Interview with

John Stocks

by Farideh Hassanzadeh

About John Stocks

John Stocks is a UK-based poet, novelist, historian and free-lance journalist who has had work published in magazines worldwide. He has been widely anthologised. His latest publications Sheffield 1925 Gangs and Wembley Glory are on sale in Waterstones.

John appeared in the UK Soul Feathers anthology, alongside Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Seamus Heaney, Carol Ann Duffy, Maya Angelou, Sharon Olds, and others. He also had the honour of sharing a page with Maya Angelou in the anthology Heart Shoots. Both anthologies were available in all major bookstores UK.

Other anthologies that John has featured in include: This Island City, the first themed-poetry anthology of poems about Portsmouth, the Cinnamon Press anthology Shape Shifting, the Northern Writer’s anthology Type 51, and the Toronto-based Red Claw press anthology Seek it. John also had a poem in the international anthology For Rhino in a Shrinking World.

Prior to a recent hiatus to focus on historical writing and research, John had poems published in an International Anthology for Seamus Heaney, the annual literary review of The Long Island Poetry Collective in New York, and Trainstorm, an anthology of Railway Poetry published in South Africa and London. Work also appeared in New Madrid, In Flight Literary Magazine, and others. He is the Poetry Editor of Bewildering Stories magazine.

About Farideh Hassanzadeh: She is an Iranian poet and translator with more than 14 books on world poetry. Her book of interviews with great international poets is named: Eternal Voices.

Farideh: Picasso believed that a great artist is someone who sees everything through the eyes of a child. In your poems, a child’s heart beats. That’s why I like to ask you about your childhood. In what environment did you grow up? What effect did your family and lifestyle have on your tendency towards literature?

John: I grew up in a village in Nottinghamshire, England in an era when children were encouraged to roam freely. In the long school holidays, we would disappear after breakfast and not return home until after sunset. There were dangers and adventures on a daily basis but, most importantly, a close relationship with the wild woods, the rivers, canals, ponds and marshes that surrounded us. There were many times when I roamed alone developing a personal relationship with nature. When I think of early childhood the focus is sensory, the brightness of the light, colours, the scents and smells.

Although I am an only child, I grew up surrounded by aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces. It was a very happy childhood although some of the adults had experienced trauma during the 1939-45 war. My uncle Jack had lost his best friend during fighting in Italy, dragging his body miles for burial. He lost all his hair after this experience, never fully recovered, remained a bachelor and never had children.

As I grew older, I became aware of literature through school. Byron and DH Lawrence grew up in the area where I lived, and the Brontë sisters were not far away. I associate my poetic mind with altered states of consciousness, which operate in a different headspace to my prose writing area, and this dream-like state evolved during a time of naivety and innocence.

Boys and girls played together, and we learned about sexual differences through play. I enjoyed school more for the sport and social activity than the learning. This was the time of the Sixties’ pop music revolution, and songs by the Beatles and others were a soundtrack to growing up. All had a formative impact.

Farideh: Before the second question, I have a request: May I ask you please to explain more about this part of your answer to my first question?: “I associate my poetic mind with altered states of consciousness, which operate in a different headspace to my prose writing area and this dream-like state evolved during a time of naivety and innocence.“

John: In response to your supplementary question: I have been working on a collection of poems which reflect how my creative consciousness evolved through life experiences linked to a sense of place.

In revisiting memories from my early childhood, I am aware of a time before I began to analyze my experiences and/or compare my life that of my friends. A time when I was living in the moment, simply absorbing experiences. I sense that this was a time of intense subliminal brain activity that created neural pathways. A time when an instinctive interaction with the natural world, in particular, shaped my consciousness, opening a door to a sense of a numinous, synchronistic universe.

When I feel a desire to write poetry, I engage with a meditative, almost dream-like state and seek out ‘safe’ spaces where I can think without being impacted by the external world. In a state of ‘poetic consciousness’ it would be dangerous to cross roads, for example, but fine to walk alone on a country path, notebook in hand.

Farideh: You say: “ When I feel a desire to write poetry I engage with a meditative, almost dream-like state and seek out ‘safe’ spaces where I can think without being impacted by the external world.” Do you mean this “safe” place is where you meet Muses?

John: In a British, perhaps Western context, a muse is generally a person of romantic interest, and a cafe or bar is a likely place to meet someone. I certainly wouldn’t question the power of physical beauty and emotional resonance to inspire poetry. However, I was thinking more pragmatically. When I am thinking poetically, I am in a deep, almost trance-like state and likely to be run over crossing the road or walk into a lamppost! As for Plato, if he is thinking of the divine in a specific religious context, no, but if he is referring to the hidden music of a potentially created universe, or a collective universal consciousness, I would agree.

Farideh: My God! What a terrible misunderstanding! When we write muse as “Muse,” we have in mind ancient Greek mythology, where Muse means: the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric songs, and myths that were related orally for centuries in ancient Greek culture

I have no doubt what a profound poet like you meant by being alone with himself in a place where there is no noise or crowds, and I would never allow myself to ask such an inappropriate question.

John: No problem. I assumed that this was the case.

Farideh: Apart from life and its experiences, which books have been effective in shaping your poetic mind? Actually, I would like to know who are your favorite authors from classic to modern?

John: The first poets to impact on my evolving imagination were the English Romantic poets. The poetry of Keats in particular and Wordsworth’s “Prelude,” where I immediately recognized the trance-like poetic state that poets disappear into suddenly, a world within a world of introspective self-absorption. Much later, I discovered — during genealogical research — family links to both the Keats and Brawne families. (Fanny Brawne was his unrequited love).

Later in my journey, I became influenced by female poets: Sylvia Plath and Maya Angelou. I also studied the work of Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin. Larkin, a controversial figure, was an exceptional writer. Seamus Heaney also.

In a global context, Rumi and other Persian poetry inspired me, as did the work of French poets, notably Rimbaud. There are many contemporary poets, especially female poets from the UK from many different cultural backgrounds, whose work I read and admire on a regular basis. Sheffield-based Helen Mort for one.

Farideh: Regarding your favorite poets, I must say that some of them are also my favorite poets, especially Philip Larkin. I deeply love his poems. Other English poets I admire are John Clare, Robert Graves and Carol Ann Duffy. I have translated a selection of their marvelous poems into Farsi, together with their lovely life story. I also introduced the poems, articles and novels of Maya Angelou to my fellow readers many years ago. Fanny Brawne’s love letters, too.

The poems of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes are not successful in being translated into Persian, but the story of their love and marriage and the unfortunate separation and suicide of Sylvia Plath has many readers in Iran, and even a play based on their lives has been staged.

By the way I don’t know Helen Mort and thank you for introducing her. Let me my next question be on a poem by John Clare: “The Instinct Of Hope”.What do you think about the first stanza of this poem. Do you agree with it?:

Is there another world for this frail dust
To warm with life and be itself again?
Something about me daily speaks there must,
And why should instinct nourish hopes in vain?

John: I went to a fascinating talk on fungi last night. It was a salutary reminder of the interconnectedness of all living things. I do constantly find solace in the cycles of natural regeneration. When planting bulbs in November, I always imagine the moment when a warm sun will bring the first snowdrops to the surface, then the floods of yellow narcissi. If we observe the patterns in nature, it gives an intimation of something numinous.

Death may well be a return to a spiritual plane, so overwhelming that our earthbound consciousness cannot possibly imagine how it works. I hope so.

Farideh: Is it easy for you to write poetry? Forough Farokhzad, a great Iranian poetess, believed that to write a good poem is as difficult as a very difficult mathematical problem. Another Iranian poet says it is as easy as: ‘one looks at the flight of the emigrant swallows and smiles!’

John: ‘Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.’

Thank you for introducing me to Forough Farokhzad. I enjoyed reading her poetry. I like the quotation, too. Wordsworth’s reflection on poetry (above) has always resonated with me. I do not find writing poetry difficult. When the mood is right and I can engage with my poetic consciousness, it is like hearing, and recording hidden music. The process itself is intense and fulfilling.

Words flow easily, but the finished product does not always reflect the quality of the mood, unfortunately! It feels like the antithesis of mathematical experience, more spiritual, but, at a subconscious level, there is probably mathematical computation, counting syllables, instinctive repetition. Rather like a footballer’s brain computes the pace and trajectory of a ball hit from one of the pitch to the other. Hearing words slip into consciousness, as if they have been blown in on a soft breeze, is a sublime and beautiful moment.

Farideh: What will you lose without poetry? And what will poetry lose without John stocks?

John: Poetry, reading and writing has been an important part of my life since I was a teenager. I consider it to be a way of seeing and interpreting nature and relationships at a deeper and empathetic level. So to be deprived of it would be like a form of blindness. Whilst I am currently having more success as a historian, and I consider analytical history to be essential to understanding the past and informing the present, poetry feels like a higher calling,

I am not sure I would be missed as a poet, but I hope I would be missed as a person of poetry and a teacher. Some poems have resonated with people and I am quite excited about a current poetry project, so perhaps my best work is still to come.

Farideh: Here is my next question:

As a historian, what do you think about the war? Albert Camus writes: “People think that peace is always maintained and only sometimes there is a war, but I believe that the fire of war is always burning, only sometimes In the intervals between wars, we see a temporary peace.”

Is there any difference between your idea on war and your perception as a poet?

John: I feel very sad, so many lives lost because of ignorance, arrogance, xenophobia and stupidity.

‘History never really says goodbye it says see you later.’ — Eduardo Galeano.

It seems to me that human beings are destined to keep making the same mistakes. I feel very pessemistic I’m afraid, we appear to be moving inexorably towards another catastrophic global war more swiftly than I anticipated. Given that it will almost certainly escalate into a nuclear confrontation, I anticipate an exceptional period of trauma exceeding that of the Second World War. I wish I could offer more hope, perhaps it would be better if only women were allowed to lead countries.

Farideh: Thank you very much for your very beautiful answers. This interview with you has expanded my mental realm.

Copyright © 2023 by John Stocks
and Farideh Hassanzadeh