Poet and writer, Jonathan Finch, joins me on the blog today…

…Hi, Jonathan, thanks for making time to be here.  I recently reviewed your poetry collection The Light Of Day II (you can read my review here) and thoroughly enjoyed the book.  So, tell me, what first got you into writing and why poetry particularly?

JF    A big adolescent hormone-fuelled nervous breakdown got me seriously into writing and certain poets just seemed to be saying it all.  For example, Keats in his “Ode To A Nightingale”.

AW  You're an Indie author, have you ever thought about securing a deal with a publisher or an agent?

JF    Well, I’m not exactly an Indie author.  Two collections of poems, “Poems People Liked (1)” and “Poems People Liked (2)”, are collections of verse which editors saw fit to publish in magazines and anthologies and some short stories were conventionally published.  The truth is I stopped writing altogether and then (re)started writing (altogether)…..again and again!  When I came back to writing, the internet revolution had occurred!  I wrote a novel in 2015/2016 called “Great Tits I’ve Known (And Other Species)”, extremely near and dear to my heart, sought advice from a fellow-writer, and was directed towards self-publishing.  Simultaneously, a publishing house showed interest but I took the Kindle (KDP) route.  As for poetry, it just can’t get you a publisher (generally speaking) and fiction - which I’ve been writing for about as long as I’ve been writing or interested in poetry - just gets you caught up in rejection-slips and difficulties.  When I saw the self-publishing path and believed it was not vanity-publishing, I went for it!

AW  I have to ask, Jonathan, the cover art on The Light of Day.  Why that particular piece of art?

JF   It’s about revelation, about religion, and about light.  Many of the poems are obviously inspired by religion (for example, “And Satan Said”, Page 94).  Poetry is also about messages, the supernatural, and going beyond.  Hence the cover art.  At a more mundane level, at the time of publication I was in close contact with someone I considered a friend and he suggested that inspirational piece of art which became the cover.

AW  And what about other types of writing?  Have you ever dabbled with short stories, for instance, or other genres?

JF   Yes, as mentioned.  And even drama.  The dedication of “The Light Of Day (II)” (“To The Departed Muse”) lets any potential reader know I’m a lapsed poet.  Prose and novels have taken over, and even if I tried my hardest, I couldn’t write poetry as I used to write it.

AW  Famous authors, such as Roald Dahl and Dylan Thomas, had a special space for writing.  Do you have a writing ‘shed’ of your own?

JF   No, I don’t, but I can say that when the poetry was at its most intense (from my adolescence to 30 - 35 years of age) I felt and indeed was so on my own that the world was my ‘shed’.

AW  Finally, if you had a whole afternoon to yourself and could choose to spend it with any one individual, living or dead or a character from a book, who would it be, and what would you want to discuss?

JF  Yes, I’d like to spend a whole afternoon with Shakespeare and the devil, and if he would grant it me (which he wouldn’t!), far more than one afternoon with Shakespeare, the greatest poet the language has!

   

about the author… Jonathan Finch was born in London into a family of teachers where fanaticism was not criticised.  His father was a devout communist for many decades.  His mother was a socialist and lapsed Roman Catholic (till a few weeks before her death).  Both parents were not English.  His mother was Irish.  His father’s grandparents were from Poland and Austria.  Post-war London was grim for Finch (despite the swinging sixties) but after grim schooling he went on to get a degree at Bristol University (and a farcical PGCE – post graduate certificate of education – at London University).  His sister got a degree at Cambridge University and went on to become an academic, a Francophile and a global feminist.  At 33 Finch left England.  At 55 Finch left Italy where he had taught English for 22 years at “La Sapienza”, Italy’s largest university.  He has now lived too long in Thailand but he is still there.

    

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