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Wivenhoe's resident poet Martin Newell writes a weekly poem for the Independent and has published many collections of poetry, including The Illegible Batchelor and I Hank Marvinned. His rock music memoir, This Little Ziggy, was published in 2001. He is equally well known for his songwriting and as the force behind The Cleaners from Venus and The Brotherhood of Lizards. Tell us a bit about your background, your studies and qualifications. I was the son of a soldier. We travelled a lot. So much so that by the time I was 15, I'd lived in twenty houses and been to eleven different schools. I left school at fifteen. I've never taken an exam in my life. I was sort of scared of them. I've had no further education. I worked in factories and kitchens and played in pop groups. I got in trouble in my late teens. Drugs mainly. I started seriously being interested in pop and rock and became a singer in proper working bands, touring. I got good at making the sort of underground pop records beloved of certain types of deviant. I was a closet bookworm, I buried myself in books whenever things weren't going well - which was quite often, for a good few years. I also worked as a jobbing gardener for some time. When did you begin writing and why? English was the only thing, apart from history, which interested me at school. I started writing songs when I was fourteen. Almost as soon as I knew three chords, I used them to write a song with! It was garbage. Learning how to write lyrics kept the flame burning. In my teens, I secretly wrote stuff, nonsense verse, silly stories. Nothing too angsty. I suppose Spike Milligan and John Lennon were influences at this point. Oh, and I never usually mention this, but the poetic parodies in Mad Magazine, I used to read them over and over. I wanted to write for underground mags when I got a bit older - or maybe music magazines. But I thought it was something that only clever people who'd been to Uni did. I used to wish I could write. I was in my late twenties before I realised that I actually could. Even then when I was about 28 and got a big article published in the Guardian, almost by beginner's luck, I thought it was just a one-off. I didn't immediately put on my smoking-jacket, pick up a quill and assume a writerly pose in my study. No, I think I went out and got drunk and just thought: "Got away with that one then." Educated people sidled up to me and asked: "How did you manage to get published, Martin?" Jolly insulting now I come to think of it, but I genuinely didn't know myself, at the time. What inspires your writing? Good writing. The urge to depict what I see before it vanishes. The need to create my own world and transmit my own perspective on it. The need to leave my footprint on the beach now - even if the tide washes it away tomorrow. The knowledge that as I sit here writing, as when I'm playing music or gardening, I'm doing something that's reasonably blameless and innocent. No-one will become homeless and no children go to bed hungry as a result of my actions. Who has influenced you? Where do we start? Poets: Houseman, Betjeman, Juvenal. Writers: Orwell, Milligan, Frank Richards, Mark Twain, Peter Ackroyd, PJ O'Rourke, Julie Burchill. Lyricists: Beatles, Ray Davies, Sammy Cahn, Oscar Hammerstein, Tom Waits. Describe a typical day's writing - do you have a set routine? Day One. Get up, shave wash, walk dog buy paper. Eat breakfast and read paper. Answer phone calls. Faff around. Play piano. Muck about with guitar. Listen to some punk rock. Check old demoes. Round about midday, feel guilty and go into writer's work tunnel. Down tools. Walk dog. Go to pub. Day Two. As day one until answer phone calls then, crack straight into work at 9.30 and don't stop until the job is done or I'm exhausted. What do you enjoy most about what you do, and is there anything you hate about it? It's great on a winter day, when I've got no hangover and the rain's lashing down and all I have to do is write. Especially if it's something I'm really enjoying writing. It's not so good when I've got a deadline and a really duff subject to write about but it's got to be done, or I don't pay the rent. It also doesn't help if I've got the "rootless remorse" hangover and it's all bright and sunny outside and the phone doesn't ring - which it always does if I'm enjoying myself, but never when I'm bored to death and falling asleep at the desk. On a bad day it feels like I'm in detention. On a good day I feel like Chaucer's Smarter Brother. Which of your works are you most pleased with and why? Some of the stuff in the last poetry collection: Late Autumn Sunlight. I mean, I've been out of the closet as a poet now for about a dozen years. Some of my early stuff was more suited to stage than page but now I can look at some of the East Anglian stuff and say, "Yeah, I'm beginning to get it right now." I think that after all this garbage about me being a poet over the years, I have actually become one now, even if I wasn't quite when I first started. Do you believe that a good writer is born with the talent, or that it develops over time? Can it really be taught? Talent isn't just the innate ability to do something, it's the ability, coupled with the persistence and practicality to realise that ability. I think the nuts and bolts of writing can be taught, yes. But... there is that very last x-factor, that creative taint of madness, or even a genuine well of melancholy from where you've been hurt by the world, which drives a writer to greatness. Oh, and it has to be said, maybe there is just a small amount of conceit or arrogance that anyone outside will care a jot about what you think. What advice do you have for new writers? a) Read lots. But don't persist with 'worthy works' which you find tedious. There are too many books and there is too little time. If it's difficult sling it and read something you do like. I for example, can't be arsed reading Martin Amis, the awful Salman Rushdie and numerous other well-thought-of modern writers, so I don't. On the other hand, with a genuine classic, it is sometimes worth going back to a book a year or two later to see if things have changed. I still haven't got around to Candide yet. But I have hopes that one day I might. b) Write lots. Then re-write lots. Then bung lots away. What you're left with is your stuff. c) Nick stuff. Tart it up a bit so other people don't recognise you've nicked it. In the process of covering up the crime, you hone your own ability and quite often come up with something genuinely original. Nick great old stuff, nothing trendy. d) Follow not in the footsteps of the great but seek what they sought. e) If you can't think what to write, parody something. When you parody a great piece of work, you are in effect taking the spanners to it and breaking it down - rather like taking a gold watch to pieces. In reconstructing it for satirical purposes, it teaches you more about that piece than any amount of dumb critical analyses ever could. f) Forget writing. Train as a plumber. Everybody will want you, no-one will dare say anything bad about you and you'll buy that secluded six bedroom house before you're twenty-five. If you had to recommend one book as an essential read what would it be? The Great Eastern Railway Timetable 2002. It's the greatest work of fiction I've ever come across. For sheer inventiveness, plot, suspense and plenty of really scary bits, I don't think I've encountered anything to rival it. As fantasy, it knocks Tolkien into a cocked hat. I'm not sure if it would survive translation into say, German, because they wouldn't understand some of the bits where, - for instance, the trains are meant to arrive but don't. I believe, however, that Icelandic Studies students might have fun trying to translate the runic imagery. For instance: "Hey does that symbol mean it's a West Anglia service with a buffet car but not stopping at Stowmarket? Or does it mean No Bicycles Until Colchester and a trolley service with no coffee?" Something of a cult has grown up around this book and for the life of me I can't see why it's not been entered for a Booker Prize. The sequel's out soon. Can't wait. |
