Will Stone is an award-winning English poet and translator. He met with Speak Up. We began by asking him what had first attracted him to poetry:
Will Stone (Standard English accent): It was just something that came, really. Well, I was always good at English at school and I used to write stories, and that was obviously my forte, but I didn’t really take it up later on, English. I probably should have done a degree, but for some reason I didn’t and then the poetry just started... well, actually I started writing songs first, I was more of a musician, and I wrote a lot of songs, I had a long period of writ- ing songs, and then I sort of... that sort of died off and I started writing poetry more, so it came out of the songs.
SOCIETY TODAY
In 2008 Will Stone received the Glen Dimplex Poetry Award. This was for his book, Glaciation, which one critic called “a collection of poems of oblique and uncomfortable beauty.” The Glen Dimplex is in fact an Irish award. Will Stone believes that his poetry is considered too heavy for British audiences, who tend to prefer lighter, less serious work:
Will Stone: I’m not saying that it’s all bad, but I just think a lot of what is most obvious, or what is most evident, to people, seems to be the same genre of poetry all the time because partly that’s because that’s what people relate to, and it’s what people are... ‘cause a lot of people in England were turned off poetry by having to do it at school, so anything that’s difficult, or got any real depth, it’s not as easy for them to engage with it.
I think they tend to be more drawn to a kind of poetry that is more of an entertainment, or something that sort of has part entertainment and part... it has some meaning that corresponds with people, but it isn’t always some- thing that you really need to think about for too long, you know. It’s like an instant hit and then it’s over, which kind of reflects our society.
The Hay Festivals
Poetry plays an important role in a series of international literary events. Hay Festival of Literature & Arts takes place at several global locations every year, including in Spain. The festivals, which take place in Segovia in September and at Granada’s Alhambra in May, feature discussions on topical subjects between well-known literary figures. British writers Martin Amis and Monica Ali, historian Antony Beevor and Spanish novelist Álvaro Pombo all took part in last year’s Segovia-based festival. International figures, including Portuguese author José Saramago and Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, were at Alhambra. Hay Festivals also take place in Wales, Beirut in Lebanon, and in the Caribbean. For more details: www.hayfestival.com.