Featured Writer Index

Jonathan Steffen: You clearly write about the world from personal experience. Do you see yourself as a confessional writer?
Martin Bennett: No, not at all – at least not in the grand tradition of Lowell and Plath. In fact, when I’m writing them, my poems often take me by surprise, following no pre-set agenda, confessional or otherwise.

JS: Many of your poems deal with events which have obviously occurred outside your native country. From a poetic perspective, where is home for you?
MB: Well, I’ve spent most of my working life as an expatriate, in West Africa, the Middle East, and now in Rome. So, to rephrase the song title, home is wherever I find myself, geographical or otherwise.

JS: Casual cruelty is a recurring theme in your work. To what extent do you see yourself as an observer of the world around you, and to what extent a moralist?
MB: Maybe this comes from my having watched too much World Service News, or it is just that such events tend to stick in the mind, demanding some sort of exorcism? The second part of the question: For my own sake and other people’s, a moralist is, hopefully, something I am anything but. An observer, ok, albeit a sometimes rather guilty one: ‘poetry making nothing happen’, etc.

JS: Animals figure prominently in your poems. What do they mean to you?
MB: ‘Used to figure’ would be more accurate, animals being scarce in urban Italy. My first job in Africa was on the edge of the Bush, so ‘exotic nature’ was an everyday experience. Then I’ve always loved Lawrence’s animal poems, likewise Ted Hughes and Pablo Neruda, not forgetting some equally graphic African equivalents in Ulli Beier’s translations of Yoruba Hunting songs.

JS: Are there subjects that you find difficult to tackle – and if so, why?
MB: Cf. question 1: if a poem refuses to present itself, so be it. Better to take oneself off to the bar or cinema. When a poem does come, it’s usually of its own accord, insistently even, whatever the subject. Reworking the poem into a definitive form is another matter.

JS: You appear to be comfortable with a variety of verse forms. Very few of your poems are written in pure rhyme, however. Why is this?
MB: Well, concerning variety I have to thank the benign influence of Auden. As for the shortage of pure rhyme, one reason admittedly might be the difficulty involved. More positively, though, thanks to Carlos Williams and other pioneers, there are a lot of other devices to draw on. Blaise Cendrar’s concept of ‘Poèmes élastiques’ is also instructive in this regard.

JS: Which writer has influenced you most, and in what way?
MB: Depends on the year and the particular books I have around at the time. Rather than one writer, it’s more of a list: Basho, Berryman, Blake, Browning and keep on going…

JS: You have translated much poetry, especially from the Italian. What is your prime motivation as a translator?
MB: A fascination with what happens at the border between two languages. Also translation is another form of reading, some sort of osmosis taking place which is difficult to define: some translations leap from the page fully-armed as it were, others take months or years. A mystery which can also be a delight.

JS: Is there a translator or translation that you particularly admire – and if so, why?
MB: Robert Lowell and, of course, Pound, translations as an extension of the art of ‘making it new.’ In the same vein, there is Logue’s ‘Iliad’ and Ted Hughes’ Ovid. Also Pirandello’s rendering of Goethe’s ‘Roman Elegies’, Quasimodo’s ‘Greek Lyrics’, an excellent short cut for those with no German or Ancient Greek.

JS: Some of your translations are described as being ‘after’ the author in question rather than strict translations. Why do you sometimes opt for this more indirect form of rendering?
MB: Version seems a much easier definition to work with, also giving the translator more scope. Sometimes the version might also involve an element of improvisation, poetry here having something to learn from jazz. Or so I like to tell myself with Keith Jarrett or someone playing in the background.

JS: From your essay ‘Vanity, Vanity, Nothing but Vanity’ it appears clear that you have had your share of disappointments as a writer. What motivates you to continue writing?
MB: Some vanity, I confess. But also, I hope, love and admiration for such-and-such a poem – whether an Old English lyric or a Browning monologue – and the wish to produce something even half as good.

JS: Some people would claim that all publishing is vanity publishing. Would you agree?
MB: No. Then it was Ecclesiastes who first posited the idea - but then Shakespeare had not yet been born.

JS: Martin Bennett, thank you very much for talking with Falcon Editions.

Featured Writer Index