Keith Hutson on debut poetry collection Routines

It's nice to start the new year with a fresh new voice on the poetry scene. So, this month I have the pleasure of reporting back from a conversation with Halifax-dwelling poet Keith Hutson, whose debut pamphlet Routines has recently been published by Poetry Salzburg (which also earned him a position on their editorial board) and who has been invited personally by Carol Ann Duffy to read with her, Fiona Sampson and Mark Pajak at the RSL TS Eliot Memorial event at the British Library this February. Keith has written scripts as well, and as a dedicated lover of both performance and the page he proved an interesting interviewee. Amongst various topics, we covered writing habits and resolutions for the New Year.

The Skinny: What is the collection about, in a nutshell?

Keith Hutson: Routines is 31 sonnets celebrating the hard, sometimes tragic, often joyous, always extraordinary lives of music hall and variety artistes. I started writing the sonnets about 18 months ago. I have many more, for a future collection, as well as other, more free-form, poems on the same theme. But I have not written exclusively on this theme during this period. I write poems about many different things.

Was there a particular trigger which caused you to focus on these themes?

I have written for Coronation Street, and for many well-known comedians, so I have always had a love of light entertainment. The best performers, and their material, are up there with any culturally iconic genre, as are all the acrobats, ventriloquists, plate spinners, dancers, singers, and so many other acts that the nation, over the years I write about (1800 to the 1970s, roughly), has loved.  But perhaps the 'trigger' for me beginning to write these sonnerts, in particular, was a love of this poetic form (I call it a strait-jacket made by angels, because the discipline of formal form tends to liberate my creativity) and a growing awareness that any direct link to the likes of Dan Leno, Little Titch, Vesta Tilly and their performance styles has almost disappeared.

Do you have any routines or habits when you write?

I write five days a week, in the morning, from about 7am to about 1pm. The rest of the day is spent doing other things (I have a smallholding, a dog, and I'm a jogger) but I never stop thinking about my writing. In the evenings, when not performing, I read. I don't have any particular process or habit apart from sitting at the table and picking up my pen. Only later drafts make it onto the laptop, and sometimes they're taken off again, and committed once more to paper and pen.

I use a thesaurus and a dictionary – anyone who doesn't isn't taking their writing seriously. It’s like trying to build a wall without a spirit level. I research as I'm writing, because that is part of my writing process. I love writing form – sonnets, villanelles, terza rima. I love rhyme. But I don't condemn free form at all, and often employ a more free approach. I'd love to say what I think of poets who are dismissive of formal structure and rhyme, but it wouldn't do my poetry career any good.

Which poets have you been particularly inspired by, if any?

I absolutely love the poetry of Michael Symmons Roberts, Carol Ann Duffy, David Constantine and Clare Shaw.

Cheesy question time… any writing goals or vague plans for the near future?

My only writing goal for the new year is to keep doing what I do. It's working for me. Since I began submitting my poems to journals three years ago, I've had over sixty published, and quite a lot of competition successes so if it ain't broke don't fix it. I know myself very well, and know what works for me.

The main thing is to do it. I hope that doesn't sound arrogant – I'm just trying to be honest. Other themes I'm working on are sport (I'm an ex-amateur boxer), physical work (as well as scriptwriting, I ran a large landscaping business for many years), and a series of poems under the theme of Journeyman, which I suppose are more directly autobiographical. I have had offers of publication for next year, so I might publish another 'artistes' collection, or take a break from that, and publish poems about another theme – or do both.