Showing posts with label Robin Roberston. Show all posts

Friday, September 28, 2018

Books that made me / Robin Robertson: ‘The poetry world is polarised. I’m in the middle, vaguely appalled’

‘There are great books that fail to be recognised at the time but are re-discovered’ … Robin Robertson. Photograph: Chris Close

Books

that

made me

Robin Robertson: ‘The poetry world is polarised. I’m in the middle, vaguely appalled’

The Man Booker shortlisted writer on his love for Jane Bowles and biographies, and why he never gives books as presents

Robin Robertson
Friday 28 September 2018

The book I’m currently reading

As always, I have submissions to read (I work in publishing). When I’m allowed to read for pleasure, it’s usually non-fiction – or something ancient and Greek.

The book that changed my life

I was brought up within earshot of north-east Scottish dialect, folklore and music, in what remained of a fishing community with its oral tradition, superstitions and legends. Tending to the solitary, I fell naturally towards books and read indiscriminately. The stories I remember were Scottish folk tales, the Greek myths (in some hopelessly expurgated edition, upgraded slowly through the years) and Grimm. As a teenager I found Mervyn Peake’s Titus books intoxicating, and those novels, probably, started my passion for fiction, while Yeats and Hughes and Heaney were making poetry crucial to me. I’m not sure a book has changed my life, but all great art jolts your perspective and enlarges your gaze.

The book I wish I’d written

I suppose I’m always trying to write that book (which is the only way to pay attention, the only way to improve). To have produced books of the stature of James Joyce’s Ulysses, or Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry, or David Jones’s In Parenthesis, without the attendant physical or psychological damage – that would be an achievement.

The book that influenced my writing

The work of David Jones – not just the poetry and essays, but the engravings, drawings, watercolours and, particularly, the painted inscriptions. I hope my admiration for his writing doesn’t stray into mimicry.

The book that is most underrated

There are great books that fail to be recognised at the time but are rediscovered, like John Williams’s Stoner, or novels like Ulverton or Death and Nightingales that offer a constant admonitory warning to judges of literary prizes. I wish more people read Jane Bowles: Two Serious Ladies and Plain Pleasures are wonderful.

The last book that made me laugh

The books that make me laugh, cry, then smash furniture tend to be written by people driven by self-promotion and shallow narcissism; they don’t have time to bother with all that pesky learning-the-craft business: they want “Likes” on social media and they’re having strong and important feelings somewhere near you, right now. The world of poetry is small and currently polarised: it’s often either simplistic or incomprehensible. I find myself in the middle, vaguely appalled. I’m allergic to “light verse”, because it seems a betrayal of the purpose of poetry. Equally, poetry that sets out to be deliberately opaque is betraying the purpose of language.

The book I couldn’t finish

I spend my life not finishing books – though they’re mostly manuscripts rather than books.

The book I’m ashamed not to have read

Being Scottish, I carry enough shame already without needing the help of books.

My earliest reading memory

I remember sitting in the congregation of King’s College chapel in Aberdeen, transfixed by my father’s sermon. I was never a believer, but the power and beauty of his delivery was thrilling. It was the cadences rather than the creed that moved me, and I understood then how language could be made to sing.

The book I give as a gift

I almost never give books as presents: it feels rather presumptuous, or something ...

My comfort read

I feel I’m drifting towards a fondness for biographies, where one can find comfort in seeing people make a mess of their lives and the lives of others and still produce art that is beautiful and lasting.

THE GUARDIAN

THE BOOKS THAT MADE ME
2017

22 September 2017
Books that made me / Franzen / 'I defy anyone to finish it without wetting the pages with tears'
29 September 2017
Philip Pullman / ‘The book I wish I’d written? My next one’

6 October 2017
Anne Enright / ‘I threw The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann into the Liffey in 1983’

13 October 2017

Eimear McBride / ‘I can never finish Dickens – it’s sacrilege’
20 October 2017
Shami Chakrabarti / ‘Harry Potter offers a great metaphor for the war on terror’

1 December 2017
Penelope Lively / My debt to roasted grasshopper with ladybird sauce

2018

20 January 2018
Kamila Shamsie: ‘It took me 17 years to get round to War and Peace’

25 May 2018

Colm Tóibín / ‘I couldn’t read until I was nine / My first book was an Agatha Christie’

8 June 2018
Carol Ann Duffy / ‘I wish I’d written Harry Potter, obvs’

27 July 2018

Richard Powers: ‘I love sci-fi. The more 10-foot reptilians, the better’

28 september 2018
Robin Robertson: ‘The poetry world is polarised. I’m in the middle, vaguely appalled’

2019

18 January 2019
Margaret Drabble / ‘Lee Child does all the things I could never do. I’m awestruck’

1 February 2019
Leïla Sliman / ‘I’ve always been fascinated by Marilyn Monroe'

8 February 2019
Emma Glass / ‘Game of Thrones is overrated. Give me The Lord of the Rings any day'

1 March 2019
Tom Rachman / ‘Does every author read faster than I do?’

8 March 2019
Ben Okri / ‘I began Don Quixote as one person and finished as another’

2020

17 April 2020
Sally Rooney / 'I want the next thing I do to be the best thing I’ve ever done'

1 May 2020
Edna O'Brien / 'Reading Charles Darwin dislodged my religious education'

24 May 2020
André Aciman: 'I couldn’t finish Moby-Dick. I lacked the patience'

9 October 2020
Neil Gaiman / 'Narnia made me want to write, to do that magic trick'

2021

26 March 2021
Vivian Gornick / 'I couldn’t finish Michelle Obama’s Becoming'

9 April 2021
Emma Cline / ‘Reading anything because you “should” doesn’t make sense to me’

6 August 2021

Damon Galgut / ‘After reading Roald Dahl, the world never looked the same’

9 August 2021
Frank Cottrell-Boyce / ‘I read Adrian Mole every year, it gets funnier each time’

13 August 2021
Anuk Arudpragasam / ‘There’s a lot of laughter in my life, but not when I read’

Friday, October 7, 2011

My hero / Tomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson

Tomas Transtrômer

Tomas Tranströmer – My Nobel prize-winning hero

The literature prize means the world of poetry can finally raise a glass to salute this humble man

Robin Robertson

Friday 7 October 2011 13.28 BST

very October, for decades, a group of reporters and photographers have gathered in the stairwell of an apartment block in a quiet district of Stockholm, waiting to hear if the poet upstairs has finally won the Nobel prize for literature. The poet's wife, Monica, would bring them tea and biscuits while they stood around – but they would always leave, around lunchtime, as the news came in that the prize had gone to someone else. Annually, the name of Tomas Tranströmer comes up, and with every year one felt a growing sense that he would never receive this highest literary honour from his own country. The vigil is over now, with Thursday's wonderful news.

The landscape of Tranströmer's poetry – the jagged coastland of his native Sweden, with its dark spruce and pine forests, sudden light and sudden storm, restless seas and endless winters – is mirrored by his direct, plain-speaking style and arresting, unforgettable images. The master-poet of anxiety, of stress, he explores the vulnerability of the human in the face of the irrational – intrigued by polarities and how we respond to finding ourselves amid epiphanies, at pivotal points, at the fulcrum of a moment: "The sun is scorching. The plane comes in low, / throwing a shadow in the shape of a giant cross, rushing over the ground. / A man crouches over something in the field. / The shadow reaches him. / For a split-second he is in the middle of the cross. // I have seen the cross that hangs from cool church arches. / Sometimes it seems like a snapshot / of frenzy." ("Out in the Open")

Tranströmer is not only Scandinavia's greatest living poet, he is a writer of world stature. It is an honour to know this man, and to have translated some of his work – and a huge happiness to me that this work will now reach so many new readers. The world of poetry can finally raise a glass to salute this humble man, this magnificent poet.

The Deleted World by Tomas Tranströmer, translated by Robin Robertson, is published by Enitharmon.

THE GUARDIAN