David Harsent

David Harsent is one of the world's leading poets. He started writing as a child after a serious accident left him bed-ridden, and he discovered the Border Ballads in a miscellany. Leaving school at sixteen, he worked in a bookshop until his first book, A Violent Country came out in 1969. In the near-half-century since, he has produced an outstanding body of work, and continues to reinvent and revivify his poetry with each new collection. He is known as a librettist, most often with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, and has written screenplays for Midsomer Murders, Holby City and The Bill, as well as crime thrillers under the pseudonym David Lawrence. In 2005 he won the Forward Prize for his collection Legion, while in 2010 his next collection, Night, won the Griffin International Poetry Prize, and his most recent collection, Fire Songs, won the 2015 T. S. Eliot Prize.

1. What was your biggest career break?

Being given an Arts Council Poetry Bursary for my first collection. I'd been working in a bookshop (nothing glamorous about being a shop-assistant) for ten years: a decade of boredom and privation. I published the book while there. The Bursary was more money than I'd ever seen in one place. I left the shop and took a year off to write. The money ran out, as money will, and I had to spend another decade working as a publisher (nothing glamorous about that, either) but the year off was life-changing: it allowed me space and time to find focus and it gave me a taste for freedom. 

2. Have you had a notable mentor – and if so what was it about them that was so inspiring?

We didn't call it mentoring back then, nothing so formal. Ian Hamilton published me in the Times Literary Supplement - my first outing in a major literary journal. I'm pretty sure that he also weighed in on my side when he was one of the judges for the Cheltenham Poetry Prize - that was my first poetry award. And he published a pamphlet of my work as part of one issue of the Review - my first mini-collection. I would sometimes let him see poems; he would sometimes give me notes: I suppose that was mentoring of a sort. One of his notes ('try lengthening your line') though apparently minor had major effect and was given at just the right moment in my writing career: I turned a corner. He became a close friend: a man of courageous drinking habits and a smoker of Olympian vigour. Ian was as fierce in support of poets whose work he liked as in opposing those he considered third-rate (and therefore dangerous cultural influences) - unrelenting in sorting the wheat from the tares. It was the fact that he cared so deeply and gave no ground that was, if it's the right word, 'inspiring'.

3. What one piece of advice would you give to the 20-year-old you?

Don't waste time. 

4. What qualities to do you most value in people you work with?

I most value what, I suppose, might be called 'dedication'.  Poetry is a solitary business, but my work for the opera stage has involved me with people who are gifted, generous, and very serious about what they do. I value that greatly. I also look for a dark sense of humour and an ability in people to hold their drink.

5. Who do you admire and why?

This is a difficult question to answer. I could make a list of poets, playwrights, artists, whose work I admire. I could make a list of individuals who seem to me to do good in the world. I could make a list of organisations like Medecins sans Frontieres...but think of all those I'd be failing to mention. Maybe the problem lies with the word 'admire'. Does it mean 'look up to' or has it more to do with fellow feeling? Does it have to do with achievement or endurance, grace under pressure or suffering nobly borne? I'd like to say I admire poets - all poets - for persisting in the face of general indifference but, in truth, there are too many I would rather didn't persist. 

6. What does the future of poetry look like, to you?

No change. There's often talk of a new interest in poetry. It's never the case. Things remain much the same: it's a minority art and no one in the poetry world should mind that - or even want to change it. I'm weary of listening to the chipper insistence of the poetry proselytisers. There's a real sense in which poetry is crucial; to me it's a way of life. I don't at all mind if most people don't feel - could never feel - anything remotely like that. The imperative, for poets, the only imperative, really, is to keep on keeping on. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. (Beckett, of course.).

7. If you hadn’t lived a life in literature, what would you have done instead?

I can't imagine. I started writing poetry when I was about twelve. I've never wanted to do anything else, (though all poets need day-jobs, as we know to our cost). My work as a librettist is no less important to me now; and I love theatre; I've written a stage-play, so maybe I'll find a late career as a playwright. I wish I had been able to learn to play an instrument. Yes, I suppose music (but as a composer) would have been the only alternative life.

8. What is your biggest extravagance?

I buy a lot of books. I don't care about cars and other boys'-toys, though I do have a TV the size of a gable-wall. I watch football on it and sometimes the news. That's it.

9. Who would you invite to your dream dinner party and why? (you can invite three people – they must be alive)

This goes back to the 'who do you admire' question, so gives me the same problem. Politicians? Artists? World figures? Cultural movers and shakers? People I might assume will be fascinating but have never met and might well turn out to be a bad choice. The people I would most like to have round my table are friends: people I know, am close to, who make me laugh, make me think. So...three friends of mine: two women, one man (for balance). Then I'd have another dream dinner, the following month, with three more such friends. And so proceed. 

10. What do you do to relax away from work?

I'm never away from work; it's not possible. When I'm not writing, I'll be reading or listening to music. Or thinking. I might be at a concert, or the opera, or a play, but that's work, of course, and I count myself lucky. (Oh, well, I might be at Stamford Bridge, I suppose, but I'd have my notebook with me.)

11. If you could change one thing about Britain today, what would it be?

Education. It should be free in all aspects. Teachers should be visionaries and receive bankers' salaries. The humanities should rank above the sciences and way above the supposed urgencies of late capitalism.  

12. What would your last meal be? (please choose a starter, a main course and a pudding)

Oysters. Wild duck. My wife's (and no other's) tarte tatin.