{"id":4490,"date":"2022-12-18T18:47:39","date_gmt":"2022-12-18T18:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=4490"},"modified":"2022-12-18T18:47:39","modified_gmt":"2022-12-18T18:47:39","slug":"the-bars-examiner-interview-with-sarah-doyle-author-of-something-so-wild-and-new-in-this-feeling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=4490","title":{"rendered":"The BARS Examiner: Interview with Sarah Doyle, author of Something so wild and new in this feeling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In this The BARS Examiner piece, Adam Neikirk interviews the poet, Sarah Doyle. If you would like to conduct an interview or review a theatre production, film, podcast, or exhibition for the new blog series, The BARS Examiner, drop us an email!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarah Doyle is the Poet-in-Residence at the Pre-Raphaelite Society, the former winner of the William Blake Poetry Prize and the Wolverhampton Literature Festival poetry competition, and the author of a pamphlet entitled Something so wild and new in this feeling<\/em> (V Press), which appeared in 2021. Something so wild and new in this feeling <\/em>comprises a series of \u201ccollage poems\u201d based on the journals of Dorothy Wordsworth. I was lucky enough to interview Sarah about this work for The BARS Examiner blog series; my questions and her responses appear below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Adam Neikirk<\/strong>: Talk about your inspiration for Something so wild and new in this feeling<\/em>. When did you first decide to write, or rather construct, these \u201ccollage poems\u201d (as you call them)? Was it different from writing that you have published in the past?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarah Doyle<\/strong>: I\u2019m researching a PhD in the poetics of meteorology at Birmingham City University, and in 2019 I turned to Dorothy Wordsworth\u2019s Journals as a means of gaining insight into and context for some of William Wordsworth\u2019s poetry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was bowled over by Dorothy\u2019s writing, by her evocation of place and her almost sororal sympathy with landscape, plants, and animals. Of greatest interest to me initially, however, was Dorothy\u2019s meteorological engagement. Many of her journal entries are scaffolded with remarks on the weather at both the beginning and the end of day, with weather conditions playing a significant role in the life and activities of Dorothy and her associates. Being a complete weather obsessive, I felt a great sense of affinity!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The forming of these poems was more demanding in some ways than writing poems from scratch \u2013 there are, after all, finite opportunities for expression when working from a pre-existing manuscript \u2013 but the creative potential of almost limitless permutations was thrilling to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AN: <\/strong>You mention in the introduction to your book that \u201call the poems here are comprised entirely of phrases \u2026 mined from Dorothy\u2019s writing.\u201d Did you find it difficult to preserve this phraseological fidelity? Were you ever tempted to include original writing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SD:<\/strong> I\u2019ve used found text from different sources in some of my other poetry, where it has been rewarding to create a conversation between my voice and that of another speaker. Here, though, I decided very early on not to include my own writing; I wanted Dorothy\u2019s voice to sing out. The poems are woven through with my own sensibilities \u2013 which ally closely with Dorothy\u2019s \u2013 but I wanted to tread lightly, and have even preserved Dorothy\u2019s spellings as a means of acknowledging the source text. I was also wary of ventriloquism in these poems, so it was equally important to me to honour Dorothy\u2019s character; to create new narratives which celebrated rather than corrupted her legacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AN<\/strong>: What qualities of Dorothy Wordsworth\u2019s personality and writing do you hope readers will notice (or feel) when they read these poems?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SD<\/strong>: First and foremost, I think that Dorothy\u2019s sympathy with the natural world shines through in her journals, and I hoped very much to illuminate that in these poems. Although she is a keen-eyed recorder of natural phenomena such as weather and seasons, Dorothy\u2019s writing transcends observation to become vividly experiential, and I wanted to convey that immediacy in poems that were immersive and sensory \u2013 at times, even intimate. I perceive a sense of rootedness in Dorothy\u2019s writing, a communion of human and non-human, which I have attempted to explore and articulate in the extracts I\u2019ve used and the conjunctions I\u2019ve created. Dorothy is a gifted writer, with the ability to express a sense of wonder in the mirror she holds up to the world. Her writing is rich in colour, texture, sound, temperature, light and shade, with a gaze ranging from the panoramic to the microscopic, and I hope that readers will get a strong sense of Dorothy\u2019s curiosity and intellect, her energy and compassion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AN: <\/strong>This collection contains what we might call direct allusions to famous poems by
Wordsworth (\u201cI wandered lonely as a cloud\u201d) and Coleridge (\u201cDejection: An Ode\u201d), and
DW\u2019s journals naturally contain many references to the poets. Yet they are conspicuously
absent from these new poems. What was your thinking behind this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SD<\/strong>: My intention was always to spotlight Dorothy as the star of this collection, rather than situate her within the relegated context of sister or friend. I made a conscious decision to exclude any directly named references to either William or Coleridge, and to ensure any instances of \u2018we\u2019 were non-specific. The reader might infer the presence of either (or both!) of the poets \u2013 and perhaps even of others \u2013 in the interactions described, but these poems are deliberately Dorothy-centric. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To elevate her further, I\u2019ve included Dorothy\u2019s account of the siblings\u2019 famous daffodil encounter, extracting the text in its entirety and shaping it on the page to highlight her amazing sensitivity to rhyme. As an illustration, here is the first stanza, where I\u2019ve boldened a series of rhymed (and even repeated) words embedded within the prose:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we were in the woods beyond
Gowbarrow Park we saw <\/strong>a few daffodils
close to the water-side. We fancied
that the sea had floated the seeds ashore<\/strong>,
and that the little colony had so sprung up.
But as we went along there were more<\/strong>
and yet more<\/strong>;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and at last, under the boughs
of the trees, we saw <\/strong>that there was a long
belt of them along the shore<\/strong>, about
the breadth of a country turnpike road.
I never saw <\/strong>daffodils so beautiful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later on in the passage\/poem, there are several pairs of rhymed words and repeated phrases, which provide another quite extraordinary exhibition of Dorothy\u2019s facility for phrasing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AN: <\/strong>What is your favorite poem in the collection, and why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SD:<\/strong> Oh gosh, if I answer this, please don\u2019t tell the other poems! I had enormous fun shaping
\u2018beautiful to see\u2019 as a small sailboat on the page. I love the drenching repetition of \u2018rain\u2019 in
\u2018When the rain\u2019, along with Dorothy\u2019s imaginative observations of the night sky in \u2018All the
Heavens\u2019. However, my two favourites are \u2018A heart unequally divided\u2019 and \u2018Lights and
Shadows\u2019. Both poems attempt explorations of Dorothy\u2019s interior life, and give, I hope, a
sense of the woman behind the journals: her passion, her depth, and her humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information, or to purchase a signed copy of Something so wild and new in this
feeling (V. Press, 2021), Sarah can be contacted here:
https:\/\/www.sarahdoyle.co.uk\/contact.php<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interview conducted by Adam Neikirk <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Adam Neikirk holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Essex. His dissertation, entitled\u00a0Your Very Own Ecstasy: A Life in Verse of Samuel Taylor Coleridge<\/strong>, comprised a verse biography of the poet Coleridge together with a critical commentary. Adam’s critical and creative writings have appeared in the\u00a0Coleridge Bulletin<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Charles Lamb Bulletin<\/strong>, and in\u00a0Creel: an anthology of creative writing<\/strong>. His second book of poetry, entitled\u00a0Itchy<\/strong>, will be available from Muscaliet Press in early 2023. Adam is Communications Officer for the Charles Lamb Society.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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