TEXT poetry

Rupert M Loydell and Maria Stadnicka

Why are experience and feeling so important to her? Why does she trust herself when she is ill and ignore all advice? Why does she think she knows what good writing is, that sharing emotions is a poem? She wants the truth but only her truth, wants spirituality but no rules, theology or creed.

My flesh is experience. My child comes home after school to ask what solitude is. ‘Take a dictionary and search it out, Alice.’ It rains. I preserve humans in small jars on my kitchen unit.

Her faith is a patchwork, she chooses what to believe and discards the rest. I want to dislike her but don’t, yet stand away from most of her work. She thinks my attitude is postmodern, that I believe too much in language, yet wants to use words to convince us what she says is right.

I live in one space. There is no room for outside, no room for interjection, adverb, pronoun. Only me, only the presence of dust makes everything vibrant.

I want room to question, space to doubt, not her heartfelt songs of sickness, love and grief. I am not convinced by ardour or intensity, give me confusion and complexity, make me wonder what it means. Poetry should be like the storm outside, causing power cuts, felled trees, sleepless nights, flash floods and temporary ruin.

Dear Beckett, you knocked at the right time. The silence is deafening. I have been watchful enough.

Rupert Loydell is Senior Lecturer in the School of Writing and Journalism at Falmouth University, a writer, editor and abstract artist. He has many books of poetry in print, including Dear Mary (Shearsman, 2017) and The Return of the Man Who Has Everything (Shearsman 2015); has edited anthologies such as Yesterday’s Music Today (co-edited with Mike Ferguson, Knives Forks and Spoons Press 2014), Smartarse (The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2011), From Hepworth’s Garden Out (Shearsman, 2010) and Troubles Swapped for Something Fresh: manifestos and unmanifestos (Salt, 2010); and has contributed to Punk & Post-Punk, Journal of Writing and Creative Practice,Musicology Research, New Writing, Axon, TEXT, English, Revenantand Journal of Visual Art Practice. RML@stridebooks.co.uk

Maria Stadnicka is a writer, freelance journalist and lecturer. Born in Romania, she lives in Gloucestershire, UK. She won 12 Romanian National Prizes for poetry and worked as a radio and TV broadcaster, presenter and editor in chief. Her work appeared in magazines and literary journals in Austria, Germany, Romania, Republic of Moldova, USA, UK and Australia. Published books: O-Zone Friendly, Short Story about War, Imperfect. Further information about her work at www.mariastadnicka.com