POETiCA Interview with Milner Place

Mark A. Murphy: Which poets are you currently reading?

Milner Place: I am currently reading John Yamrus and Carola Luther.

Murphy: Which poets would be on your shortlist for the next Nobel Prize?

Place: No names spring to mind, except Milner Place.

Murphy: Which poets do you always return to and why?

Place: Pablo Neruda and Ken Smith, most of all. Either will spark me almost invariably into producing something myself.
 

Murphy: What do you think of the adage: ‘talent borrows, genius steals.’?

Place: Not a lot.
 

Murphy: Do you agree with the poet, John Redmond when he writes: poetry does not have a nature’, what might poetry be for you?

Place: I guess I can agree with Redmond. My concept of poetry is that it is similar to music, in more ways than one. And like music, there is infinite variety which is subject to individual tastes. It might be best to remember that new tastes can be acquired, and maybe some of the old rejected. What I like is not necessarily to the taste of another, or mean that I may like it at some time in the future.
 

Murphy: What do you think of ‘confessional verse,’ does it have a place in your heart?

Place: Can’t say I’m a fan, though like all poetry it can depend on the execution and approach. In many cases it looks like a therapeutic mission, but that may only be of effect to the writer or fellow sufferers.

Murphy: When I was a boy, my father would pay me pennies for remembering verses. Do you like or think it is important to commit verse to memory?

Place: I certainly value many poems I was encouraged to remember in my youth. Though there are few of my own poems I could recite at will, I’m a firm believer in the importance of the oral tradition in poetry, and very conscious of this in writing and revising my own stuff.
 

Murphy: What kind of relationship do you have with the past, are you nostalgic?

Place: Nostalgic, no. But I use the past as a dramatist uses scenery, and create characters based on people encountered, albeit often distorted beyond recognition.
 

Murphy: Do you write every day?

Place: Not so much now as of old, but I try.

Murphy: We’ve both attended many workshops over the years, do you think it’s the job of the workshop to teach poets to be better poets?

Place: I regard workshops as a form of self teaching, perhaps communal learning. For the years I ran workshops I tried my best to make them democratic and avoid any teacher pupil relationship. This can really only be achieved in a series, where members get to know and trust each other. For this reason I’ve little time for one-off workshops, though they may have some value to others.

Murphy: You once said to me, ‘do what you want with poetry, just make it interesting.’ What advice would you give to aspiring poets nowadays?

Place: My simple advice would be to ask: ‘Is this boring’?
 

Murphy: I read in a Wikipedia article about your brother, Ullin Place (the philosopher) that you were ‘one of the leading English poets’. Does that give you any sense of satisfaction?

Place: I’d be inhuman if it didn’t give me some satisfaction. Like it has given me a glow that a German publisher, Ralf Friel, asked if he could publish my work, and has produced a great selection from all my books.
 

Murphy: Is everything writable about as Sylvia Plath had said?

Place: I’d agree.

Murphy: What’s the greatest pleasure in being a poet?

Place: Dunno. Maybe the feeling that you’ve got something near right.

Murphy: You are a Spanish speaker. I believe you even wrote a volume of poetry in Spanish some years ago. What do you think of poetry in translation, can it ever remain faithful to the original?

Place: A lot can depend on the poet and the poem. There’s ever the problem that certain words and phrases have connotations within a culture, often very subtle, that it’s nigh impossible to get over in another language (culture). When writing in another language, you also need to be writing, as far as possible, within that other culture. Few of the poems I wrote in Spanish can I satisfactorily translate into English.
 

Murphy: What has been your most ambitious poem to date?

Place: Two come to mind. The City of Flowers, which was published as an A4 booklet, 26 pages, by Spout Publications, edited by Keith Jafrate, illustrated by David Pitt. To try to get a whole city into a form of a poem, its ambience and its people, presented quite a challenge. The other is the title poem of a current selection from all my work by Ralf Friel, Moloko Print, in Germany. This another long poem. I believe both these poems to be at least well constructed, so that they are reader friendly, ever a problem with long poems.
 

Murphy: Lawrence Ferlinghetti is 94, Ernesto Cardenal is 87 (two of my favourite living poets). Do you think your work gets ‘better’ as you get older?

Place: Never being a good judge of my own work, I can’t really say. I certainly write with greater fluency, and/or ease, that comes with practice
 

Murphy: Are you a ‘spiritual’ poet?

Place: I wouldn’t say so, though ‘spiritual can be very stretched in meaning. I’m not religious.
 

Murphy: I’ve often read that poetry is in the life-blood of many countries. I once read that Pablo Neruda was giving a reading for ten thousand people when he was asked to recite a certain poem and he said he ‘didn’t remember it well enough’ and four hundred people in the audience started reciting the poem. Do you think that could ever happen in the UK?

Place: Not in any way likely. I believe, apart from the power of his poetry and political bent, that Neruda could communicate with the ‘people’ because of his background. His father a railway man, and being brought up in comparative poverty in a small village. He spoke from the heart to them. There is also a greater respect for poets in Spain and Latin-America. Neruda was also a man of action, when it came to aiding others.
 

Murphy: What are you working on now and how can people follow your writing?

Place: Not working on a particular project, just writing poems. The selection of poems from all my books, and then some, by Ralf Friel, entitled The man who had forgotten the names of trees,150 pages, gives a comprehensive look at my work and changing styles. It includes an essay on my poetry by the late Todd Moore. Though the intro etc is in German, all are also in English placed at the end. All the poems, except 3 short ones in Spanish, are in English only. It also comes with artwork by Harald Hauser, who has an international reputation as an artist. More info can be seen here: http://www.milnerplace.electricmuseum.de/ or it can be bought from me by contacting milnerplace@msn.com