Chris McCully

Chris published his first poem under the 'Gardening' column of the Scarborough Mercury in 1975. In 1982 he began an association with Carcanet Press that has lasted until today, and has published five volumes of poems with Carcanet - Time Signatures (1993), Not Only I (1996), The Country of Perhaps (2003), Old English Poems and Riddles (2008), and Polder (2009). A volume of Selected Poems is scheduled for publication in 2011. You can find out more about these collections by typing 'poems' into the Search box above - or simply by clicking on the link 'Poetry' below.

You're looking at one of my workbooks (above). The process of composition has always been, for me at least, ritualistic, slow and messy. I almost invariably draft poems and translations in pencil in large workbooks, and have done so for what are now more than three decades. The workbooks have to be a particular size - large enough to allow for crossings-out and other pieces of unloveliness. Occasionally, when the workbook isn't to hand, I jot things down on bits of scrap paper (preferably yellow US legal pads, for some reason) and then transfer them into the workbook. I've tried to compose straight into the computer, but while this works well for all the prose I write, it doesn't work at all where poems (or poetic translations) are concerned. The process, then, is utterly, stupidly obsessive - a matter of trust in ritual accompanied by a certain amount of fear that the crossings-out will remain unlovely, the page almost empty and the poem finally unsung.