It is the week of National Poetry Day when I catch up with Gillian Clarke for a phonecall. We have been blessed with a weekend of sunshine, and it looks set to continue bright and cloudless. An Indian summer. Gillian is at home, but never for long. The doors and windows flung open to embrace the lovely weather instead of her many comings and goings, a busy schedule of readings, teaching and public and private engagements that propel our National Poet across Wales, England, and even on a forthcoming short trip to India with the Hay Festival. Does she like to be busy? ‘Academi told me that I don’t have to do anything as National Poet, perhaps three or four readings a year, but I really can’t see the point of that. I say yes to everything.’
The theme for this year’s National Poetry Day was ‘home’ and that was where Gillian Clarke found herself returning to on the day, travelling from judging a poetry prize for schoolchildren in Liverpool to her birthplace of Cardiff where Guardian journalists lay in wait to be educated about Wales. ‘I do these things for Wales and for poetry. I want poetry to be included everywhere from events to buildings. It is a relatively cheap public art’ explains Gillian. The poet read two of her poems for the journalists – one sad, commemorating those who were killed in the Six Bells colliery explosion (Six Bells) and another celebratory and relating to the Senedd (Small Blue Butterfly). ‘The National Assembly of Wales feels like mine, I can call this place my own, my home. Westminster feels too posh and too remote.’
Poetry and spoken word has been attracting bigger audiences and Gillian agrees that poetry is changing its spots: ‘Poetry readings used to be so dreadful, poets would shuffle and drop pages with one hand and hold a pint in another, muttering and mumbling their way through a set. Today poets have polished up their acts and become charming and clear; congenial. Carol Ann Duffy is a lovely reader, although she hates to perform alone. In fact everyone I’ve chosen to read with me on this tour is a first rate reader. At events, there is always someone who tells me that they have never been to a poetry reading before – their spouse dragged them along – and they found that they really enjoyed it. There is still a much bigger audience for poetry out there, waiting to be reached.’
Gillian will be performing at Trinity University College, Carmarthen on Thurs 25 Nov and at Y Drwm, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth with Carol Ann Duffy on Sat 27 Nov.
For more information on the tour and to book your tickets for the events, contact Academi: 029 2047 2266 / [email protected].