The new Write Out Loud Poem of the Week is ‘Hitting the Wrong Note’ by David Redfield. It’s a poem about a choirmaster. In his Q&A David talks of the “lightning bolt moment” of reading Coleridge’s ‘Ancient Mariner’ at the age of 17. His favourite poets include Alice Oswald, whose Falling Awake won this year's Costa poetry prize. He’s based in Norfolk, and has a couple of favourite poetry reading places in Norwich, a city “teeming with great poetry”.

 

What got you into writing poetry?

I've always loved words and music, and as a child my parents owned a set of recordings of (very) abridged Shakespeare plays, featuring great stage actors of the day (Gielgud, Redgrave, Ashcroft, Maggie Smith, etc.), and I never failed to be swept along by torrents of rhythm, melody, and passion even when I had so little literal understanding of what I was hearing. I later had a huge teenage crush on my Eng lit teacher who introduced me to the likes of Hughes, Heaney, Plath, and Larkin. If there was one real lightning bolt moment it was reading Coleridge's ‘Ancient Mariner’ one humid summer's day when I was about 17 - the intoxicating cadences just pulled me in, and I've been in love ever since!

 

How long have you been writing?

I really started as a college student, doing an English and drama degree. That stuff was as hopelessly pretentious, angsty, and self-regarding, as one might expect.  A couple of years later I briefly joined a small writing group in York, where everyone - to my youthful eyes - appeared several generations older than me, and cruelly inflicted some of my first efforts on to them. They were kindly indulgent, sometimes stony, but it was a valuable apprenticeship. After a few years absence I began again in the early 90s, having my first “proper” poem published when I was about 30. Twenty-five odd years later, after many professional ups and downs, I'm a fully-fledged freelance writer with a modest but credible publishing history who teaches creative writing and dares the scorn of the world in occasionally describing himself as "poet".

 

Do you go to any open-mic nights?

I've been known to take to my feet from time to time. These days I live in rural Norfolk, but am blessed in having Norwich on my doorstep. Norwich (a well-deserved Unesco City of Literature) is absolutely teeming with great poetry, and not just at the University of East Anglia. There are probably as many potential reading opportunities as there are venues to host them, but my own personal favourites are both in the heart of the old city: Olive's, which is a wonderfully cosy, funky bistro where you practically sit in each others' laps - intimate is not the word - and Café Writers upstairs at Take 5 which is run by the mighty fine Martin Figura and Helen Ivory. I've usually got something in my bag wherever I am, so I'm always prepared to  "don the mantle" and wave my arms about.

 

What’s your favourite poet/poem?

Poetry is for all moods, places, and times, so just one will probably never contain everything I need. Corny as it sounds, poetry is so immersive  that my favourite is probably whatever I happen to be reading at the time. There's always a stack of poetry to devour next to my bed. Perennial favourites are Robin Robertson, Alice Oswald, Jacob Polley, Matthew Hollis, John Burnside, Esther Morgan, and Sheenagh Pugh. I'm particularly enjoying Alice Oswald's Falling Awake at the moment.  She is an absolute linguistic genius and innovator: her Tithonus is mind-meltingly brilliant.

 

You're cast away on a desert island. What's your luxury?

I'd want to have pen and paper of course, or at least something with which to make a mark, but for me that would be more or less a necessity. Luxury? If Bob Geldof can bag the Metropolitan Musuem of Art, could I have the Poetry Library on the Southbank, please?

 

 

HITTING THE WRONG NOTE 

by David Redfield 

 

Rooted next to his upright piano,

close in the tiny room,

I couldn't breathe.

He held one hand

to the small of my back,

the other across my

taut diaphragm:

 

(I can believe he loved

the music, but he craved

only angels, expected them -

and, by God, he was

going to have them,

even if he clipped

their wings along the way).

 

Here, understand? From here!

A scrawny fledgling, I could not rise -

not that time, the next, not ever.

 

The news wouldn't tell

who was among the chosen,

but when I think of the shame

in hitting the wrong notes,

I understand how crooked

my flight could have been

if I'd ever hit all the right ones.

 

("He" was my choirmaster when I was eleven years old. At the time I knew him he was known as Barry Brunton. His whereabouts are currently unknown, but he is wanted by the constabularies of at least three counties in connection with historical child abuse offences dating back to the 1970s).