Where and when were you born?
I was born in Govanhill in Glasgow, then when I was three the family moved to a house in the new council estate of Pollok in 1947. Pollok is in the southwest of Glasgow.
Could you tell us something about your background?
My father was a railway engine driver who worked on the
railways for 48 years after he came over to Scotland from Dublin in 1916. My
mother was from Saltcoats in Ayrshire, she worked in the local Ardeer dynamite
factory until she left to get married in 1933.
My mother’s mother was a Catherine Reilly from around Newry.
In 1949 I went to the local Catholic primary in Pollok
then to a new secondary comprehensive called Lourdes which opened when I was 12
in 1956.
Were either of your parents or grandparents (or any other relatives) writers? If not, were any of your relatives actively interested in literature?
My grandfather or great grandfather on my mother’s side apparently would recite sections of Thomas Moore’s Oriental epic poem “Lallah Rook” from memory at weddings and the like. My mother had a secondhand copy of Moore’s poems which she kept in her room. That’s the only literary link I know of. There were no other books in the house apart from the ones I got out the local library.
Are any of your
siblings writers or involved in a creative profession?
My sister Cathie was a tailoress then she worked in the Motorola microchip factory in East Kilbride where she lives. She is now retired. My brother John is also retired now, he worked as a bricklayer for years then he became a site clerk. My brother Eric worked in a spectacles making factory then as a bus driver. He died of a chest complaint when he was 48. I dedicated my biography of James Thomson “To Eric – who thought well of people.”
What was the first poem (or who was the first poet) that turned you on to poetry?
When I was about 16 a classmate sat a scholarship exam for university. He showed me the paper, and there was a poem by Stephen Spender called “The Express” quoted in full. From that moment my interest in poetry began as an art with personal meaning for me. It had never worked that way in school.
What age were you when you first began writing poetry, and did you receive any encouragement?
Probably within a year or so of reading Spender’s poem I began making efforts to write poetry myself. I didn’t look for encouragement from anyone. I showed some of them to a friend. He wasn’t hugely interested, so I can’t remember getting any encouragement from anyone.
When you started writing poetry did you have dreams about becoming a "professional" poet? If so, did anyone advise you against this course of action?
I never wanted to be a professional anything, and I still don’t know what being a professional poet means. The only advice I ever got about writing was from reading other writers writing about it, what they said about their own lives and thoughts. Kierkegaard’s Journals, Andre Gide’s journals, for instance, had more to say to me than anything that would be likely to be said to me about being “a professional poet”. I respected the words of artists and people working out their way of being in the world, that’s what I’m saying I suppose.
Did you ever get a
poem published in your school magazine?
There wasn’t a school magazine, and we didn’t “do” creative writing at school. Thank goodness, nobody interfered with that private process in me.
Q. Did you go to university, and if so, which subject(s) did you study?
When I left school I hadn’t enough passes to go to
university. I went to work in an employment exchange then had various jobs, bus
conductor, university bookshop assistant. I got enough passes at nightschool to
go to university when I was 23. I was
chucked out after two years having passed one exam. But I met there other
writers who became friends, and I spent my second year editing the university
magazine.
I wrote my first dialect poems “Six Glasgow Poems” at
this time.
I went back to university a second time after I was
married, did English and Scottish Literature and went on to begin postgraduate
work on James Thomson the author “The City of Dreadful Night”. I never finished
the doctorate, but published the book seventeen years later.
When did you first
start submitting to poetry magazines?
When working in Glasgow University bookshop I sent some poems to the local university student magazines. That was how my poetry first appeared.
What was your first published poem? Which poetry magazine published it? And what year was it published?
My first two poems published together were called “The Other Side of the Ticket” and “Dream”. They were published in a Glasgow university literary society magazine called “Sixteen Poems” about 1967 or 1968. Among the other fourteen poems were poems by Edwin Morgan and Ian Hamilton Finlay.
Round about the time that you started seriously writing poetry, who were your literary heroes? And would you say they had an influence on your writing style?
At the very beginning MacNiece. That moved on to cummings, Williams, Beckett, Creeley.
Have you ever attended a creative writing course or been involved in a writers' group? If so, did you find it useful?
I went to Philip Hobsbaum’s group at the end of the
ninteen sixties, which is to say beyond sometimes drinking with Philip and
mutual friends in the Rubyait Bar in Byres Road, I went up to Philip’s house on
regular Sunday nights where other writers gathered. Its use was in getting
involved in close debate which I liked, and in learning how to run a group
myself later - photocopy in advance and make sure everybody has a copy.
I wouldn’t say the group had any influence on my writing
as such, I didn’t show very often and never changed a syllable of anything I
did show. But it was a good way to get to meet other people involved in writing
and have to argue with people whose opinions you did not share.
The real “writing group” for me was the bunch of writers including myself that would meet in the poet and later playwright Tom McGrath’s house in Glasgow just to talk and smoke dope. We were on the same side of the world regarding poetry and its new excitements - and that side of the world tended to be on the other side of the Atlantic, which Philip’s group definitely wasn’t.
When did you put together your first collection of poetry?
My first collection was called Poems. It was published by
my father-in-law in Dublin in 1973. He ran a small publishing house called E
& T O’Brien.
As there was no distributor in Scotland I had to take it
round shops myself.
It is an enlightening experience going round shops trying
to sell a book called Poems. What I did find was that a number of shops would
sell the copies then practically roll up the linoleum looking for them when you
went back to get the money
It’s now out of print.
Did you enter any
poetry competitions?
No, it was always a private activity with me.
Which of your poetry books has been the most successful in terms of sales?
"Intimate Voices" has been reprinted twice then republished twice since it first appeared in 1984. So it has been more or less in print for 23 years.
Have you won any awards for your poetry?
I haven’t won any of the usual Horlicks prizes for Boring Heavily Crafted Verse About Sweet Damn All.
My book "Intimate Voices" did share a Scotland
Saltire Book of the Year award.
Do you make a living out of poetry?
No. I have worked
in various jobs over the years and been unemployed for periods. Latterly I made
a living doing readings for GCSE pupils in England and Wales as part of the
Poetry Live! show that tours towns and cities with poets whose work is in the
GCSE exams reading to pupils bussed in to town halls.
Then five years ago I got the part-time Chair of Creative
Writing position at Glasgow University. Third of a job. I have two years before
I retire. Currently my connection with the creative writing students is
informal, though busy. I do workshops tutorials and occasional lectures.
If a young would-be poet approached you, which poets would you recommend as vital reading?
I would look at their writing first to see where they had travelled so far.
Which poetry magazines would you recommend him or her to subscribe to?
Again that would depend again on where they had gone so far. There is no homogenous “world of poetry”. It has deep divisions.
You are marooned
on a tropical island for three months. Which three books would you take with
you?
The Collected William Carlos Williams, the Collected John Clare (Robinson Oxford edition 9 vols) and the Collected Short Stories of Chekhov. I have built that desert island at home.
See:
Tom Leonard's publications
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