Late Sketches & Studies - Tony Towle
Review by Crack Magazine
Tony Towle was born and raised in New York City. Now in his 80s, he’s published numerous collections of poems and this, his latest, is brought to us by a Newcastle-based press. It’s a collection that wears its philosophising lightly: “To the next person who asks how I am, / I will respond: “As young as I’m / ever going to be, but I hope not as old,” / because that’s what an old person / might have quipped in the old days”.
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BBC Upload with Leo Ulph - Radio Transcript 05/06/2025
Kairen Kemp - Interviewer
Oliver Taylor - Interviewee
Kairen: When was it you first started writing?
Oliver: At the beginning of lockdown when I had all that time to myself. I was in a band previously, before lockdown had happened, but I was awful at writing music.
Kairen: (Laughter)
Oliver: But, I kind of realised that the lyric side of music I really enjoyed, and I spent all of my time on that as opposed to any other element. I didn’t like being in a band, I much preferred doing my own thing, and the most accessible way of self-expression for me was poetry, particularly in the form I write which is prose poetry. So, it was that and just being bored really...
Kairen: I think you’ve got an MA in Creative Writing, haven’t you?
Oliver: Yeah, I did an original degree in Law, but then as I was doing it I wasn’t enjoying it. It was a bit of an unusual choice which I felt I picked simply because I wanted to go to University, but then English was something I should have picked, and then I did end up doing it in a Masters degree.
Kairen: As anyone who is listening will notice, you have this gorgeous accent-
Oliver: Thank you very much (laughter).
Kairen: And a lot of your work seems to be inspired by the area in which you were living. Is the northern voice important to you?
Oliver: 100%. I don’t write as if I am romanticising the town I come from. I really just write about what I am used to, certain people I have met over the years and certain experiences I have had, and it won’t always seem pretty, you know? But I do love writing about where I am from, and the northern voice is incredibly important to me. But, obviously I am here now in Brighton.
Kairen: So, why Brighton?
Oliver: I moved here after university and I’ve been here a few times. The visits were all it took for me to fall in love with it (Brighton). It wasn’t me wanting to get out of the north because of it being not for me, I love it, but I just wanted to move somewhere far away just to see whether I could do it. So far it is going well. I had never been to any of the poetry nights in Brighton, but I knew they were going to be good, you can just kind of tell, and luckily it has been amazing.
Kairen: And of course, I met you at Of The Chest (A Brighton-based poetry event)
Oliver: Yeah, Of The Chest, what a night (laughter)
Kairen: How did it feel the first time you stepped up and read your own stuff?
Oliver: Well, because I haven’t heard any other northern-speaking poets in Brighton, it was always going to be quite vulnerable, as vulnerable as it already is because you are doing poetry. It was scary, but I am used to it now, and I suppose it is a good way to separate yourself and make yourself stand out (the northern accent).
Kairen: Yeah, and I think that if it is a bit scary, it sharpens your delivery, doesn’t it?
Oliver: Yeah, 100%.
Kairen: And... It was brilliant to hear a northern voice, especially because nobody else can read your poetry in the same way that you do.
Oliver: Yeah, I guess so.
Kairen: It is a really interesting form and it is not rhyming poetry, is it?
Oliver: No, where I can help it, I always try to distance myself from rhyming and wordplay, and having a concrete structure. What I do is prose poetry where there is nothing really skillful about it, it is more like you are just writing whatever is on your mind with no limits. There is nothing to prevent you from saying anything you want. It is completely expressive.
Kairen: Your power of miniscule observation is brilliant, and that I really liked. Some of it is dark, but there is always this point where you just sit and smile.
Oliver: I appreciate that. I like making the stuff I write absurd. It’s an absurd country in its own way (England). It’s absurd in ways that English people know, and the people who live in England. I write in a kind of hyper-observant way about these weird little things that only people who live in England will understand.
Kairen: What would you say to young people who are just starting out? (In poetry)
Oliver: The only thing I would say, and it is going to sound very simple, but read as much as you possibly can. To be honest, without besmirching any other writer’s advice, I think you’d be silly to give any advice other than ‘just read’. That is all you can do. In as much of your spare time as possible, read everything,
and read more than you write. If you did it the other way round, you’re at risk of being repetitive. Read everything, whether it is good or bad or whatever. Read anything that you can get your hands on, and it can take a while, but you will see a natural development. It is as simple as that.
Kairen: Are you going to read something for us, she says excitedly (laughter).
Oliver: Yeah (laughter), I have got something which I have from my collection which is out at the moment. It is called First Guinness in a New City. It is a poem about my love for music.
For every poem I write
I’d love for a melody to be attached.
For music
is every way
I listen to sad songs
to remind myself I am still breathing
And I listen to happy songs
to remind myself
I am still breathing
And I listen to music that can boot doors of of hinges
so I can look the pretty girl in the eye
I use music
in every way a decent melody ever intended
I use Shane Macgowan
to write what I could never poetically articulate
I use music
I don’t always need it
and often when my ears are full already
I don't even want it
But as I step of the train
and onto the platform
the music in my ears
has stripped the fat from my beer belly
It has made me walk with my back
coherently straight
into a night
unafraid of the dark.
MY INSPIRATION: KOEF NIELSEN (NARC MAGAZINE)
Excerpt: Inspirations come in many guises – as poets, Robert Frost and Edward Thomas, not so much as “nature” poetry but in their language and speech patterns, Creeley, Pickard and Bunting for their concision. Yeats for I made it out of a mouthful of air. From people, heroes such as Tony Harrison, whose drive and intelligence unfolding through his career have awed me ever since Newcastle is Peru, the late Martin Turner who introduced me to Pound while were at school together, and, again, Tom Pickard, with whom I worked over 50 years ago in his bookshop, and at the Morden Tower. His uncompromising commitment to his talent through all opposition and adversity has never failed to inspire me. The Morden Tower, which Tom and Connie founded and made work, was a huge catalyst for poetry in the UK. I seriously believe that Newcastle was nearer then to the West Coast and the Black Mountain School in the US than to London – but this independence has always been the city’s strength as a seed bed for talent across all disciplines.
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'LATE SKETCHES & STUDIES' TONY TOWLE - REVIEWED BY MARTIN STANNARD
Excerpt: Let’s begin this with a quotation:
you come by to type
your poems and write a
new poem instead on my
old typewriter while I sit
and read a novel about
a lunatic’s analysis of
a poem by Robert Frost
it is all suffocating
Frank O’Hara, from “The Light Presses Down” (July 26, 1963)
and point out that the “you” O’Hara is addressing here is Tony Towle.
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