An Introduction to our Guest Editor: Richard O'Brien

It’s a good thing Andrew Bailey phoned me personally to tell me I was a winner in 2006’s Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, because if I’d heard from school they might have told me I’d been ‘shortlisted to win a book prize’ – the news as reported to my bewildered mother. 

Since then I’ve been able to make a bit more sense of the moment in my grandma’s kitchen when I was first inducted into the semi-professional poetry world. As a child I’d always read, and poetry in English classes never seemed to me the chore perceived by other students (in fact, Simon Armitage’s Kid was a turning point in my existence, if my personal statement is to be believed), but it wasn’t until that fateful call that I really realised poetry was something that was happening NOW, that it was worth paying proper attention to, and that if I worked on my own writing enough I might even be able to carve myself a slice of the poetry pie.

The Arvon course in February 2007 was genuinely the best week of my life (cue violins) – rivalled only by 2008’s – and with my fellow winners I’ve since helped set up the Pomegranate poetry ezine to publish the best new work by writers under 30.

I’ve thrown myself into the scene, with readings at the Poetry Café, submissions to various magazines and competitions, and a pamphlet coming out on tall-lighthouse in July 2009. I’ve been published in Magma, Fuselit and The Rialto, and was a runner-up in the Christopher Tower Poetry Prize.

Outside of the poetry world, I suppose it’s only natural that I’m starting a degree in October in English Literature and French. I’ve been spending my summer staring at my reading list until it decreases, turning 18, soaking up live music and dancing in Edinburgh’s Royal Mile dressed in a full-length wolf suit for reasons that seemed clearer at the time.

In my own poetry I like to use form where appropriate, but I’m not averse to keeping it free, though I always think a strong sense of rhythm is important when you’re working with words you want others to remember. My own tastes are pretty varied; though I lean towards the conversational and accessible, I’m a sucker for metrical pyrotechnics (phrase stolen from a Swinburne write-up) and I’ve always found Chaucer a lot of fun. On the table nearest as I type I’ve got Frank O’Hara, Matthew Hollis, Michael Donaghy and Ezra Pound, and I hope they get on because Frank’s 500 pages thick and it’s not even a very big table.

 

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