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the near interview of Richard Z |
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Author: Billy Marshall Stoneking Published on: June 19, 2001 at performance poetry |
| The title of this feature, "The near interview of Richard Z", is partly a tribute and partly a recognition of the circumstances under which the interview was conducted. The tribute is to Richard Zola's poem, "the near death of Richard Z"; the circumstances are that Richard and I have never met, face-to-face, never spoken to one another voice-to-voice. The interview was carried out in cyber space via email. I sent Richard a list of questions which he answered. He sent them back. I edited and re-jigged, and sent them back for his final approval. He did some more corrections, additions, etc., and what you see here is the result. Virtual theatre. I hope you find it as stimulating as we did. |
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| Billy Marshall Stoneking: I cop a bit of harrassment now and then from people about my name. Even though it really is my name, it doesn't sound very real to some people. Is Zola your real name? What are its origins? |
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| Richard Zola: Really? I imagined the Stoneking part of your name was an accolade given to you by the Aboriginal people you worked with. That would be real.
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| B M S:Yeah, there are a few who've thought that. A feminist magazine once published one of my poems cos they thought I was a woman, though they misspelled my name, Billie instead of Billy. |
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| RZ: I like the idea of false names, false identities, fugitives and so on. Some do it for political reasons, or as a kind of exorcism of the past. Mine doesn't sound real? Critics like it... if they don't like a piece they can call it a ZZZZZola. Pity my sister Lola. When her Spanish friend sees her at the end of the street she yells, "hola lola zola". Billy, let's get on with this and the question may answer itself. Zola is an Italian name. |
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| B M S: When did you start to write, or have you always been a writer? |
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| RZ: When did it start? When did I notice the first symptoms? Well, growing up... my family was poor. My father was paid on a Thursday and often the money ran out on the following Tuesday, despite my mother's careful budgeting. We didn't have electricity in the cottage we lived in until I was fourteen in about 1963. The rooms were lit by gas and candles. So... no electricity, no TV, but we had a radio; we had books, our voices, newspapers and relatives. Actually, I spent a lot of time ill as a child, so no school either. I spent weeks and months reading obscure moldering novels, magazines, comics, listening to the radio. I remember sitting with my father listening to a radio broadcast of Under Milk Wood, him laughing and sometimes serious and me not understanding but fascinated. I'm part Irish and the family was large. Many evenings were spent listening to the older people talking, yes listening to the 'craic' as they called it. Listening to the craic and watching them drinking. I started writing when I realised that these novels, comics, verbal stories, were written by men and women. That you could actually do this - create stories, entertain, lie, engage with the minds of others - was extraordinary, I thought. |
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| I started school when I was four. Ran away, back to home again often (about a mile). Then they let me write while others did maths. So yes I've always written, for myself, or letters, stories, but haven't taken it seriously until recently. There was always something else to do, you know, work, life. It's the same today, except now I keep what I write. |
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| B M S: Shelley - or someone - once said that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. What are your views on this? Does poetry have a social or political function as you conceive it? |
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| RZ: For sure, though I think that the influence of poetry on social change is reactive and supportive rather than pro-active. Novels (The Gulag Archepelago, for example) and drama, I would say have more influence on actually promoting social change. Poetry seems to be more commemorative of upheaval. Poetry accompanies revolution... can reinforce ideology. I think its real power though is historical as a recording device. Folk song acts similarly... the history of the working class, for example, remembered and recorded in song. In the sixties, Adrian Henri wrote about the H-Bomb as did Gregory Corso... I don't know how many ideas on nuclear weapons were changed. The First-World-War poets... Owen and Sassoon... how much effect they've had on the anti-war movements I couldn't say. However, preaching to the converted has its function. |
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| B M S: Who (or what) are your influences? |
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| RZ: Well as I said earlier my upbringing. Being born and living twenty years on Guernsey must also have influenced my perception of the world. It's a small triangular island, about three miles wide at its widest point and eleven miles long, maybe less. Living there was like being on the periphery of the planet, and there were wild winds and seas and not many unfamiliar faces. So there was a distance from the world. And I've always had a kind of dislocation, a psychological dislocation, from others; these two phenomena I think became somehow linked and are a major influence. Other influences? Fidel Castro, European cinema, Bergman, Edward Hopper, Jackson Pollock, Warhol, Matisse, Anders Zorn, Dylan (Bob and Thomas), Leonard Cohen, Hubert Selby Jnr, Roger McGough, John Cooper - Clarke, Henry Miller, Henry Fielding, Buffy Sainte - Marie, Emile Zola, Grateful Dead, Jean Genet, every Zen, Sufi and other mystical poet I've read; Robin Williamson and Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band. And Elisabeth who is the "you" in (most) of my work. This list could go on and on... I could add to it every day. |
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| B M S: Are you aware of any underlying themes, issues, running through your work? |
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| RZ: Yes. Fear, paranoia, loss, distance, parting, meeting, death, fear of death, dislocation... temptation... sex... bewilderment... artificiality... |
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| B M S: Some readers have commented on the repetition of certain images (symbols) that run through a number of your poems. Would you care to comment? |
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| RZ: Ha! See this is... this idea of repetition, there's a sort of opposition to it that really annoys me on those days when I feel I'm wearing someone else's shoes. This repetition is central to my current work, it's a rhythm, a mantra. Symbols, yes, you're referring to bracelets, fish, birds, painted feet, neon signs, rain and all that. This is not an appropriate place to go into semiotics in a wide social sense such as the symbolism of ladders and elevators for example and their effect on our perceptions, but bracelets... I've worn bracelets for years; they're tribal, their appearance on and off flesh speak of humanity, femaleness, maleness. They're useful as a creative device to set mood, create a feeling and so on. I use these symbols often. Some people understand... oh, and I use the same themes often... some people understand what's happening; others call it cheating. (laughs). In my opinion the same song can be written a million times, the same lines and phrases used over and over. So painters should paint only one nude? So in my work, certain objects and symbols present themselves, and I'm grateful for that. |
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| B M S: I used to think - and I probably still do - that all art, including poetry, is essentially religious in nature. I'm not talking about churches or codes of ethics or bibles and born-again christians. I mean something that is essentially spiritual. Do you see art in these terms? If so, why, and if not, why not? |
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| RZ: No not all art. Much art is propaganda... like the stuff produced by the Nazis, and it's difficult to see the spiritual in street-long portraits of the various dictators that have haunted us for so many years, and the verses that have been written in their honour. Or in those awful portraits of aristocrats that hang in galleries the world over... or The Last Supper; sentimental and anaemic... Tribal art and naive, yes, redolent with spirit... and urban poetry... the last few hundred years... there is I think a kind of secular spirituality. I don't really want to talk about Verlaine and all, and Wilde, and later the Beats... they've been written about so much I almost don't care. But there's an obvious spirituality running through that link to the past. William Carlos Williams, yes and Lorca, and oh so many. As for my own stuff... it's an attempt to cut the top off god's head, to stop time, to see from outside time... to see things as they are... from beyond blood flesh and mind... without neurosis and preconceptions... yeah to see what's in god's head... (laughs) |
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| B M S: A poet I know recently referred to you as one of the great unknown love poets of the fin de siecle. What's your reaction to this? |
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| RZ: [Shifts position, remains silent for two minutes longer than is comfortable] Well... I agree that I'm unknown. Uhhhh... is there a kind of barb in there? Some sarcasm...? |
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| B M S: No, no. Not at all. (laughs) |
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| RZ: The fin de siecle? Verlaine? Rimbaud? Decadence? Art for art's sake? If I accept that statement as a compliment it's because... ok, yes, I can see where he/she may be coming from with regard to the use of simple language, a need to point to the sacredness of life and objects... to somehow try to transcend the suffocating influence of materialism and utilitarianism... ugliness... My reaction to that statement is all over the place.. fragmented.... A great love poet!? I can't comment. The fin de siecle? Why not last week? (laughs) Or tomorrow? I might have made a good press officer for the Paris Commune, though, like Paul Verlaine.... The more I think about this... those poets like Rossetti... sex and spirit.. and themes of memory... intense moments... exile and isolation as we were saying ...... life as drama... a sense of original sin, yes, all these are in my work.... the mention of cosmetics... oh..well, I didn't realise... I can see links... never have before... all I can say, like Rimbaud said, "I could never throw love out the window...". |
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| B M S: So how does your work (as in job) impact upon your work as a poet? |
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| home links interview |
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| RZ: I work with people who've been damaged by drugs. I don't see any material there for a poem. I've tried a few times, but the results were uninteresting, melodramatic. |
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| B M S: Do you perform your poetry before live audiences? |
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| RZ: When I was about six, I was asked by a teacher to read my favourite poem in front of the class. At the time, in newspapaers and magazines, there was a monochrome drawing of a tin of cat food and two contented cats. And there was an accompanying rhyme that went something like: "Kit - E - Kat is good for cats/ it keeps them young and fit/ and it's true I'm telling you/ your cat will really love it". There were two more verses and I recited them all. I loved it (the rhyme - I never tried the food). I was sent home with a note to my parents complaining about their son's attempt to subvert an English lesson. So far I've turned down invitations to read my work in public only because I haven't felt the need to perform. I feel a compulsive need to write and that's what I do. When a deep and irritating need to perform arises, I'll do it. I'm not possessive about my work though. Sometimes I imagine others performing it. Dylan, he could do it. |
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| B M S: What is your view of performance poetry, then? |
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| RZ: Oh, this is... I think it's essential and subversive. Subversive of the kind of literary mafia that appears to control printed poetry. I don't know if it occurs elsewhere, but in Britain for sure. Peter Finch (Welsh avant garde poet) has written extensively about this and those interested should seek out his work. |
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| B M S: Yes, he was a featured poet here at PERFORMANCE POETRY. He can be found in the Links section of PP. |
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| RZ: Right. Well... performance poetry helps to subvert this oligarchy, but some aspects of the 'performance of poetry can be disconcerting. Like who will be the first ventriloquist poet? And performance poetry can be suffocatingly reverential so that anyone with any kind of a name gets repeated encores even though they were awful; or it gets so distorted and "unliterary" and loud and crude it only hurts. Maybe it's only an English phenomenon, but I've noticed a lot of poets are cripplingly self-deprecating and apologetic and there's a sort of embarrassment about being an artist, any kind of serious artist, so everyone's a clown. Having said all that, yes, performance poetry is here to stay. I don't think it's essential to the survival of poetry though. |
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| B M S: To what extent are you aware of "a voice" in your poetry? How important is the voice in the writing of a poem? |
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| RZ: Voices. So many voices and impostors. Finding the true voice... takes time. I think you become kind of possessed by the true voice, the one you trust. But you have to at least flirt with the others, go with them a way into potentially unhealthy alleys. The true voice is always present, though. It's sometimes drowned out by the others. You know you're listening to the true voice when the page fills quickly with words and there is a balance to them. You feel it in your body and the objects around you become self-illuminated, and nothing other than what they are. There's a sense of surprise and gratitude when you read the words again the next day. |
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| B M S: Have you written in any other forms besides poetry, and with what results? Ever had any interest in writing plays? |
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| RZ: I've written children's stories; one was broadcast on BBC radio and later included in an anthology they produced and removed on second printing for being politically incorrect. The rest I've thrown away except for one or two which are yellowing in the apartment somewhere. As for the theatre, I've never considered that. Radio plays are interesting, but a stage and actors... no. I'm interested in the possibility of writing scripts for animation... and some of my work I think could be animated, (not in the Daffy Duck style) words read... poetry and film... I'm becoming interested in that. |
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| B M S: So tell us about a typical day in the life of Richard Zola... |
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| RZ: You want to know about that? A typical day? OK. On a day when I don't have work the next day, I lock the doors of the house where I work - at around 9:00pm - and walk home. I have a bag over my shoulder which contains 2 diaries, an umbrella, and a small pharmacy of cold cures, migraine capsules, indigestion powders, paper handkerchiefs and pens. So I walk home through suburban streets, past lighted windows, beneath branches, across junctions... breathing more heavily up the sloping road to the apartment. I curse the key that I can't find, find it, open the lower door to the communal stairway - climb 2 flights... open the apartment door. The sound of voices - live and recorded - yellow light, music... I trip over shoes and coats, answer yells and grunts of greeting. I head for the kitchen, dump my bag, curse for a while about the state of the sink... cook a stir-fry and rice. Talk to and at Elisabeth. Curse the neighbours. Elisabeth goes to bed. At about 11:00 or later, I search for and find my pen and paper... put a disc in the player, usually Miles Davis or Yoko Ono, some music that is apparently formless so my mind is occupied, and wait.... tune into the voice.... wait... write... wait.... coffee... write... doors slam.. open... shouts outside... sirens......wait.... curse...wait, write... pee... but not out the window, oh no, not since that time when... |
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| I write until 7.00am... go to bed, get up at 12:30 pm... sit in the kitchen, bathe in the bathroom... read what was written in the night... .sit ... sit ... sit... curse... the day passes.... 1.30 am and sleep... with luck... |
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| B M S: All of this begs the question - how much time do you actually devote to the writing of poetry? |
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| RZ: Physically, about 14 hours a week, but I believe it happens all the time, continuously... unconsciously.... and then it bursts out when given the opportunity. |
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| B M S: Somebody once said, "a poem is never written; it's rewritten". What's your process? How much editing do you do, and how do you go about it? |
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| RZ: Billy, now I'm going to open myself to accusations of arrogance. I do rewrite and edit. However if a piece seems to require a lot of work I don't usually bother. If it seriously needs resuscitating, I assume I've listened to an impostor voice. When I do rewrite... it's a similar process to the first writing... go through the whole thing - feel it, recite it... swap lines around... try it out... post it on the PERFORMANCE POETRY discussion board to get criticism of it... lunge at it with a knife... |
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| B M S: A knife! Would that be included in your advice to younger poets, if you were going to give advice? |
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RZ: (Laughs) Oh, well one thing I'd tell them is believe everything for at least 30 seconds. |
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| B M S: Is that it? |
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| RZ: Don't write about daffodils, even if they're dead. Be careful in small boats. Don't fear preachers, priests or cold fields. Read Engels and the Bible, recipes and road signs, languages you don't understand, maps and billboards, neon signs and suicide notes. Remember that work hurts, death is coming and perambulators decay. Write. Find something for your mind to do while you're writing. Don't think; leave that for the edits, the re-writes. Accept criticism. The abattoir is never far - you'll be praised one day, hated the next. Never write poetry as therapy. Understand that nothing material you have is worth anything unless everyone has it or has the choice of having it. Read. Read Marx and the Bhagavad Gita. Go to poetry performances. Don't go to the toilet as the poet is about to speak their first or any line. Don't heckle - unless they're fascist. Be willing to kiss a cow on the lips. |
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| B M S: That should just about do it. |
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| RZ: Yes, I think so too. |
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