Ruth Fainlight
Ruth Fainlight was born in New York City, attended junior high and high
school in Arlington, Virginia, but has lived in England since the age of fifteen.
After adjusting to the English educational system, she went to art college, spent
some years in France and Spain, and later married the writer Alan Sillitoe.
She has published thirteen collections of poems (including two ‘Selecteds’)
in England and the USA, as well as two volumes of short stories, and translations from
French, Portuguese and Spanish. Selections of her own poems have been published in
book form in Portuguese, French, Spanish and Italian translation. Her latest
collection is Burning Wire, Bloodaxe 2002.
She received the Hawthornden and Cholmondeley Awards in 1994, and her 1997 collection, Sugar-Paper
Blue, Bloodaxe Books 1997 & Dufour Editions USA 1998, was shortlisted for
the 1998 Whitbread Award.
Her operatic work includes libretti commissioned for the Royal Opera’s Garden Venture
in 1991 and 1993. The Dancer Hotoke, composer Erika Fox, was nominated
for the 1992 Laurence Olivier Awards. Her TV opera, Bedlam Britannica, was
transmitted on Channel 4 in September 1995.
She was Writing Tutor at the Contemporary Opera and Music Theatre Lab for the Performing
Arts Lab (PAL) for its last three seasons in 1997, 1998 and 1999.
She has served on the Council of The Poetry Society, and is a member of the Society of
Authors and the Writers in Prison Committee of English P.E.N.
In 1985 and 1990 she was Poet in Residence at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee,
USA. She has read her work at festivals and conferences, universities, schools and
libraries in Argentina, Canada, England, France, Germany, Greece, India, Israel, Italy,
Japan, Macedonia, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Uruguay, USA and Wales.
Statement of poetics
"Where does the poem come from? I think there is an almost continual monologue or
soliloquy going on in my head - a voice commenting on what I see and feel and explaining
it to me, mulling over preoccupations, of perhaps years’ duration, sometimes making
jokes. And at irregular intervals, a phrase or group of words will demand attention, like
a branch tapping against a window or a child tugging at my skirt. That is what I am
waiting for, and every time, it seems a miracle.
It can start anywhere and at any time, and I hurry to find a pencil and scrap of paper to
record the vital phrase. Sometimes it will happen when I am writing in my notebook, or
answering a letter from a friend. Then I notice that the language I am using seems to have
changed, and realise I have written down the initiating phrase of a poem. These words have
a particular tune, which is the ground-rhythm of the poem presenting itself, and through
all subsequent work and revision I must be faithful to that melody.
This phrase, or node, or cluster, of words includes every essential element of the poem:
its consonantal and assonantal sound-color, style of vocabulary, and pace; as one cell can
contain the information necessary to grow a complete organism. I am also inclined to think
that if I were able to follow every existing clue, it would reveal that
it contained the poem’s entire potential subject matter encoded in those few
words. Letting the poem emerge and reveal itself is like being witness to a process of
crystallisation, because the form is implicit in its content, the content enclosed in its
form.
This is how a poem starts, and if I am lucky, after a certain amount of time and work I
will be left with enough material to give a reasonable hope of finishing it. But a poem
can only be worked on for so long, as dough should be kneaded only for a certain time,
then covered and put aside to let the process continue in darkness. There must be a period
of incubation. The next stage will involve other aspects of the mind: knowledge,
memory, intelligence and self-criticism, the components of poetic skill - one of the most
important being knowing when to stop.
* * *
I try to keep the words of a poem close to the feelings and sensations that inspired it,
in the hope that it will inspire the same feelings, recognitions, and memories in its
reader. In this way, she or he become involved in its reality, even a participant
in its creation – because reading is an active relationship between reader and
writer. But writing is a relationship between writer and language. A poem develops
organically from the first inspiring phrase. The poet’s work is to allow all its
potential of sound and meaning to realise itself, and like every other living organism,
its development is a unique combination of unassailable laws and the entirely
unexpected."