Brian Bilston: Let Sleeping Cats Lie

In the second of our podcasts with CLiPPA shortlisted poets, Nikki Gamble talks to Brian Bilston about his collection of pet poems, Let Sleeping Cats Lie. Brian talks about why he writes, his thoughts about performing and reflects on whether he intentionally writes for children.

Transcript

Nikki Gamble

Welcome to another episode of In The Reading Corner. Today’s the turn of Brian Bilston, a poet and novelist who has been published for adults and children. He’s amassed quite a following through social media, earning the sobriquet, the poet laureate of Twitter. His witty, wry voice has a wide appeal, and his most recent collection of poems for children Let Sleeping Cats Lie. Shortlist for the CLiPPA Poetry Awards. I’m very pleased to welcome Brian to my reading corner.

Brian Bilston

Hi Nikki. Thanks for inviting me.

Nikki Gamble

Where are you joining me from?

Brian Bilston

I’m in Oxford.

Nikki Gamble

The first thing I wanted to explore was when poetry came into your life, whether it was something that was there from childhood. Did somebody read poetry to you or was it you reading material of choice? But if not, when did poetry become a thing for you?

Brian Bilston

Yes, that’s a good question. I don’t think there was any one moment. Poetry wasn’t really a part of my life in childhood, though I remember having good fun in the classroom, writing assignments, and writing poetry in the shape of different things, which I do even now.

It wasn’t until I was in my mid- to late-teen years that I encountered poetry. Until then, my main reading had been stories, although I’d always been fascinated with words. I grew up in a house where we didn’t have that many books. But what we did have was a love of music. And in particular, as a young lad, one of the things that grabbed me about the music was listening to the lyrics. And I suppose when I look back, I realise I’ve always been quite obsessed with that sort of short form, being able to instil ideas in a concise, interesting way. Listening to the lyrics of Eleanor Rigby, for instance, I remember wondering what on earth the Beatles were singing about, or marvelling when they were singing about that walrus.

It wasn’t until I was a bit older that I got into poetry. That’s when I found poets who could make me laugh or smile. I encountered John Hagley when I was about 15 or 16. I saw him on television. At first, I thought he was a comedian, but then I realised he was a poet, too. So, I went out and bought one of his books. I was instantly hooked. And then suddenly I realised other people were doing similar things, which opened up a door for me.

Nikki Gamble

I want to pick up on some things you’ve just said. The first concerns caligrams, the shape poems you still feature in your collections. And I think one of the things you do with your caligrams is that they always reflect and amplify the poem’s meaning. Whereas sometimes, when we teach shape poems in school, we might give a template, say of an elephant. and ask the children to write a poem about an elephant around that shape. They’re difficult poems to write, I think. Acrostics are often treated in the same way as simple forms for children to write, but it’s not easy to make a poem from an acrostic.

Brian Bilston

No, and it’s funny, when I started doing those, it stemmed from sharing poetry on social media and the realisation that I was sending poems out in a world dominated by photographs and film. Sometimes, words on a page could be easily missed in that context. I started to think quite hard about how I present my poems in that way. But as you say, I don’t just do it for the sake of it, I feel like it has to link in with the theme and add something to the words. Not just a mirror for the words.

Nikki Gamble

I’m also interested in what you say about the importance of poetry in the teenage years. I had a childhood infused with poetry, mainly because my dad loved it so much. He would always buy me a poetry book in the school holidays. But in my teenage years, I wanted tragic poetry. You’ve mentioned humour, but for me, it was anything tragic. I think the thing that connects our experience is the intensity of emotional experience, whatever that might be. I think that’s what’s important in coming into adulthood.

Brian Bilston

Although I summed it up as the poetry that appealed to me being humorous, to be honest, before I encountered John Hagley, the first poet that I’d studied at school, at secondary school, that I really liked was Philip Larkin. What appealed to me about some of his poems was the black sense of humour and that he was writing about quite miserable things.

I found those teenage years quite difficult, so humour was an escape. But I also liked hearing about the misery of others back then, too. Larkin combined both those things. Also, there were a few swear words, which go down well when you are a certain age.

Nikki Gamble

You can’t forget that line about your Mum and Dad, can you?

Brian Bilston

You really can’t. No.

Nikki Gamble

That’s a little bit about your reading of poetry. My next question is, why do you write poetry? What’s in it for you?

Brian Bilston

Yes. What isn’t it for me? That’s a pretty existential question.

I started writing poetry when I was in my early thirties, but I didn’t share it with anyone. It was purely for my own consumption and enjoyment, and for the process of writing. I think the spark was simply having fun with language and seeing what you could do with words. A lot were probably quite silly poems involving puns and idioms. I think that’s what got me writing poetry in the first place, the joy of words.

But then I think something about the experience of writing poetry takes me to a slightly different place from where I spend most of my time. It uses my brain. So, outside of poetry, I do many things like crosswords and other kinds of puzzles, and I do like focusing on something, and poetry’s like that, trying to find the right word or way of saying something. So there’s something about the act of writing poetry that is very helpful.

To a certain degree, I use poetry as a form of self-therapy, particularly when the world is quite problematic. I use it to write about how I feel about a particular subject or make sense of it somehow. I am not necessarily trying to answer the world’s problems, but I need to get down on paper on what’s going on in my head.

Nikki Gamble

Interestingly that we’re talking about writing, but I wondered whether that is how composing happens. Do you sit at a desk to write, or are you composing in your head, and then suddenly you have to get it down on paper? How does that alchemy all work?

Brian Bilston

Oh, I wish I knew. To be honest, it is both those things.

I came to poetry as a career very late, really. For a long time, I worked in an office, and I think one thing it instilled in me is this idea of routine. So I do a nine-to-five job as a poet, even though that nine-to-five job might not be me, just sitting at my desk for all those hours. It’s a real mix of creating that time and that space in which to write, but also not getting so wedded to it that it becomes an obstacle.

Sometimes it comes very quickly and naturally, and I can get it down almost in a few minutes, probably because it’s been knocking around in my head for a while. And it’s a fairly simple conceit.

I might go on a bike ride or a walk if I’ve got an idea for a poem. I’ll be walking around, moving around town with that in my brain in the background while I eat another Danish pastry.

Nikki Gamble

I wanted to ask about how important performance is to you. Twitter, of course, is a kind of performance, isn’t it?

Brian Bilston

I suppose so, and people on Twitter themselves are very performative.

It must be said. When I joined Twitter, I joined under the pseudonym of Brian/ and the whole. Bilston persona is a kind of performance in itself, although it’s very similar to the real me. One of the things I would do on social media is be very interactive with people who commented on my poems. And so the persona would carry on into that exchange too.

Performance has become an increasingly important part of my work. For years, I shared poems on social media, but now I’m out and about. I have to pluck up the courage to go on stage in theatres and art centres and read my poems. And I thought I’d never be able to do that because I’m quite shy. Being on a stage and bearing my soul to 400 people is a real puzzle to me. But that’s now what I do, partly for a living.

But I do enjoy it all the same, I think.I’ve learned various techniques which have helped me overcome my fears, not least to think I’m the best person who could be delivering this poem, whether people like it or not. This is what I’ve got, and I know how best to do it. So I have come to grips with it all. I do really enjoy it, particularly while I’m on stage, and afterwards. What I still struggle with is just the thought of going on stage.

Nikki Gamble

Let’s talk about the collection that’s been shortlisted for the CLiPPA, Let Sleeping Cats Lie. The theme is pets. Did you have the poems ready to hand and decide to make them into a collection, or did you write them specifically for the collection?

Brain Bilston

Again, a little bit of both. I did write it as a collection. There were a handful of poems that I’d written already over the years. I’ve written a lot of poems about my cat. Usually, not necessarily with children in mind, just to share on social media.

My previous collection for children was a football-themed book. I enjoyed writing those poems as I’m a big football fan. Having enjoyed that experience so much, I was casting my mind around what other things I love. The subjects of animals came up very quickly, so I had this sort of starting point with a handful of poems.

One thing I find quite helpful once I’ve got an idea for a book or a collection is that I brainstorm a whole list of ideas. Having decided to focus on pets, I started to think about what range we are talking about. What pets are there once you get beyond cats and dogs? So I made a list: gerbils, hamsters, snakes, spiders, and various weird and wonderful pets. Maybe a dinosaur could be a pet too. And I thought about different approaches because although I primarily write poetry, that’s supposed to be fun and make you laugh. I didn’t want it just to be that either. So I thought about the issues we all have when we have pets. We love them very much, but there comes a time when we have to say goodbye to them. Not everyone has a pet. Some kids would love one. What’s it like not to have a pet to come back to? So I started thinking about those issues too. Eventually, I had a hit list of poems I wanted to write. I didn’t write all of them because sometimes you have ideas you think are great, but you can’t quite find the right words.

Nikki Gamble

I asked if you would choose a poem to read to us. What have you chosen?

Brian Bilston

I’ve chosen a poem called ‘What’s in a Name?’ It’s not particularly typical of the poems in the collection. It’s a more thoughtful and reflective poem. But I think it’s the poem that means the most to me in this collection because it is very directly about my beloved cat, who accompanied me for the writing of some of these poems. And nearly everything I’ve done in previous collections. She’s no longer with us. But I did want to write a poem in her memory.

BRIAN READS

Nikki Gamble

As you say, there’s an entire range of tones and emotions in this collection, ‘What’s in a Name?’ being one of the more reflective. It leads me to thinking about the voice in which these poems are written. This one is obviously a very personal voice, and some of the poems are written as though a child might be writing them and some of them are not.

Do you see yourself as writing these poems for children?

Brian Bilston

That’s a very good question. In some ways, I’m not quite sure. I’m not very self-analytic. It sounds quite selfish, but if anything I am probably writing these poems for myself. It just so happens because of the topic that these will be appropriate for children. I don’t see a huge amount of difference in my thought processes when writing for children versus grownups. In fact, there’s often quite a lot of crossover, I find.

When my very first collection of poems that were mainly posted on Twitter were published, I used to have a lot of people saying things like their 9-year-old son really loved them because the love the word play. Although they were not intended for children and there were some inappropriate poems in the collection.

One thing I would say is that it’s easier to take all the shackles off when you’re writing for children. I think there’s less expectation that a poem needs to be a particular kind of thing. Basically, children are far more imaginative and accepting and carry so much more joy in them than a lot of grown-ups. so I feel like it’s probably easier from that perspective.

Nikki Gamble

The other side is that because you don’t have necessarily have a clear image of who the reader is, it means poems have different levels of complexity some of which will be harder for a younger reader to access. But the joy of it is that they are there for them when they are ready because a poetry collection is something that you come back to. Certainly, the collections that my dad gave me when I was a child, I go back to now, and I see very different things in those poems, and they sit alongside each other in a way that you don’t get in a unified novel.

Brian Bilston

Yeah, that’s a very good point. I’m a great believer in that you don’t always have to understand everything to enjoy it. Thinking back to music and hearing some of those lyrics of the songs that were being played in my childhood; I didn’t know what half of them meant, but in some ways, I didn’t care because I liked the sound of them. I liked the musicality of the language. They were intriguing. Sometimes it might make me laugh, but I didn’t know why it was funny. And then you go back to it, like you say, when you are a bit older and you maybe have different perspectives on it.

Nikki Gamble

I chose one for you to read as well. You’ve talked about idiom being something that you love and this poem has lots of idioms in it. It’s ‘The Meditations of Colin, the Lugubrious Goldfish’. And just to give you a little bit of context I’ve just been speaking to Colette Hillier whose collection, ‘The Colossal Book of Words for Kids’ is is also shortlisted for the CLiPPA. One of the words I looked for her book was lugubrious because I love the word. it isn;t in that collection but I enjoyed it in yours. If you would read it to us, I’d be delighted.

Nikki Gamble

I couldn’t help chuckling all the way through that. But of course, laughter is contingent to some extent on you knowing the idioms. That’s also one of the reasons that I asked you to read that one, because some children will be laughing at that. They won’t even know why they’re laughing at it. There’s something fundamental and funny about it, but an adult like me is probably laughing for a different reason.

Brian Bilston

That’s right. These days it’s true in film too. I think about all those amazing Pixar films. I think they were one of the first ones to make films aimed at children with plenty of things in there for the adults that will be watching the films too.

Nikki Gamble

And I have to say, you’re not above silliness either. So we’ve got some silliness in there too.

Brian Bilston

I do really enjoy silliness. It must be sad, perhaps I enjoy too much for a person of my age.

It does help to keep me young.

Nikki Gamble

One final question. what’s risen to the top of your poetry reading list right now?

Brian Bilston

Oh I always have a very large pile of books with poetry. I do love collections by individual authors. But what often really gets me is an anthology and a moving from one different voice to another. So I’m reading an anthology called Cosy Poems, which is just perfect these days of turmoil. In here there are poems bout the changing nature of the seasons, about how nice it is to be hugged, about the joy of the hot chocolate, all sorts of different things. And one of the things I really love about it is the mix of voices and writers from across the ages. There’s a poem here by Nikita Gill and then there’s one by Edward Thomas. I just love that when you turn the page, you never quite know qhat’s coming next? It can take you to a completely different space.

Nikki Gamble

I guess one of the things that you’re saying there is how poetry can be a real mood changer. We can choose the poems that we need to calm us down, to energize us, to make us feel safe, to unsettle us. We can do all of those things.

Brian Bilston

Yeah that’s right. I think that’s important for all of us and I think that’s important for children. If children can discover that about poetry when they’re at that young age, that’s going to be the thing that gets them to stick with it. The fact that there’s a poem out there for every child, for every situation. Sometimes it’s not easy to find that poem, but it will be knocking around out there somewhere.

Nikki Gamble

Yes, I think there’s one there even for Colin the goldfish. Brian it has been such a pleasure talking to you. Congratulations on making it to the shortlist for the CLiPPA prize. I look forward to seeing how the shadowing groups of children respond to the poems.

Brian Bilston

Thank you, Nikki. It’s been a pleasure.