Also, my apologies to anyone who did come thinking they’d be hearing Selima, because her toolkit it would be quite something to hear, but I’m sure you’ll have it someday – because to this festival everyone wishes to come, and she will come someday.  

 

It’s a great- first of all, I want to know how many of you are actually poets, how many of you write poetry? Ah yes, yes, right well, okay so you probably already know all this already but let me just give it a try.  

 

I love the idea of a toolkit. First of all, because it has such a great sound. What a great word – toolkit. And then, because it’s a workman-like thing: the idea of having something that is a working object, a working way into something, And I like also the image of it being something a plumber would carry. You know? The idea that these are things to do with working life, with everyday living. And, in light of that, I remembered an essay by Pablo Neruda and I’m going to take the liberty of reading a bit of that to you. It’s called ‘Toward an Impure Poetry’: 

 

It is good, at certain hours of the day and night, to look closely at the world of objects addressed; wheels that have crossed long dusty distances with their mineral and vegetable burdens, sacks from the cold bins, barrels and baskets, handles and hats from the carpenter’s tool chest. From them flow the contacts of man with the Earth, like a text for all troubled lyricists. The used surfaces of things; the wear that hands give to things; the use and disuse of substance – footprints and fingerprints. The abiding presence of the human engulfing all artefacts inside and out. 

 

I’d meant to stop there but the rest is so great- if you don’t mind. 

[quiet laughter from audience]

 

[Imtiaz Dharker continues:]

Let that be the poetry we search for, worn with the hands’ obligations, as by acids steeped in sweat and in smoke, smelling of the lilies and urine, splattered diversely by the trades we live by, inside the law as beyond it. A poetry impure as the clothing we wear, or our bodies, soup-stained, soiled with our shameful behaviour, our wrinkles and vigils and dreams, observations and prophecies, declarations of loathing and love, idylls and beasts, the shock of encounter, political loyalties, denials and doubts, affirmations and taxes. 

 

So, this is an essay that I’ve always carried with me, because to me that’s one of the things that- it says so much about how I come to poetry as well. 

 

So, what would I have in my toolkit? As I said, I see it as a box, you know with those drawers, those things you pull out. And a nice handle. So in my toolkit, first of all, I’d like a really big garbage bag. Because there’s so much of writing, and you know too as writers yourselves, that you have to throw away. There’s so much that you- well, the bits that are lost are lost in a way, but the ones that you finish, or that you work on and work on and that are overworked and need to be sent away. Those go into that garbage bag.  

 

The next thing, and this is one of the main things I’d have in this toolkit, is a pair of ears. Not Van Gogh’s ears, but living ears – not Van Gogh’s cut-off ear, but living ears. And the ears would hear and make note of conversations: conversations walking by on the street, conversations at stations and in airports. Conversations that walk by and you can capture them. The kind that find their way into a poem and can make it come alive. Because one of the things a poet has to do is overhear, be a constant spy, be the double agent. Carry messages, maybe even in code, from one world to another. So that’s one of the things.  

 

Then again, the ears to hear how language is used, to hear how language is misused. And if you’ll excuse the continuation of the plumbing theme, ears that have an inbuilt shit-detector, because that’s one of the things you really need to have to be able to take out what doesn’t work, what doesn’t sound right, what sounds false – the false notes. Now, with these ears I would bring back the memory in the ears; all the things from the past, the languages you think you have forgotten, the lullabies your grandmother sang to you. In my case, the Punjabi bits of words, the domestic Punjabi my mother would have spoken – old folk songs, Glaswegian swear words (7.15). You’ve all got them, you’ve all got them in your own backgrounds. All the different, not just languages, but the texture of all the different voices that you’ve heard. For me, now it’s the sound of Welsh as well – just examining how the word cariad gives a different feeling than darling. It makes the idea completely different in some ways – I don’t know why. And I’d see all of those as part of the wealth that the ear can provide for me. For me, again, from growing up, every Sunday we’d go to Qu’ran lessons in the Seamen’s mission in Glasgow. And, I’m not a religious person now. I don’t – in fact have deliberately turned my back on – all organised religion. But I cannot deny that there is an incredible beauty in the rhythm of, for example this prayer:   

 

[Prayer read from Qu’ran] (timestamp 8.10 in recording)  

 

Now if I said that, you’d say hmm she’s reading a poem in Arabic maybe. But it is an ordinary prayer out of the Qur’an and, whether I want it or not, that becomes part of the rhythm of the voice that I have. All the other sounds that I have in my background, like the hubble-bubble that my Grandmother would smoke, or the sound of the water in the hubble-bubble. Children’s songs from Glasgow, children’s games from Glasgow – something like, I don’t know if any of you would know it, ‘Kick the Can’. Kick the can, kick the can, and the sound of the can clattering down the streets. All those are the rhythms that belong inside those ears. The sound of the street, a bird, a bus, a rickshaw. You all have them as well. 

 

The other thing that is in my toolkit is the voices of other poets – all the other poets I have ever read, because one day I realised what poetry was when I read Gerard Manley Hopkins, when I read the Wind Hover, which you all know well. And, those sounds- I think one of the things that helps a lot in the toolkit is to keep with you a poem that you love very much, and just keep going back to it. And of course it is like, you know they say a sign of growing old is when you don’t make new friends – you have to look at the new poets as well, keep looking at other poets, keep looking at things that are turning up and find new friends as well, but keep the old ones with you too. And for me, another great friend is Carol Ann Duffy’s Valentine, which I’m sure you know well. 

 

Not a red rose, or a satin heart. 

 

I give you an onion. 

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. 

It promises light 

Like the careful undressing of love. 

 

Here,  

It will blind you with tears 

Like a lover. 

It will make your reflection  

a wobbling photo of grief. 

 

I am trying to be truthful. 

 

Not a cute card or kissogram.  

 

I give you an onion. 

Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips, 

Possessive and faithful 

as we are, 

for as long as we are.  

 

And that- those words, those kinds of words are things that I carry with me always. Because, in a lot of ways, carrying those poets with you is like carrying your relatives. For me they’re the real relatives – not the people from the country I was born in, or people who I’m related to by accident. You know, it’s really these poets. Whether it’s the twelfth century Sangam poets of India, or Carol Ann Duffy, or Gerard Manley Hopkins – those I see as the real relatives. And you carry your relatives, at least I do, in your toolbox. I carry all these relatives, as many as I can, with me. 

 

I also read all these poems out loud, so my voice is the other thing in the toolkit. Whether it’s my own poems – I test them out by reading them out loud. Do any of you do this? Do any of you- yeah of course, okay. Yes, because then also because of that you hear all the wrong notes – you hear, in your own poems, hear the wrong notes in other voices. It just becomes part of your system, part of the rush of the blood.   

 

The next thing, of course, that I have, that I have in my toolkit is eyes. Because images work their way into the poem – images are such a strong thing. One of the things I do – I draw as well. There are these great drawings, paintings on the wall, and I think some drawings at the back, which I’m told the artist is here as well. I draw on a fairly large scale, and one of the things I do is, I get up on a chair and look into a mirror, and have the drawing down on the ground so that I get a bit of distance from the drawing, and I get to see that drawing- It’s a strange thing, when you put a reflection- you know it from your own face, when you see the reflection you see some of the mistakes. So, when you see the reflected drawing, for me, that reflection can point out some of the mistakes. So, I would put a mirror into my toolkit as well. The images, the reflections of the images, are one of the things that I use, and the images will find their way into the poem.  

 

I put my heart into the toolbox, not necessarily as, you know, my valentine heart or my emotional heart, but the pumping machine, the rhythm of the heart – because that’s the real rhythm of the poem. The breath, the heart, the in and out. To me, that’s the basics.  

 

I’d put in a thick skin.

 

[laughter from audience]

 

[Dharker continues]

 

You’ll have lots of people who tell you that can’t go in a poem, this isn’t really a poem. You know, in the end you have to trust yourself and at least, for me – well, I’ve found it useful to have quite a thick skin to let things slide off. It’s not just that – I take criticism – but very often there’s, you know, there’s people who want to censor you, even your own family want to censor you. I’ve written poems and someone in the family has come up to me and said, why have you put me in that, why did you say that about me and it wasn’t about them at all, but they recognised something in it. People think you’re writing about them. Countries don’t like it that you’re saying things about them. All kinds of groups of people would be annoyed – good. offend them. Have a very thick skin.  

 

I’d also put a pair of hands into the toolkit, and I like that because it’s coming back to the workman-like business of poetry. It’s the touch of things, the sensuality of things. And also, with those hands, you’d dismantle the world: you take it apart, take apart the language. I use these hands to unpack the world and maybe put it back in a slightly strange order, so it looks like something odd, but it makes sense to me. Even if it’s words, putting them back in a slightly strange order, you taking that cliche and putting it into a different position. Taking a verb and a noun and putting them oddly together with other odd verbs and nouns. Sometimes that’s a good part of the toolkit for me. And sometimes even a random putting together, occasionally, can throw together something that works for me. So much of it is about playing with it, and almost like a child with different bits of lego – playing with it and letting different things happen with it. And for me that’s also the fun of it: the toolkit, my toolkit. I know I’m not a plumber, I’m not going to do anything really useful, or make the toilet flush work or fix the washer on the tap. But what I can do, is I can have an enormous amount of fun with the language.   

 

I’m sorry, is that fifteen minutes? 

[interviewer] Yes, yes.

 

[Dharker]

And so, in fact, I’ve finished really, and I just wanted to end with something that – I don’t know how many of you were at the talk earlier about Louis Simpson – one. Okay, well I think it’s not a bad thing to repeat Neil Astley’s reading of Louis Simpson’s Toolkit.

 

American poetry

Whatever it is, it must have a stomach

That can digest rubber, coal, uranium, moons, poems.

 

Like the shark, it contains a shoe.

It must swim for miles through the desert

uttering cries that are almost human.

 

 

[Applause]