Janet Sutherland is a poet, author and editor with an MA in American Poetry. She also won
the Kent and Sussex Poetry Competition in 2017. Acclaimed poet Gillian Allnutt said, ‘There is
a tact, a tender truthfulness, that leaves language alone and lets everything touched on speak for
itself’ about Janet’s most recent collection, Home Farm. WORD!'s Abigail Willock caught up
with her for an exclusive interview…
Abi: Where does your love of poetry come from?
Janet: I went to a small convent school for a couple of years when I was nine
and handwriting practice was copying out poems “in best”. I remember puzzling over
and copying Kipling’s The Way through the Woods and The
Snowflake by Walter de la Mare. Our class production that
year was on The Song of Hiawatha by Longfellow and the next year we had an
enthusiastic trainee teacher who taught loads of poetry including The Golden Road to
Samarkand by James Elroy Flecker. And then add in the poetry in the hymns and
carols.
Abi: Can you remember the first poem you wrote?
Janet: It was a couple of stanzas on the bright
blue spring flower called Scilla. I attempted rhyme, got distressed and had to ask Dad
for help. I was nine.
Abi: Can you tell me about the process of writing and editing a poetry collection?
Janet: This is a big, big question! My collections have tended to be conceived
of as whole book projects. For example, my last collection, Home Farm, Shearsman Books 2019 is
about growing up on a dairy farm, the one before that, Bone Monkey, Shearsman Books, was
about a trickster character and the one I’m just finishing now which will be called The
Messenger House, out from Shearsman next spring, is about my great-great-grandfather’s travels
to Serbia with a Queen’s Messenger in 1846 and 1847. I’ve been working on the new
collection since 2013 and it’s a hybrid – a mixture of journals, mine and my ancestors,
poems – set then and now, historical evidence sourced from the family and from the
archives at Kew. The process began with transcribing my ancestor’s journals, looking up things
I didn’t understand, trying to unpick his handwriting and his character, visiting some of
the places he went to. The process of editing has been about following seams of
evidence and then piecing them together where they naturally fit, which can be intuitive or
practical. I love the editing part of things, arranging and rearranging, gradually
understanding an overall shape.
Abi: Who is your favourite poet and why?
Abi: What are you reading right now?
Janet: I’m reading Ocean Vuong’s Time is a Mother.
