AM. It is almost thirty years since I moved into
a house in Matlock and found that living just down the road from me was an
accomplished and published poet. Our conversations over the intervening years
have certainly motivated me in my writing and I've also benefited from your
critical reading of various drafts of things I've written. I'm wondering about
the origins of your literary interests. Were you from a 'bookish' household or
were there any particularly inspiring teachers in your schools?
DD: There were few books
in my very happy working-class home, but my rigorous primary school encouraged
us to join the local library. Once it
was clear that I was a keen reader, my parents bought me books like the Books
of Knowledge (a kind of encyclopaedia) and The Empire Youth Annual, which I
still have.
I started school in wartime
and loved stories of adventure, travel and combat. None of them seemed to feature people from my
background, however, so I never felt qualified to write anything like
them. In the first wave of 11+ children
at grammar school, I was certainly inspired to learn, but not to write
creatively. At university, reading
English in the era of F.R. Leavis and L.C. Knights, I became a trained critic,
able to recognise good writing. The poet
of the time was T.S Eliot, someone else with whom I had little in common. Only my own years working in Africa, the army
and the RAF gave me the confidence to realise that I now lived in the world
that I had previously only read about, plus the view that any walk of life had
its interest. In my late thirties I then
wanted to write, but it was a broad ambition and an idea could as easily be for
a novel, a play, a short story or a line in a poem.
AM: David, you have already raised a number of interesting avenues I would
like to explore. Perhaps firstly we could talk about class? Like you I came
from a working class background – the respectable end of our council estate,
mind you – and went to the town’s grammar school. However, unlike you, I found
the formal study of literature impossible, an alien experience. At an earlier
age, I’d devoured the ‘populist’ Famous Five, William and Biggles books, and
loved our public library, but I didn’t have the patience or application for the
more ‘improving’ hardback ‘ Childrens’
Classics’ that kindly aunts sometimes bought me as Christmas presents. By
adolescence I was struggling with, and in the main part rejecting, what I, at
the time, judged to be reading matter for ‘posh’ and conformist kids. I’m
curious about what you think it was about your experience or you yourself that
held you into the academic study of literature? (Conversely, of course, I’m
curious as to what it was about me and mine that, at that age, didn’t).
DD: I grew up in Coventry,
a ‘boom’ town of car factories and well-paid workers hopeful that their
children would not follow them on to the assembly line.
I had no specific ambition, apart from wanting to travel away to places I had only experienced in film and books. I read the Biggles and Just William books too and those boys’ papers like Hotspur, which were also full of adventure, often featuring public school types.
I was not
technically or scientifically minded, but found myself enchanted in the world
of literature and history. Dickens, of
course, was no more distant from my generation than Lawrence is to the present
one and of course was not, in his own time, a ‘classic’ writer, but rather
widely read and extremely popular.
Perhaps I was ‘conformist’ in a way, but I think conformist to the new
post-war working-class movement in which we felt we were as good as anyone else
and the good things, literature included, should be accessible. Only a narrow part of my education was in
school, since much of my life was church-based: scouts, choir, altar service,
youth club, sport. I was confident in
these areas and further encouraged to learn.
The King James Bible was certainly an early introduction to the beauty
of language. Paradoxically, I think I
was fortunate not to have been exposed to any vocational guidance, and so
stayed open-minded until after university and National Service .
AM: I see why we have no problem conversing for a whole day whilst out
walking, we share a strong enthusiasm for some interests and have some similar
influences whilst also having had interestingly diverse life experiences in
other respects. I too loved those boys’ papers like the Wizard and the Hotspur
and, although I’ve long been distancing myself from religion, the language of
the King James Bible has been popping up unbidden in my thoughts since my first
acquaintance with it in childhood. I find it interesting that you didn’t want
to write until your late thirties – ‘the famous novelist with the
uncontrollable compulsion to produce stories since very early childhood’ seems
to be such a cliché these days - and I understand the rationale you have
outlined. Did your relatively late start mean that you were able to by-pass the
embarrassing ‘early works’ adolescence (and beyond) of many writers? Can you
say a little about your early efforts and publications?
DD: Yes, I recognised good
writing for what it was, but simply lacked the self-confidence to produce my
own work. Then I met my wife Shirley,
left the RAF, became more politically aware, and my life, which had previously
been exciting and enjoyable, also became a time of change and greater
possibilities. I started to write poetry
and from the beginning, I had some success in publishing my poems in the local
newspaper, magazines and like you, Andy, enjoying success in competitions. I remember a magazine called Ostrich, which I
think was quite political. I still enjoy
competitions because of the anonymity of the judging. Because I was a late starter, I suppose I had
plenty to write about. And I continue to
write poems based on events from years before, recorded briefly in notebooks
and diaries, finding that the important issues stay fresh and other detail
happily fades away. The topics came from
all quarters: nature, love, sport, social situations. A year or two after I started writing poetry,
I tried my hand at stories and drama; in fact the ideas came thick and fast and
at first I didn’t know if a new idea would become a line in a poem, or in fact
a novel. I wrote two novels, both
published, for children before I found that it was not a good way for me to
escape from my day job as a teacher. The
main successes with my drama and short stories were with the BBC, whom I can’t
praise enough as an organisation which does give new writers a chance. I had enormous energy, having great
enthusiasm for my work in a good progressive comprehensive school, a young
family, a busy political and social life – and the ability to get up at 5 a.m.
like Anthony Trollope and write for a
couple of hours before the rest of the day’s activities.
AM: Great stuff, David. Unlike Trollope and yourself and one or two others
I’ve known, I’ve never been able to be coherent or even alert in the very early
morning. I do agree about the virtues of competitions. My own achievements in this
respect, although fairly modest, have been a terrific boost to my sense of
myself as a writer and competitions do allow ‘beginners’ to submit work under
the cloak of anonymity with confidence that it will be considered fairly
alongside the offerings of the great and the good. Additionally, I suppose,
success can tell established poets that their work is still considered of high
merit and that they are not merely riding on their reputation.
Can
we go back to youngsters and literature? After the RAF, you became an English
teacher, and later a head teacher, committed to the comprehensive ideal. I’ve
said above that I didn’t really switch on to literature at my grammar school
and I accept that that may have been more about me than my teachers or the curriculum.
May have been. So I wonder, looking back, how you view the success of your
endeavours in this respect? Do you have any views on continuing educational
developments especially in relation to kids and literature nowadays? What
advice would you give to somebody like your younger self just starting out as
an English teacher?
DD: “Don’t start from here!” I’d have to
say. The modern curriculum, with its
centrally directed platitudes from people who simply do not know the vast
majority of children, is simply crippling.
Inspired teachers have always brought their enthusiasms to the
task. I do not think it matters what
those enthusiasms are, but they will always transfer. For me the answer was to encourage students,
from eleven-year-olds with learning difficulties to Cranwell cadets, to write
about themselves, to find the poets inside themselves. I would let them write without hindrance:
there were other times and places to correct grammar to teach conventional sentence
construction (and I cared very much about those things too). A touch of Kes, I suppose, but it works. The computer can help – children who have
physical difficulty in writing, spelling and so forth can still get their
thoughts down. I would tell them not to
worry at all about punctuation, but to use line breaks. Creative expression was vital and achieved so
well through poetry and drama. In fact,
the spelling, grammar and punctuation would follow successfully when the pupils
had something they actually wanted to say.
The other point is that young people who regard themselves as
poets/writers do not feel excluded from the world of literature. The teacher, naturally needs to introduce
them to books they will relate to, in the first place. The two children’s novels I had published
both centred on children from ‘ordinary’ backgrounds: a boy on a council estate
who becomes an amateur boxer; another who belongs to an airforce family and
gets lost overseas. Not all children are
drawn to fantasy or historical novels; they need to start nearer home. The rest will follow. Oh dear, the years of retirement seem to have
melted away. Sorry for the lecture. I’m particularly sad that inspired teachers
are no longer allowed to choose the literature for the English syllabus in the
old Mode III way. We did that because we
respected literature and wanted the best for children, which was not some
watered down version of what happens in public schools, but something vital and
relevant and likely to lead towards the classics rather than away from it. Time I stopped.
AM:
Stirring stuff, David. Good to hear it.
Let’s find a barricade and go man it. I worked as a teacher briefly for Alec
Clegg in the old West Riding forty years ago and loved his view that teachers
needed to be nurtured and encouraged to become artists themselves. So, we were
frequently given help to become better painters, musicians, writers,
dancers(!), in the belief that if our enthusiasm was genuine then it would
transfer to kids. Technique, the discipline of the craft, could then be more
easily learned once driven by a genuine creative pride. What a long way from
today’s centrally prescribed curriculum and the interminable, Ofsted-fearing
box-ticking.
I started this conversation by
referring to the help you have given me with my writing over the years. I still
have some early drafts of pieces from ‘Hanging in the Balance’ with your
pencilled comments on them. Looking at them now I realise even more how helpful
they were to me, both in terms of improving those pieces then but also in terms of teaching me broader
principles that I’ve continued to benefit
from – cutting out excess verbiage, not being pretentiously ‘creative’,
reigning in a tendency towards too much obscurantism. Also, trusting my own
judgement more once I’ve given a piece its final, very critical read through. You’ve
continued to help less experienced writers in various ways. Could you say a
little about your activities in this respect and, if you can, about the sorts
of help you find adult writers need and seem to benefit from?
DD: Adult writers have two advantages: life experience and the motivation to express
themselves. Having something worthwhile
to say is the first requirement, whether it is an unusual narrative,
observation of a relationship, the impact of something in the natural world or
powerful emotion. All of us are moved in
these ways, but aspiring to be an original and effective poet is a huge
ambition. When I have run workshops my
first advice has often been to write down your thoughts on the supposed subject
(it can often change in the process) quite rapidly, with little thought as to
line length or indeed any of the crafting process. It is surprising how much can come out. Then you can think about shape, sound, exact
vocabulary. We are all generally better
at editing and correcting than getting things right first time.
Obviously
there’s not room here for the kind of compendium of advice that so many tutors
and literary advisors have produced, but there are one or two pointers. One is to cut out anything which tries to
explain events or emotions already expressed: you must leave the intelligence
of the reader to find a meaning; a degree of mystery is always beguiling. I don’t understand the intricacies of
climbing, for instance, but love your use of the technical terms – they add
authenticity – and your climbing pieces are complete metaphors in themselves
for the challenging events and relationships that the reader can apply them
to.
Also,
I like to see poems with concrete language, i.e. not ‘cruelty’, ‘passion’,
‘love’, ‘unhappiness’, but actions, observations that show these
processes. Often poets want to comment
on important public issues: I advise an oblique approach. If you write directly about e.g. political
events, you may for a short while be topical, but it will soon date. And you would need an extraordinary talent
to write directly about say, the Holocaust or a war you had not experienced,
though you may have material about a survivor or a historic place you have
visited which could provide a poem or story.
You can often make a breakthrough when a piece of work doesn’t seem
right, by changing from first to third person or vice versa. If you are putting down an experience you
have directly experienced, making the narrator ‘he’ or ‘she’ can provide
freedom to achieve a poetic truth rather than the narrow historical one you
started with.
I’ve
said nothing about submitting work to magazines and publishers, but honestly I
think that would have to be very specific advice to an individual to be
effective. There are general tips in all
the guidebooks. I could go on, but will
end by simply advising any writer to make sure to share their work with somebody
along the way. I still have a monthly
workshop with two accomplished poets whose opinion I trust. Sometimes your strengths and weaknesses show
themselves simply in the process of reading the poem aloud.
AM: Thank you so much for all of this, David. I hope that others reading
this interview, whoever they may be, can gain some of the benefits that I have
had from our conversations over the years. I hope also that others will want to seek out your work if they are
not already familiar with it and I am including here a link to your latest
publication, ‘Borders, Baggage’:
The
image of Major Cheung in the park early morning with colleagues from his old
military days alongside the calligraphers with their evaporating characters
seems both strong and wistful and a good one with which to conclude. Thank you.
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