While at Cyprus Well, I’m planning to explore the soundscape of the house and the music that Charles Causley listened to. His collection of jazz and folk music closely resembles my own musical influences and I plan to think about how music and poetry crossover. I’d like to play with ideas of music, sound and faith. So, for example, in the introduction to Jim Causley’s recording of ‘Angel Hill’, birdsong and church bells crossover, the sounds merge and the effect is profound yet unspeakable; I would like to try to approach some sense of the unspeakable with language. My poetic practice includes process-based techniques, such as collage, soundscape and visual poetry. Using these techniques, my goal for the week is to produce the ghostly structure of a first draft of a sequence of poems.

My current reading includes early 20th Century futurist poets such as Velimir Khlebnikov and Vladimir Mayakovky, as well as poets such as Robert Lax, Rosmarie Waldrop and Peter Larkin. Contemporary poets that I’ve been enjoying recently include John Burnside, Luke Kennard, Vahni Capildeo, SJ Fowler and Kirill Medvedev. I’m looking forward to introducing Causley to this chaotic party of poets.