SHOWCASE: spotlighting new and upcoming writers

 

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://jillsaudek.ampbk.com/

https://www.austinmacauley.com/author/saudek-jill

 

Jill Saudek

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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.

 

 

 

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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!