A poet’s life should be down to the biographer to relate. Ted Hughes didn’t come on and expressly say “I saw a monster in the river in my childhood,” but he did build up to talking about it in interesting ways. It was for his biographer and critic to come on and delimit exactly what happened to Ted Hughes in his boyhood. It’s the same with me: if I want a biographer to explore my life, I need to make sure the work is there, and it is most ‘there’ at the moment in the poems I have superimposed on photographs on canva.com. At least, it is these that I hear are the best of me if I want to be a poet in the Digital Age.
I still don’t think there will ever be a biographer let loose with my life… he or she would have to deal with my having helped invent the net at seven, been the witness from The Lords And The New Creatures, failed with an attempt at the maths of the new colour, attained what I shall call the island penguins, predicted September 11th with exactitude in 2000, also making prophecies about the God Particle and the alignment, and my writing that year the highest-marked A-level exam essay in the country.
If I came on in a book of poems and just made a list of triumphs of my own genius against whomsoever it is, not that I really think I’m a genius either, then there would be nothing for a critic or biographer to note. So we must remember the lesson of Ted Hughes which is to make sure the work is of high enough standard first before the biographical information is released. All too often I fail at this. But at least I know this and know now also what my best poetry is – digital templates.
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