Roy Fisher: June 11, 1930 - March 21, 2017
In 1988 Roy Fisher judged a poetry competition for the Derbyshire magazine Staple. He managed to subvert the whole competition concept by selecting one hundred poems, printing the authors’ names in the magazine and inviting all of them to read at the prize-giving in Chesterfield. I knew people associated with the magazine and I remember rumblings of discontent, with some saying it was a ridiculous idea. I entered the competition and was one of the hundred. At the time I had never published anything, even in small magazines, and to see my name in print was quite something. I had also never read my poetry in public before. I gave a nervous delivery to a packed auditorium, and as I left the stage Roy Fisher caught my eye, smiled and nodded. He treated others that night in a similar way. In those days, opportunities for newcomers to read at supportive public events were rare (this was before creative writing courses had caught on). The reading had an air of celebration, and I’m certain it launched more poetry careers than just mine, judging from the number of fledgling poets, who had clearly never done that sort of thing before, performing their work under the benevolent eye of Roy Fisher, who had somehow made that hierarchical, commercial and exclusive phenomenon – the poetry competition – democratic and inclusive.
That experience sparked a life-long engagement with Roy Fisher's work. I saw Fisher read a number of times over the years, always at humble locations, always in the Midlands; at a book festival in Lowdham, a small town in Nottinghamshire; in Stoke-on-Trent, at the Five Towns Festival organised by Nicholas Jonson; at The Flying Goose, a tiny cafe in a suburb of Nottingham. Roy Fisher didn't leave the British Isles until his middle-age, and he lived his entire life in the English Midlands. That regional association informs his poetry and is a constant presence in it. And yet, what Roy Fisher symbolized for the Midlands poetry community of which I was a part, was an awareness of European modernism and its associated artistic and philosophical movements, and, in particular, an awareness of American poetry and poetics.
Fisher started his a career at a time when modernism was out of fashion in Britain. By the time he published his first book, City, in 1961, critics such as Kingsley Amis had destroyed the critical reputation of Dylan Thomas, and along with it those of his post-war contemporaries, the so-called Apocalyptics. The dominant mode was the restrained idiom of The Movement and the narrowed horizons of Philip Larkin, with his aversion to foreign poetry. Fisher was, in this context, unorthodox, to say the least. He followed City with The Ship’s Orchestra, a very un-British surrealist text, and then in 1971, he brought out The Cut Pages, a work of collage and cut-up inspired by Dadaist techniques. This Derbyshire poet, who read his work in the suburbs of Midlands towns, was anything but parochial.
It’s also worth reflecting on how much Fisher was responsible, along with his contemporary Charles Tomlinson, for introducing British readers to American poetry. In the days before Amazon.com, news travelled slowly, and American books and magazine were often hard to come by. At one of the Midlands venues where I saw Fisher read – Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire – his reading partner was none other than Ed Dorn. The dry understatement of Fisher's poetry, the close observation, the precision of phrase derive from the American tradition stemming from WC Williams. The concern with place – dating from Fisher’s first collection dealing with his home city of Birmingham and continuing through his masterpiece A Furnace – could be seen to have its origins in Williams’s Paterson.
Although I saw Roy read a number of times over the years, and was an avid reader of his work, I didn't actually meet him until he gave a reading at Lowdham Book Festival in 2006. The organizer of the reading, Adrian Buckner, asked me to meet Roy on arrival and look after him for the day. It was a pleasure to spend time with this relaxed and utterly unpretentious man to whom I owed a debt of gratitude for that early encouragement. The copy of his Collected Poems that he signed that day is one of my most valued possessions.
That experience sparked a life-long engagement with Roy Fisher's work. I saw Fisher read a number of times over the years, always at humble locations, always in the Midlands; at a book festival in Lowdham, a small town in Nottinghamshire; in Stoke-on-Trent, at the Five Towns Festival organised by Nicholas Jonson; at The Flying Goose, a tiny cafe in a suburb of Nottingham. Roy Fisher didn't leave the British Isles until his middle-age, and he lived his entire life in the English Midlands. That regional association informs his poetry and is a constant presence in it. And yet, what Roy Fisher symbolized for the Midlands poetry community of which I was a part, was an awareness of European modernism and its associated artistic and philosophical movements, and, in particular, an awareness of American poetry and poetics.
Fisher started his a career at a time when modernism was out of fashion in Britain. By the time he published his first book, City, in 1961, critics such as Kingsley Amis had destroyed the critical reputation of Dylan Thomas, and along with it those of his post-war contemporaries, the so-called Apocalyptics. The dominant mode was the restrained idiom of The Movement and the narrowed horizons of Philip Larkin, with his aversion to foreign poetry. Fisher was, in this context, unorthodox, to say the least. He followed City with The Ship’s Orchestra, a very un-British surrealist text, and then in 1971, he brought out The Cut Pages, a work of collage and cut-up inspired by Dadaist techniques. This Derbyshire poet, who read his work in the suburbs of Midlands towns, was anything but parochial.
It’s also worth reflecting on how much Fisher was responsible, along with his contemporary Charles Tomlinson, for introducing British readers to American poetry. In the days before Amazon.com, news travelled slowly, and American books and magazine were often hard to come by. At one of the Midlands venues where I saw Fisher read – Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire – his reading partner was none other than Ed Dorn. The dry understatement of Fisher's poetry, the close observation, the precision of phrase derive from the American tradition stemming from WC Williams. The concern with place – dating from Fisher’s first collection dealing with his home city of Birmingham and continuing through his masterpiece A Furnace – could be seen to have its origins in Williams’s Paterson.
Although I saw Roy read a number of times over the years, and was an avid reader of his work, I didn't actually meet him until he gave a reading at Lowdham Book Festival in 2006. The organizer of the reading, Adrian Buckner, asked me to meet Roy on arrival and look after him for the day. It was a pleasure to spend time with this relaxed and utterly unpretentious man to whom I owed a debt of gratitude for that early encouragement. The copy of his Collected Poems that he signed that day is one of my most valued possessions.
Alan Baker