Peter Hague – Page 3 – Fevers of the Mind

A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Peter Hague

with Peter Hague:

Q1: When did you start writing and first influences?

Peter: My first experiences with serious writing came in 1972, inspired by the work of Leonard Cohen. At that time, I was well aware of his music, but I saw a copy of his book: ‘The energy of Slaves’ in a shop window and bought it. I then bought all of his books – poetry and novels, which many will be surprised to learn, go back to the mid-1950s. I found his style deeply intriguing and often laced with humour. I was a student then, miles from home and starting to explore a sudden new world. I think Cohen’s work filled in some of the blank spaces and energised a new creativity in me.

Q2: Who are your biggest influences today?

Peter: I have no current influences. I think that I have found my voice now, after all this time and continue to develop it. However, I am still greatly motivated by all the true and worthy influences I have had over the years. Shortly after Leonard Cohen, I discovered T.S Eliot and many more. These people still influence me today: Wallace Stevens; Kathleen Raine; Anne Sexton; Sylvia Plath; Philip Larkin; Robert Lowell; Edward Thomas – many more.

Q3: Where did you grow up and how did that influence your writing? Have any travels away from home influence your work?

Peter: I grew up in the North of England but I do not consider myself to be a “northern poet”. I spent a period of my early life in the south west, which seems much further away than it is now, and I think the outcome of that developed the idea that it was best to try to be international. I feel more comfortable using my words to reach a wide range of people and I have always associated myself with America. I have also always been interested in the bold national diversities of European countries and their traditions. Individuals worldwide are for the most part, very similar in needs and ambition and although this can help to simplify the message, it offers the need for deeper creativity and a broader brush.

Q4: What do you consider the most meaningful work you’ve done creatively so far?

Peter: Well, the answer to that will always be my poetry, especially now I have decided to devote the remaining years of my life to it. I spent most of my life in the world of visual arts, as a creative director, and also a recent decade as a digital artist, using the art name ‘e-brink’. You can see my updated web site covering that period at: www.e-brink.co.uk. However, throughout the years I have always continued to write and study poetry and have completely redesigned my main web site, which is now all about my current writing. The address is https://www.peterhague.com. This is me finally putting my writing first and I have a great deal to offer, with more books already in production featuring both new and old work.

Q5: Any pivotal moment when you knew you wanted to be a writer?

Peter: I think that goes back to when I had just left school and worked briefly as a painter and decorator. I remember being up a ladder painting a gutter when I suddenly had an epiphany (partly guided by ideas from my Mother). I promptly decided to apply to the local Art School, which I did – that was the start of it – two years of revelation. I later spent three years at The West of England College of Art in Bristol (School of Art and Design – UWE Bristol) doing a graphic design course.

Q6: Favorite activities to relax?

Peter: I have been known to read.

Q7: Any recent or forthcoming projects that you’d like to promote?

Peter: I’ve just published two books of poetry and will be spending some time promoting them. ‘Hope in the Heart of Hatred’ is intended to be a bridging book between the work I am doing now and my early work. ‘Gain of Function’ is my very latest work. It features one hundred and two poems, some of which have been published in various places, including Twitter and your very own, Fevers of the Mind.

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B0976BLVNL

Q8: What is a favorite line/stanza from a poem of yours or others?

Peter:

As the first wave rebounds
from the squalor of population,
we wear its shadow
like a stiff, new coat.

Q9: Who has helped you most with writing?

Peter: Throughout my life I have always returned to writing and I have tried hard to perfect what I do with it. Editing is the main part of everything I do and I have learnt so much from revising my own work. Therefore, I think I would have to say to this question that I mostly helped myself. Having said that, all the influences mentioned above and my study of their work has been priceless. Being a writer is not easy though. There is a definite sense, real or imagined, that the world is pushing back. You really have to be confident in your own talent and purpose to keep going. Having done so, over the years, I now have complete confidence in my work.

Bio: Peter Hague has written and studied poetry for most of his life and apart from being published in magazines like ‘The Interpreter’s House’ he is now posting some of his work on Twitter. Two books of collected work are in production now and are expected in the coming weeks. He is also working on a new website, dedicated to his writing. He is also associated with the art name ‘e-brink’ and has a gallery of digital art at: http://www.e-brink.co.uk.

2 poems by Peter Hague in Fevers of the Mind Press Presents the Poets of 2020

Wolfpack Contributor: Peter Hague

Avalanches in Poetry 2 entries by Peter Hague : “I Did Not Want it Darker””Between Leonards” “Following Leonard”

Twitter @PeterHague

https://www.peterhague.com/

2 poems by Peter Hague in Fevers of the Mind Press Presents the Poets of 2020

A Place in the Universal

Here, on the bright side of death
I occupy the right side of my heart.
I am at the centre of my being -
a line scribed from head to soul -
a blend of genres, running pole to pole.
I am at the centre of my living dial -
at the confluents of patience, blood and bile,
and all revolving in the universal smile -
that inherent affinity -
dispensing an axis for all.

Relocation of the Heart

The walls of this unfamiliar house
have transformed themselves
into the closest copy
of where I last felt comfortable.

It is not their fault
that paper peels and paint cracks -
or new feet stroll across the creaking floor.
It is an unburdened wish
to liberate change. 

Bio: Peter Hague has written and studied poetry for most of his life and apart from being published in magazines like 'The Interpreter’s House' he is now posting some of his work on Twitter. Two books of collected work are in production now and are expected in the coming weeks. He is also working on a new website, dedicated to his writing. He is also associated with the art name ‘e-brink’ and has a gallery of digital art at: www.e-brink.co.uk.  

Wolfpack Contributor: Peter Hague

A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Peter Hague

Avalanches in Poetry 2 entries by Peter Hague : “I Did Not Want it Darker””Between Leonards” “Following Leonard”

I Did Not Want It Darker
(On the death of Leonard Cohen 2016)

When your song first idled in my head,
like something matured in careful words.
I was a student in my teens – exiled – un-said,
with no road for my drowning voice.

Your songs sang out of the influence of poems,
like a threading railway, forged in ruin –
rolling out your passion in Spanish chords
and the black brute of honest dread.

Lorca found his voice stifled by blood –
He, the designated hero of your noble campaign.
It was a blend of the stations of devotion and reason,
and all that lingers in songs and rooms.

You threw your baggage out onto the pavement –
into the anonymity of my least-walked streets.
And that day I saw a founding step –
a revolution, intertwining words and thoughts.

You sang above the abandon of amorous poets,
who closed their lips and proceeded to go blind.
While you, with your Kestrel eye
ranged the glories they vowed to overlook.

The implicit technicalities of love and being
were flicked away and left behind,
as they talked themselves naked, with the spoken word,
immersed in the self-sabotage of liberty’s dissent.

You elevated your poems on the wings of chords,
so a wider audience might comprehend
not only the unfathomed void of a broken heart
but the subtle things you had to sing to mend.

And they were each caught then, by the siren voice,
as all we disheartened sailors were.
And all soon fevered with a charming blend
of patience, love and rapturous doom.

It was the poems though, that spoke to my longing,
from the grey cities of smoke and gold –
out of an avalanche of hidden critics
who discussed your darkness in curtained rooms.

And with an inability to hear without eyes,
they made their own dark song to sing.
It rang in the certainty of eventual prose,
walking through pages of worn-out words.

In time, eased by the celibacy of your charm,
they smoothed themselves with forgiveness and love.
They found a shoe that fit better as a glove –
thus perceiving the so-called ‘Godfather of Gloom’.

It was a dagger through your triumphant heart –
a tenderly savage paper dart –
but washed off – like the crayons they used
to eventually scribble a favourable report.

Your poetry spoke into the mind and the heart –
and always with music, as it lent itself to you.
Always with a resonating chord or two,
strummed by a lost soul, reaching out.

If only for those troubling minor chords
that leave the soul vibrating on
with increased emotion and subdued doubt –
an attempt to set a few words free –

an attempt to capture truth, and smooth it out.
To push the sky beyond a pilgrim’s thoughts.
To stop the clock and make it wait –
to instigate – to celebrate –
those same words in perhaps a less apparent state.

Words we would never really need to own,
or reveal the joke inside their frown.
Or think of as correct, or right –
but simply called upon in the delicate night.

Such words once said, need never be recalled,
they move their meaning, where other’s take flight.
For they have already snapped their core, like flares –
and bathed us in a blesséd light.

Between Leonards
(On the Death of Leonard Cohen 2016)

I saw my son between Leonards –
the living and the darker one.
My son gave me a recording
of Leonard’s latest song.
He sang about leaving the table,
he sang himself out of the game.
He said if we want it darker,
he would extinguish the flame.
This was the light that lit my decades –
the light where perception first shone.
By the time I saw my son again
Leonard’s light was gone.

Following Leonard

This could be the darkness
written in your soul.
An elemental darkness,
without the element of control.
It’s been murder in the city –
there’s plague now, at the beach.
The only goal we truly have
disappoints the reach.

But there’s a crazy road to nowhere,
that branches from your heart.
And it’s a long, long way to get there –
better make a start.

Wolfpack Contributor: Peter Hague

A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Peter Hague