It is a great privilege to welcome Scottish poet Andrew Philip to the blog,

as he drops in for a blether about his Hebridean Thumbnails as part of

The Ambulance Box Tour.

 

 

thumbnail n. concise and brief: he did a thumbnail sketch 

 

Every now and again, you pick up a new book that immediately excites and transports you to a world

 inhabited by your thoughts, language and spirits.

 Such a book is Andrew Philip’s debut collection ‘The Ambulance Box’.

 

 Hebridean Thumbnails

 fo cheo

islands buried in the sky’s white sands

 

DR: A warm virtual welcome to you, Andrew!

AP: It’s great to be here virtually, Doug.

DR: When I first picked up your debut collection, I was sitting in the coffee shop of Blackwell’s Books in Oxford.

Normal ritual with a new book; hot mug of Americano, comfy seat and read carefully the titles on the contents page.

But this time I got no futher than the first poem, Hebridean Thumbnail 1. The title resonated with the themes of my own art, and when I opened the page I was immediately struck with the simple, beautiful, and consice form of the poem.

As an Artist, the concept of the thumbnail sketch is a familiar one and in the case of my own work, it is used as a vehicle for one-off, intimate landscape studies.

How did your sequence of thumbnails come about, and why did you choose to use this form?

AP: I’m glad it made such an impact, because it felt like a risk starting the book with a one-line poem.

There were two main triggers for the sequence. The most obvious one was that my wife and I had recently returned from a holiday in Lewis and Harris. The second was more mundane: Julie Johnstone, editor of Essence Press (http://www.essencepress.co.uk/), was looking for monostiches — one-line poems — for a special edition of island magazine.

Something else that fed into the creation of the sequence was a comment by a writer friend, the poet Siriol Troup, that she’d like to see me do more writing about landscape. The single line seemed like a good form to approach that challenge. Not only does it require intense focus but the form evokes the horizon and shoreline, both of which are prominent features in Lewis and Harris.

I love the concision of the form too. I’d been interested in short, compressed forms for a number of years, so writing monostiches seemed a logical step to take.

 

sligean air an traigh

 all the bonnier for being briste  briste  briste

 

DR: Isn’t creating art always about taking risks? Just the act of putting your work out into public view alone would seem like a risk to some.

Siriol’s suggestion was certainly a good one, and choosing the form of the single line was an apt move, both aesthetically and contextually.

I’ve been working for a very long time to develop the ‘less is more’ attitude to drawing, and when working on a subject such as coastlines or sea horizons, studying brevity is essential.

It is interesting that you said that one of the start points was that you had recently returned from a holiday in the Hebrides. Had you written any notes or created any thumbnail sketches (either on paper or mentally) that you used on your return to Linlithgow?

AP: Yes, you’re absolutely right about risk. It’s integral to making art. Perhaps that’s part of what makes a positive audience response so gratifying, especially when the work is as personal as many of the poems in The Ambulance Box are.

I don’t think I’d written any notes while we were in the Hebrides, but there were plenty strongly visual memories and we took a good number of photos. Although my notebooks come with us whenever we go away, I tend not to write anything on holiday.

DR: That’s interesting that the work is done from memory and recall. I always find it amazing how much, if you have tuned your eye and your brain in carefully, you can remember of a place, person or event.

Possibly the physical and time distance helps you to absorb what has been happening around you, and through your intuitive poetic sense or conditioning, naturally edits downs the information to fit with your own language or themes.

In these poems you started with a short line of Gaelic, for instance the opening ‘fo cheo’.

What prompted you start the poem with the language of the islands?

AP: Distance — whether physical, temporal or emotional — from the subject is often very useful in making art, don’t you find? Distance from the work is also an essential part of the process, and I try to build that into the writing.

There were, again, a couple of spurs for the use of Gaelic. The most obvious one being the setting, which provides a clear context for using the language. I’m also interested in the aesthetic possibilities of bringing together Scots, Gaelic and English in various ways, and this sequence seemed a good opportunity to do that.

The Gaelic phrases are also somewhere between a (sub)title and an extra line, though they lean more towards the former. In a way, they gloss the poems’ ostensible subjects. (I say “ostensible” because the emotional reasonances are deeper and wider than straightforward exploration of the landscape.) I wanted to provide that gloss, but not make it too obvious.

Besides the aesthetic considerations, there is a subtle political element to using Gaelic. By giving it equal weight to the English and Scots — or possibly more: without it, you’re guessing what the subject is — I’m saying it’s of equal value.

 

 

solus na stoirme

 where sky and land split   a fragment of grief flickers

 

DR: The distance theory is very true in terms of focusing on what you want to use from an experience, and also in how you will then communicate the thoughts or emotions to your audience. You have then got to hope that the audience bring along their shared experiences and have the necessary vocabulary which will allow them to engage with your work.

Using the Gaelic (sub)title does add an extra dimension to the poems. I have tried through the years to use Gaelic or Scots titles in many of my works, where it not only has relevance to the subject matter, but adds another ‘key’ for the audience to use to unlock the narrative behind the work.

I would love in future to incorporate more texts into the work somehow, but want to avoid the normal typographical tools and tricks. I’m going to keep looking at words especially in Scots and Gaelic, and by studying their shapes and structures, find a way to embed them into the visual elements.

For some, the single line (or occasionally single word) form of poetry is considered to be inferior in quality and artistry to the normal concept or perception of what a poem should be. Books such as Atoms of Delight, and the work of writers like Thomas A. Clark challenge this opinion.

Where would you say the strength lies in work such as the Hebridean Thumbnails, and do you find it more or less difficult to express and communicate your ideas in this more compressed form of poetry, say compared to using a more formal structure.

AP: I’d have to say that anyone who considers the single-line poem inferior in artistry doesn’t know what they’re on about. The line is the fundamental unit of poetry, and the form focuses your attention on that fact. Its strength is in the intensity of focus, both in form and subject. There’s nowhere to hide. For it to work, it has to be good. In a poem of more standard length, you can get away with less striking lines — sometimes you might even want them to heighten the impact of a cracker of a line when it comes — but everything has to work harder when there are no other lines to lean against.

Simone Weil apparently said “Absolute attention is prayer”, and the monostich has something of that quality. If it works, the white space around it on the page becomes resonant and alive. It’s really hard to do that justice in performance, so I seldom read them.

Atoms of Delight is a fabulous book. That’s where I first came across the monostich, if I remember rightly. That and Gael Turnbull’s marvellous “spaces” poems, which eventually helped to inform “Notes to Self”, which is one of the longer pieces in my book but also emerges out of that pared-down aesthetic.

I’m not sure whether I find it easier or harder to express my ideas in this form. To an extent, that’s because ideas can often be found or, at least, clarified in the writing, so the form is part of discovering the content. The best lines are often the ones that surprise the writer and leave you thinking, “Now where precisely did that come from?” I guess you find something similar happening in your art. It can be a fairly organic process.

 

(image to follow)

comhradh a’ chladaich

after all this time, what has the beach left to say to the tide?

 

DR: Yes, your right. Often I’ll start out with an idea or image in mind. It’s not until you make the first marks on the paper that you can truly say where it is going. Often the simplest of ideas can turn out to be the ones with most power and interest.

The white space on the page and it’s effect on the line or image is something I have been fascinated by for a long time. I created a small series of drawings a few years ago called ‘Meith’, after a conversation with Gaelic poet Kevin MacNeil about brevity and the beauty and intensity of poetic forms such as the haiku. The image was of navigation markers, transected by a small fragment of island or shore, creating a horizon and the allusion of distance and perspective. The overall effect was to create an icon or cruciform motif.

 

Sketchbook study for ‘Meith”

 

But what gave it the real strength was the white space, further enhanced by mounting the work. It was an interesting challenge to make, paring the image down to its barest essential elements, which as you said with the single line motion, left it with no other means of support or hiding places. It was a real learning process for me, one which I still bring into play when creating my work today.

Interesting you should mention Gael Turnbull. I had recently been reading one of his poems which typifies the fundamental power of the single line. The poem was ‘Near Sloc Dubh, South Harris’, collected as part of Carmichael’s Book. The visual impact of the poem is very interesting to me as an artist. The ten lines of the poem are spaced on the page giving the impression that as well as being read as a whole poem, each line has been constructed in a way that when read singly they can stand alone. For example the last three lines of the piece are,

 

Silence inhabits the glen.

 

Remembering is our tomorrow.

 

Forgetting, what won’t come again.

 

 

Truly beautiful and inspiring, like much of Turnbull’s work.

You said that poems like the Hebridean Thumbnails don’t work well live. It’s intriguing and somewhat magical that the silent space around the poem as it is read cannot match the resonance of the whiteness of a page.

AP: I could be wrong about that, of course. It’s often hard to tell what works for an audience. You’ll get people coming up to you after a reading full of praise for a poem that you didn’t think had gone down that well. However, as a listener, I find the short forms hard to enjoy as much in a reading. They need so much space around them and readers never give them that space. After all, they might well have a paying audience in front of them. It takes a huge amount of self-confidence to be silent in public!

DR: That’s very true! I think the amount of self-confidence and receptiveness of the audience also goes for minimalism in the visual arts.

I’ve been chatting to you about a very small part of what is an excellent, moving collection of poems. The book takes the reader on a journey through a whole spectrum of emotions and self-questioning. I find myself traveling back and forth through the book, reading and re-reading the poems and finding new layers of thoughts and images each time. I’ve been particularly taken by the Pilgrim Variations.

Personally, from an artists point of view, the book (like many of Salt’s titles) is a beautiful object. The vision and colours, strengths and fragility, and emotional trials and joys we all face in our lives are realised throughout your poems. A real workout for the eye, heart and mind.

To take a line from your ‘In Question to the Answers’ -

9. What is the next line in this sequence?

What next for Andrew Philip?

AP: On Monday, I’ll be reading in London along with fellow Salt poets Rob A Mackenzie and Katy Evans-Bush as well as the eminent Chinese poet Yang Lian. It’s a real honour to read beside Yang Lian, and I’m hugely excited about the evening. We’ll be at Lemon Monkey, Stoke Newington High St from 7 pm on Monday 29th. The cafe is licensed and the event is free.

The virtual book tour continues, of course (details on the Cylcone page: http://saltpublishing.com/cyclone/?p=350), but this summer is largely going to be taken up with a significant family event.

I’m still looking for direction for the next collection but, at the moment, I think it’ll be a bit more outward looking than The Ambulance Box. Some of the recent poems I’m most pleased with certainly have that quality to them.

DR: I would think it is rather like the period after a one-man art exhibition, a time for gathering your thoughts and a wee bit of directional ’stocktaking’.

I’m sure like me, there will be many people looking forward to the next direction and collection of your work.

Thanks Andy for allowing me to provide you with this stop on the Ambulance Box Tour, and I hope you have enjoyed our virtual blether as much as I have. It’s been an honour and a rare privilege to have you here.

Look forward to hearing yourself, Katy, Rob and Yang Lian read at Lemon Monkey on Monday.

AP:It’s been real pleasure, Doug. I look forward to meeting you in the flesh at the reading.

You can buy a copy of The Ambulance Box directly from Salt’s website at www.saltpublishing.com, and also from Amazon.

Andrew’s blog is at www.andrewphilip.net.

 

 

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