Jill
Saudek
So far in this series, I’ve
showcased the talented writers Ruth
Loten, Jane Langan, Beck
Collett, Ron Hardwick, L.N.Hunter
and Katherine
Blessan. This month, I am turning the spotlight on a poet, Jill
Saudek, author of two books of excellent poetry. Jill also writes stories for
children, some of which will be published soon.
Jill’s poems are
intelligent, thoughtful and compelling. Her first collection was a series of
responses to works by other authors, and her latest collection is a series of
poems in response to famous paintings.
Biography
Jill Saudek
was born in Oxford in 1946 and grew up in Marlow. She attended High Wycombe
High School and then studied English Literature at Newnham College,
Cambridge. She went on to become an
English and Drama teacher and subsequently Head of Sixth Form in a variety of
schools in the London area, before retiring in 2009. She now lives with her
husband, son, daughter-in-law and three grandchildren in South East London.
Further
Information
You can find
Jill’s website, where her blog can be found, here:
https://www.austinmacauley.com/author/saudek-jill
Jill Saudek
******
Here are several extracts from Jill’s
latest collection of poetry, Poems From Poems, published by Austin
Macauley Publishers in 2023 [her earlier collection, Poems From Paintings,
was published in 2022]:
Shakespeare
Sonnet: “When in the chronicles of wasted time…”
The
whole sonnet – my first “response”:
When
in the chronicles of poets old
I
read descriptions of their poor hearts, broken
Yearning
for proud beauties who, too cold,
Spurned
them, their pleading words, alas, unspoken,
Fated
to live only in written rhyme
For
readers yet unborn, but powerless
To
hold sway in their present, urgent time,
Thus
giving us joy, themselves only distress;
Then
do I muse on poetry’s strange force
To
move us so in centuries far thence,
When
lovers’ lives had run their so brief course,
The
love itself long dead, once so intense.
For
poetry escapes Time’s cruel scythe
Though
none of those who feel and write survive.
Herbert’s
Love – the whole poem
Faith
Faith
bids me welcome; my dull brain resists,
So
long my leading guide.
“Reason
is all,” my jealous mind insists –
Let
nothing else inside.
Faith
in the unknown must be a mirage!
Erect
a stubborn wall,
Fashion
a fortress, build a strong barrage
Against
the fanciful.”
But
Faith says: “There are worlds beyond our reach
Where
stranger things
Than
cold philosophy could ever teach
Might
lend you wings.”
From
Arnold’s Dover Beach the first stanza:
The
sea is wild tonight,
The
moon is hidden;
Only
sharp spears of light
Shoot
through the clouds’ dark pall;
Low,
ominous drumming
Comes
on the air unbidden,
And
leaden raindrops fall
From
thunderous height.
Helplessly,
we watch the squall,
Black
above foam-white waves, coming
Ever
closer, as we cling
For
comfort in the pitiless storm,
Fearful
of what each tide may bring,
What
unknown, terrible harm.
Hardy’s
The Darkling Thrush– the whole poem
The
woods are lovely – brown and gold,
The quiet of the shade,
With
magisterial oaks of old
In avenues arrayed:
A
fragment of the Kentish Weald,
A living, breathing thing:
The
evening dew along the field -
Above, a few birds sing:
I
hear the magpies’ noisy din,
Coos, where wood pigeons meet,
The
crows’ hoarse cawing and the thin
Chatter of parakeet.
And
far above me, the outpouring
Of a lone blackbird’s long,
Melodious,
sweetly soaring,
Heartfelt evensong.
And
yet a sense of loss persists -
The song birds of my youth
Are
rarely heard; reason insists
That this is the stark truth:
Cuckoo,
nightingale and swallow
Lost in the human rush
For
domination. Soon may follow
Hardy’s valiant thrush.
Some
blessed hope may still remain
Though frail and gaunt it seems,
And
as the long years slowly wane,
Darkness swallows dreams.
So
much has vanished from the past –
I fear the future’s Spring
In
lands where so much does not last,
And no birds sing.
Tennyson’s
“Come into the Garden, Maud…” the first two stanzas from the longer poem
For
a Granddaughter – May 2020
Come
into the garden, my darling, my darling,
For it is permitted at last”
For
so long in my mind I’ve been calling you, calling
And willing the slow time to pass,
My
whole being aching, my tears quietly falling,
In my yearning to hold you fast.
And
now I am here on the soft grass before you-
And there you are in your old place!
But
I have to resist the urge to implore you
To reach out and touch my poot face;
All
I’m aware of is this: I adore you,
I want you in my fierce embrace.
Andrew
Marvell: To His Coy Mistress – the opening 14 lines
May
2020
The
irony is that we have all this time
And
yet to be together is a crime!
This
bed, the centre of the world should be
But,
without you, a snow-white plain, empty
Of
all that makes me feel that life’s worthwhile;
I
am confined, a prisoner without a trial.
Outside
the window panes, the busy sun
Laughs
at me, knowing that I am undone -
What
is his light and warmth without your touch?
I
dream of you, my fingers reach to clutch
Your
hand, thinking that you are with me –
I
wake, I cry – it was mere fantasy,
You fade, you vanish into echoing air
And
I am left alone with my despair.
Yeats:
Easter 1916 – the first stanza
Easter
2020
We
had not smelled death before,
Nor
felt that it was near -
Just
a rumour from ancient lore,
Nothing
for us to fear;
The
Reaper, only a symbol
From
primitive ages long past;
The
funeral bells might toll
But
they did not trouble our rest.
Snug
in our complacency,
We
shut our eyes to the truth
That
there is no security,
Not
even for gilded youth.
Now
we can clearly see,
For
the black-out curtain’s been drawn:
All’s
changed, changed utterly,
An
ancient terror’s reborn.
******
Jill Saudek
And finally we come to The Big Interview, where Jill kindly
answers writing-related questions and lets us into some of her
writing secrets...
1.
How
old were you when you first knew you wanted to be a writer, and what set you
off down that journey?
As a child, I loved writing – stories, secret diaries,
lovelorn teenage poems (“For he tames grief that fetters it in verse”, I
intoned – and it worked!), long, descriptive letters. Then I went off to study
literature at university and felt so daunted by the power and beauty of past
works that my own poor efforts dwindled and died.
And then, just three years ago, during
lockdown, I started to write poetry again – in my mid-seventies. I heard a
snatch of a radio programme where Giles Brandreth recommended learning poetry
by heart as a brain workout; I began with a Shakespeare sonnet but soon found
the task too slow and tedious – writing would be more fun, surely? I composed
my own sonnet as a reply to his “When in the chronicles of wasted time” – the
title seemed apt! This set me off on an unexpected and exciting journey.
2.
Tell
us about the books and writers that have shaped your life and your writing
career.
As an English teacher, my life has been filled with
the process of reading, pondering and communicating the joy of literature. My
brain is stuffed full of poems, and I sometimes annoy my friends by quoting odd
lines in the midst of conversations, their relevance often apparent only to
me. One abiding influence was T.S. Eliot
whose “words echo” in my mind and whose use of allusion I found exhilarating. I
love the musicality of poetry, where Tennyson, Keats and Yeats excel.
3.
Have
your children, other family members, friends or teachers inspired any of your
writing? Has there been any particular mentor in your past?
My next book, to be published later this year, is for
young children. I have a number of “small relatives” to whom I would read my
stories, and soon found that my feeble attempts to illustrate them were worse
than useless – much better to let them form their own pictures in their “mind’s
eye” – the title I chose for this book.
As a teenager, I knew Roger Scruton, the
philosopher, a friend of my brother’s, and it was he who taught me about Eliot
during long, Thames-side walks together.
My husband has always been the first to
listen to my poems, as I present him with the latest offering, and his gentle
and thoughtful comments are invaluable.
4.
Does
the place you live in now, or have lived in the past, have any impact on your
writing?
Certainly, the children’s stories are rooted in place,
as I juxtaposed their familiar, homely settings with magical locations. My own
childhood home in Marlow was full of music rather than poetry, but the two are
related, of course, and my delight in nature certainly stems from there. I have
not travelled extensively and so my writing is very much “home-grown”.
5.
How
would you describe your own writing? Do you tend to write in a particular genre
or form?
Form in poetry is absolutely central to me – hence the
liberation I felt when I had the idea of replicating the exact form of an
original poem in my various “responses”.
At my school, it was deemed that “free-form” poetry was the way forward
– but this rarely appealed to me. Now, I find the demands of rhyme and metre
are at the heart of my ability to write.
Somehow, constraint brings release! The challenge of tackling the many
different poetic forms has been exhilarating. I hope that my readers will
always read the original poems in conjunction with mine.
6.
Are
there certain themes that draw you to them when you are writing?
The aim of my poems was to cover the general theme of
the originals but with my own modern perspective. Thus, I inherited the themes,
as it were, rather than created them. Many are timeless – love, death, parting,
hope, nature – but others have certainly shifted across time. Religious faith
was one of the preoccupations of past writers but my own attitude towards death
does not include the metaphysical poets’ terror of damnation or indeed faith in
divine love, so beautifully expressed by Herbert in his poem “Love” [see
Jill’s response to this poem in the excerpt above]. Climate change soon
became an ongoing theme, as when I responded to Arnold’s “Dover Beach” [see
Jill’s response to this poem in the excerpt above] by turning his metaphor
of the retreating Sea of Faith into a fear of warming seas literally flooding
the land, or drying rivers threatening life. Likewise, Hardy’s “Darkling
Thrush” [see Jill’s response to this poem in the excerpt above] led to a
fear of silent springs to come, in my response.
7.
Tell
us about how you approach your writing. Are you a planner or a pantser?
This is how I approached Poems from Poems: I
leafed through various anthologies to find a poem that I felt I could respond
to, usually, though not always, one already well known to me. Once I had found
“a way in”, as I thought of it, I would go for a solitary walk and let the
ideas permeate and germinate. Then I would sit down and write the poem. I write
very quickly, and was surprised by how easily the words came. Then came the
necessary process of revision, often to tidy up a metrical line, before reading
my effort to my husband and returning to my desk for any last tweaking.
Do
you have any advice for someone who might be thinking about writing creatively?
As a teacher, I had to find stimuli for the students –
perhaps a picture (as in my companion book “Poems from Paintings”) or a title
rich with possibilities of interpretation. Marking is the bane of many a
teacher, but reading creative writing was (almost) always a pleasure.
My only advice would be that the writing
process is enriching in itself, whatever may become of the product!
9.
Are
you, or have you been in the past, a member of any writing groups?
No, I have never joined a writing group but can imagine
that the interchange of ideas could be inspiring, and – given the right
leadership – confidence-building.
10. Did you have much feedback from others
during the process of writing your poems, and what do you think is the value of
such feedback, if any?
I have not actively sought feedback from other
writers. I value my close friends’ positive feedback as it definitely boosts my
confidence. Since publishing my books, I have given a few talks to members of
local poetry groups, where I ask for their thoughts and interpretations, and
this has been a rewarding and interesting experience.
11. If you have experience of
self-publishing, what has been its challenges and rewards?
I had an abortive attempt to self-publish my first
book on Kindle, but my IT skills were not up to the task. I then consulted The
Writer’s Handbook for addresses of possible publishers and found that only one
did not require me to have won awards before they would accept a submission.
Only Austin Macauley Publishers promised to look at the whole book, so I sent
the poems there and was pleased by the feedback and their deal: if I undertook
to pay one third of the expenses, they would cover the rest, which I thought a
very fair offer. I was delighted by the quality of both publications when they
arrived.
12. Where do you get your ideas from?
My ideas spring from the original source, be it a
painting or a poem. It is such a great thing to have a catalyst, a springboard
from which to jump into the unknown! Everyone should try it…
13. They say that successful writers need
to be selfish. How far do you agree with this?
Being retired has many benefits for the writer! It
proved easy for me to find plenty of quiet time for writing.
14. Beyond your family and writing, what
other things do you do? Do these things have an impact on your writing?
I enjoy going to concerts, listening at home and,
above all, singing in a local chamber choir. My love of music influences the
soundscapes I try to create in poetry. I belong to two book groups where we
discuss contemporary fiction. Walking is a part of my daily routine, and I have
easy access to local woods and meadows from my house in Bromley, with the hills
of Kent and Surrey a short car journey away.
This too I find integral to the process of creating, as I resolve ideas
and patterns in my head before settling down to write. I like going to art
galleries but am no expert – my knowledge of art was greatly expanded when I
undertook the task of interpreting paintings in my first book, Poems from
Paintings.
15. Would you describe yourself as a
“cultured” person?
Yes, I would!
16. Are you interested in history and if so
does it impact on your writing?
While no expert, I am definitely fascinated by
history. The age in which a painting or a poem was created is important to its
understanding, and one of my aims in Poems from Poems was to explore the
differing approaches to human experience and cultural values over the ages.
However, my work is subjective, based largely on intuition, and I do not
undertake detailed research of the background to a poem or work of art.
17. How did the Covid pandemic affect you
as a writer?
I began Poems from Poems shortly before the
first lockdown and many of the poems reflect the particular concerns of that
time – for example, the suffering of a grandparent unable to hold a young child
(Tennyson’s “Come into the Garden” – see extracts above), the
frustration of a young lover forced into separation from his beloved (Marvell’s
“To His Coy Mistress” – see extracts above), or the sudden awareness of
imminent death in our previously sheltered lives (Yeats’ “Easter 1916” – see
extracts above).
18. There is a lot of discussion about
so-called ‘Political Correctness’, the Woke movement, ‘cancel culture’, trigger
warnings and sensitivity readers these days in the world of publishing. What
are your views on this?
I definitely feel that a writer does not need to have
first-hand experience before embarking upon a story or poem, although I do
understand sensitivities about other cultures and would not feel able to tackle
poems or paintings from non-European traditions.
As regards “updating” children’s books,
I strongly believe that young children are more able than is often acknowledged
to understand complex language and plot development. My forthcoming book of
stories, The Mind’s Eye, is
designed to be read to children aged three to five (i.e. before they can read
fluently themselves) and I have used more ambitious vocabulary and sentence
structure than is usual, while each story is roughly thirty to fifty thousand
words, divided into chapters but with a forward narrative thrust, which I have
found that the children seem very capable of following over a period of time.
I find “trigger warnings” probably
helpful for parents and teachers but also probably unnecessary for young
readers, and certainly not for most university students. Isn’t one of the
purposes of reading to be “upset” – that is, jolted out of complacency and
routine through imaginative empathy? But, of course, there will always be
exceptions where particularly vulnerable individuals may be badly shaken.
19. Where would you place your own work on
the Fantasy – Complete Realism Continuum?
I hope that my poems will feel realistic, rooted in
the truthful recording of experience. In my children’s stories, I attempt to
bridge the divide between the known and familiar, and the unknown and magical.
As a teenager, I loved Science Fiction,
especially John Wyndham’s novels; as an adult, I have moved away from this and
hardly ever read or watch fantasy. I suppose I prefer to examine the mysteries
of the world around us.
In October, I will showcase
the wonderful writer and member of the
20-20 Club
Colin Johnson
Not to be missed!
