Tim Turnbull is an award-winning poet, known for maintaining little distinction between poetry for the page and the stage. He won the inaugural Edinburgh Book Festival Slam with a poem which had also been published in the prestigious literary magazine The Rialto. In 2005, his first full collection, Stranded in Sub-Atomica, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. More recently, he won the Arts Foundation’s Performance Poetry Fellowship which resulted in Caligula on Ice, a theatrical performance which blends poetry, caustic comedy, ghost stories, folk songs, parody, pastiche and cutting satire. Performing three sets across the weekend, he took time out to talk…

Hi Tim, welcome to Latitude Festival and thanks for taking the time out to do this interview. Have you performed here before? What’s your experience of the festival so far?

No, this is my first time at Latitude – the festival’s grand. My previous experience of a festival was Reading in ’89, which was a bit ferocious. This is altogether more civilised, with a good variety of music, poets and more.

Which other artists, writers and bands are you planning on seeing while you’re here?

Simon Armitage, Blondie, Seasick Steve, and I’ve enjoyed wandering into the comedy tent in-between times. Joanna Newsom was impressive this morning.

Generally speaking, what drew you towards writing and performing poetry, and when did you start?

I started out writing as a kid but spent most of my twenties in various bands. When I got to thirty three this seemed a little undignified, so I returned to poetry in around ’94. I’ve taken the performance route rather than starting out with magazine publication. Now I’ve pretty much devoted to poetry it tends to feed itself.

The poems in Stranded In Sub-Atomica move between and often combine everyday, conversational vernacular and a lyrical, more ‘poetic’ register. How does your speaking voice relate to the poetic voice in your poems?

I write pretty much as I speak, but it’s fun to mix registers and feel a poem wrestling with itself through syntax and diction. I suppose my answer to ‘What’s a performance poet’ is poets doing their poems in different voices. I test my written work by reading the poems out – usually when the wife’s out with only the dog to listen in.

Your poetry daringly yet successfully treads the line between performance and page poetry, and you famously maintain little distinction between the two. What do you see as the potential benefits and pitfalls of such writing?

I don’t really know as it’s the only route I’ve taken. I don’t know what’ll work until it’s tested – the only empirical evidence for that particular assertion, you could say. Ultimately, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly.

The media often relish in noting the apparent lack of popularity that poetry currently suffers. But the rapid growth of performance poetry and new, independent poetry magazines suggests the opposite. What do you reckon to be the truth at the bottom of all this? 

I suppose, as you suggest, that some – though not all – journalists can be a bit lazy, with the occasional broadsheet piece about poetry just mumbling along. But there are good pieces on contemporary poetry in the right places – a recent article by Niall O’Sullivan in The Wolf magazine comes to mind. But you don’t get into poetry to be a superstar – you should practise snooker for twelve hours a day if you want to be famous.

How do you feel about baring your soul to an audience of strangers when reading your more personal, autobiographical poems?

I do perform very personal poems, but I disguise them as being about someone else. I suppose I’d say that I’m not hiding but revealing things. Realistically, the confessional is only ever ‘apparently confessional’.

Any personal rituals before reading to an audience?

Pacing and walking, walking, pacing, pacing and walking. I must’ve done fourteen miles before going on yesterday.

What’s your favourite poem by another poet?

It changes on a daily basis, but for today, I’ll say ‘Green Sees Things in Waves’ by August Kleinzahler.

What’s next for Tim Turnbull?

Well, a ten-hour drive home tomorrow for starters. My second collection, Caligula on Ice, is published in May, and there’s a bilingual edition coming out in Germany too. They get my stuff.


Interview by Ben Wilkinson