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An Interview with Simon Fletcher
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British born prize-winning poet and freelance writer Simon Fletcher is the author of six collections of poetry and the editor of numerous anthologies. He has performed his work across Britain and in Pakistan, Germany and Norway. He has read his work on BBC Radio, runs poetry writing workshops in green spaces and organises live literature events. He is also the founder and manager of Offa's Press, a small poetry press in Shropshire, England. He lives in the Oswestry Hills.
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When did you first begin to write poetry and what inspired you initially to become a poet?
I first started to write when I was about 14 as a result of reading Shakespeare at school. Up until that point I wasn’t really interested in poetry but I found Shakespeare recognisable and thrilling, language that opened doors, so to speak. I’m not sure I was ‘inspired to become a poet’ as that didn’t mean anything. I didn’t know any writers or poets. I’m not sure I comfortably embrace the idea of ‘inspiration’ now. I have always tried to write but never had the opportunity to follow it full-time. I’ve always had to do something else to make ends meet. I describe myself as a freelance writer who writes mainly poetry, in brief.
What have you published to date?
I have been getting work published since 1975 but much of it, including my Wyre Forest Diary an account of the natural history of the Wyre Forest, 1981, is out of print. See attached list at end. This doesn’t include a lot of newspaper/ magazine articles, book reviews etc owing to their ephemeral nature.
How does the place where you live colour and influence your poetry?
I think where I live makes a huge impact on my writing and I’ve been fortunate to live in some exciting and beautiful places. I’m sure this is true of most writers. I moved to the Shropshire border village of Pant, in 2010, because I’d visited the place and was excited by the local landscapes and flora (I’d never lived on limestone). I haven’t regretted that for a moment as it’s opened up all sorts of new knowledge/ experience. I also find a greater intensity to life in the country.
What moves you to write? What subjects are you most passionate about?
I write about all sorts of things. I used to write about people and relationships, what we might call love stories/ poems, but these days it’s mostly the love affair with damaged nature. Let me put that another way: I’m trying to flag up what should be the urgent battle to save our living environment. We know about dramatic species decline, the cuckoo, for example, but is poetry the best way to do this? I don’t know but it’s what I feel I can contribute to at the moment.
What aspect of writing poetry do you find the most challenging?
That boils down to themes and tone. I work very hard in trying to present true pictures of what’s going on in nature without causing too much alarm to the general reader. That’s very difficult as I don’t want to turn people off a very complex subject but rather inspire them with the beauties of nature and make them want to do something about the present mess since not all individuals, businesses and governments are taking responsibility.
I use a diversity of forms in my poetry as different subjects seem to demand quite different forms. There are a lot of ballads/ lyrics too that work on various levels, I hope. That’s an important aspect of ‘Wild Orchids’, I’m sure.
Choosing the best poems in the right order is something that’s always tricky and I’m indebted to Cherry Doyle, my editor at Offa’s Press, for helping out with that.
During the course of your career you have worked variously as a teacher, literary development officer and poetry promoter. Tell us a little bit about your work as a literary development officer. How did that come about and how would define that role?
During the late 1990s a number of literature/arts development posts were created by Arts Council England in collaboration with various councils around the country. There were a number of these part-time posts in the West Midlands and I was delighted to be offered the one in Wolverhampton. It gave me a chance to develop reading and writing skills across the city, through the libraries. So writing groups and/ or reading groups were set up and, eventually, live performance events created. Some of these are still going and one could say they underpin the work of Offa’s Press. However, the government decided that these posts were no longer needed in 2013 so my post was ‘deleted’. This was part of the wider under-funding of public services which has done so much damage to the country in the last 10 years.
Literature development, in a nutshell, is about encouraging the reading and writing of books and poems by people who, perhaps, hadn’t had the exposure or opportunity before. And, of course, we all need those opportunities. How different would my life have been without a brilliant teacher introducing me to Shakespeare, around 1972?
You are also a publisher. What were your objectives when you set up Offa’s Press?
I saw that there were many talented poets, Emma Purshouse for example, in the West Midlands who weren’t getting their work published/ performed, and who had no links with established poets/ publishers, so I decided to do something about it. Drawing on my various experiences of being published, since 2010 Offa’s Press has published some remarkable poets and helped to build up confidence and opportunities. It was all about creating a space where poetry could be enjoyed.
In recent years we have seen the emergence of ecopoetry and several journals and awards are now centred round ecological issues. Do you think that editors and publishers of literary magazines and books are generally becoming more environmentally aware these days?
The appearance/disappearance of ‘ecopoetry’ is a remarkable story in modern publishing and precisely reflects the levels of anxiety of the public/ the fears of mainstream (conservative) British publishers. In the late 1980s and early 90s there was an outpouring of ‘green’ literature and poetry anthologies. Then something happened in the mid-90s and political commentators/ mainstream publishers seem to have taken fright. It’s only in the last 5 years with the emergence of ‘school protests’, Extinction Rebellion, some remarkable ‘nature’ documentaries from the BBC, and so forth, that ‘ecopoetry’ and environmental awareness has been back on the agenda. In other words, the general public can see there’s something seriously wrong and some publishers have seen there’s money in it. This isn’t a cynical comment as without money coming in publishers struggle, too. At Offa’s Press we published an anthology of ‘environmental’ poetry, We’re All in This Together, in 2012 and it went almost unnoticed. If we’d published it today I am confident it would have done very well.
To what extent would you say that you have been enriched by working with people from many different cultures, faiths and backgrounds in and around the West Midlands? Tell us about some of your collaborations in this area.
Most of my cultural collaborations, which go back to the late 1990s, have been in the north of England but over the last 20 years I’ve spent more time working with diverse communities in the West Midlands. As a result of spending some time mentoring Kuli Kohli, now the poet laureate of Wolverhampton, I realised there must be other talented women poets from the various north Indian diaspora so we set up the Punjabi Women’s Writing Group in 2018. It’s been challenging but several of them are emerging and Santosh K. Dary and Priyanka Joshi were included in the New Voices anthology from Offa’s Press, 2022. I am delighted that both New Voices and Kuli’s A Wonder Woman have been selected as ‘Recommended Reading’ by ‘Poetry on Loan’ librarians in the West Midlands. I’ve found my life greatly enriched by working with people who are very different, superficially, to me.
What projects are you working on at present?
At the moment I’m trying to put together a new collection of poetry focused on the wider issues of our times. If Wild Orchids is the local picture then the next collection will take in/ reflect the broader canvas. It won’t all be serious, but whether I’ll find a publisher, even after the commendation in the Michael Marks Award, is another matter.
What is definitely going to happen, later in the year, is an anthology of poetry about birds, Away with the Birds, co-edited with Kuli who is a keen RSPB member. We’ve been running workshops, live and on Zoom, and leading walks across the region in the last year and we want poems from poets in the West Midlands about all aspects of birds’ lives, including the challenging stuff, to keep nature in the readers’ eyes: www.offaspress.co.uk
Wild Orchids
In these low worked-out limestone hills, I found
wild orchids grow,
a thrilling sight, the charm
of early purple, common spotted, bee,
a rarity and joy.
It’s often said that poets go to war
to save their homes,
the people, language, place,
but I find love in all diversity,
I’ll happily fight for this.
The fields and rivers are polluted, spoiled;
we need to work,
re-wild our countryside
and coasts, restore the health of everywhere,
to re-connect our loves.
Simon Fletcher
From Wild Orchids, Offa’s Press, £5.95
To order your copy go to: www.offaspress.co.uk/shop
Simon Fletcher book list:
The Occasions of Love (Pennine Pens, 1994) Poetry Collection. Copies available from Pennine Pens, £5.95. (www.penninepens.co.uk.)
A Little Bridge jointly with Debjani Chatterjee & Basir Sultan Kazmi (Pennine Pens, 1997) Poetry Anthology in English. £5.95.
Email from the Provinces (Pennine Pens, 2000) Poetry Collection. £6.95.
Nanny Knows Best! (Pennine Pens, 2002) e-novel. Political comedy. E-version 2012.
Some Fine Old Ways To Save Your Life (Pennine Pens, 2006) Poetry Collection. £6.
Another Bridge jointly with Debjani Chatterjee, Brian D’Arcy & Basir Sultan Kazmi (Sahitya Press, 2012) Poetry anthology. Some copies available from Simon @ £5 plus £1.50 p&p.
The Poetry of Shropshire, co-edited with Jeff Phelps, (Offa’s Press, 2013) £7.95 Poetry anthology available from Offa’s Press (www.offaspress.co.uk).
The Cherry Trees of Wyre (Angria Press, 2014) Poetry pamphlet illustrated by Ian M. Emberson. Paperback version available from Simon £5 plus £1.50 p&p. E-version, 2015, available from Pennine Pens.
Reflections (Shropshire Wildlife Trust, 2015), £6.95. New writings on the environment edited with Gladys Mary Coles. Copies available from the Shropshire Wildlife Trust.
Close to Home, (Headland, 2015), £7.95, Poetry Collection. Some copies available from Simon @ £7.95 plus £1.50 p&p.
The Poetry of Staffordshire, co-edited with Emma Purshouse, (Offa’s Press, 2015) £7.95.
The Poetry of the Black Country, co-edited with Emma Purshouse & Dave Reeves, (Offa’s Press, 2017) £7.95.
The Poetry of Worcestershire, co-edited with Michael W. Thomas (Offa’s Press, 2019) £7.95.
Ripening Cherries, co-edited with David Bingham (Offa’s Press, 2019) Anthology of Japanese short-form poetry in English, £7.95.
In the Sticks, Poetry of and from the countryside today, co-edited with Cherry Doyle (Offa’s Press, 2021) £7.95.
New Voices, new poetries from the West Midlands, edited by Simon Fletcher (Offa’s Press, 2022) £7.95.
Wild Orchids, pamphlet collection of environmental poetry (Offa’s Press, 2023), £5.95.
Upcoming: Away with the Birds, an anthology of poetry about ‘birds’ co-edited with Kuli Kohli, Offa’s Press, 2023. |
