Issue 106 / Dec 2019/Jan 2020

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ARTISTIC LICENCE This month’s selection of poetry is taken from Matthew Thomas Smith’s debut book, Songs - a collection of tales pulled from the most surreal colours of the day to day. When and where did you start writing poetry? 1994. Bootle, Merseyside. (They started out as nursery rhymes/ lullabies but I could not get the hang of the guitar.) To what extent have local surroundings shaped your poetic voice and written vernacular? I do feel rooted in Bootle and Liverpool but through that same language I also feel like a citizen of the earth. The atmosphere and visual landscape of the poems featured in Songs ranges from the desperately real to the sarcastic and abstract. What is it that draws you to the themes featured throughout the collection? All of the poems are part autobiographical. I have lived these poems. The poems are me and the world around me. Would regard your poetry as a product of political upheaval, or an answer to it? Can poetry be a vessel for change? Both. It can, and I hope these poems can help to show that. The day I went to the Job Centre Out of place next to the well-used under threat library and not 300 yards from the block of flats where some middle-aged fella threw himself off perhaps in response to the bedroom tax or a recent smack drought part-time vacancy notices still hang next to the always-open automatic doors they promise flexible hours and competitive rates it seems that nobody wants to be a window-cleaner’s apprentice or a courier for an ‘ever-expanding’ criminal law firm I shuffle from one foot to the other in the falling queue conscious of empty desks and out of use signs on printers You won’t find anything here son jibes the well-dressed woman to my left this is more of a ‘keeping up appearances’ set-up If this collection of poetry is, as your press release states, to be the last you will ever write, what statement do you wish the collection to convey? Nifty Records approached me to release a Poetry Collection. I had never planned to. Songs feels likes a natural ending – 30 years of me within one object. I feel I need to move on. I need to see what else there is. I am not a messenger, as such. Not really. Ultimately, I would like it if more people started to engage with poetry. That has always been the aim. Words: Matthew Thomas Smith / @mtsmith2605 Photography: John Johnson / @John.Johno niftyrecords.com/shop/songs Songs is available to pre-order now via Nifty Records and is officially released on Friday 6 th <strong>Dec</strong>ember at The Royal Standard. Idea for a British film that would probably win an Academy Award A rich fella with a plummy voice has a cob on because his mother just won’t die and he can’t bear his wife countless infidelities later his mother dies and he inherits a fortune but he still isn’t happy For the Mountaineers climb the shale and slate while it is still able to take the burden the daytripper-favouring path only goes so far leave the camera in the house not everything is photo-worthy use your eyes kneel down get closer don’t take a tent fold your flag into your pocket be mindful of the summit look out for kestrels or a search-party headed by a bloodhound or a helicopter and beware of robin redbreasts rarer knowing tuned-in 52
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Issue 106 / Dec 2019/Jan 2020

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