A Bow-Wow Shop Primer 

How  to Interview Lord Byron (or any other poet)

Tricked out for the gab: Lord Byron in full-dress, studio-interview mode, first quarter of 19th century, by Thomas Phillips 

1.   Before the interview with Byron or A.N.Other begins, make sure that you have read the poet's works thoroughly. Ignorance seldom recommends an interviewer to his or her subject. Some poets - in common with other human beings - are more nit-picking than others. Some poets - the ones who are likely to be on the strenuously intellectual end of the spectrum - expect you to have the equivalent of a doctoral dissertation in their work; others feel happiest engaging in a genial chat, with the occasional reference to poetry, preferably their own, being interpolated for the sake of good form.

2.   If you intend to ask searching questions of a personal nature, leave those until the end of the interview. It is always wise to be ejected from a room at the moment when you are ready to depart.

3.   If the poet has been interviewed before, try to read those interviews before conducting your own. You may discover that various items of information, though unknown to you, are quite commonly known to the rest of the world. What are the questions the poet has not been asked? Who are the poets by whom he has not been influenced? 

4.   Before the interview begins, make sure that you have reduced your enquiries to a series of numbered questions. Write those questions down. Memorise them if you like. This simple procedure will be an aid to coherence and clarity.

5.   Don't read from that list of numbered questions, eyes staring at knees, when engaged in the interview itself. If you pay too much attention to what you are about to ask, you may miss at least some of what the poet is saying - or, even more important, you may miss noticing exactly what the poet is doing with his own eyes, fingers, legs, knees as he wrestles with your words and his conscience. Eye contact is a good thing. It shows that you are listening, and that you are caring about what is being said. It demonstrates that you do not need a crib to remind you who exactly it is that you are interviewing. And if you listen, and are seen to be listening, you will be able to pick up on what is being said so that the conversation maintains an easy and inevitable flow. The goal is to establish a tiny friendship of mutual trust which, enduring for a  matter of minutes, will hold a specious promise of eternal fealty.

6.   Use a tape machine for the sake of accuracy. This will demonstrate to the poet that when you come to transcribe the interview, you will not be dealing in lavish approximations. Later on, employ someone - a younger or much older sister perhaps - to transcribe that tape. A tape machine is useful most of all at the end of the interview, when you switch it off. At that moment, the poet will begin to tell you things that were not quite fit for the tape, wholly forgetting that you also possess near perfect powers of recall. Do not panic if the tape is blank when you play it back. Various options are now open to you: you may wish to request a second interview if the original experience can bear to be repeated; or you may wish to write down as much as you remember as quickly as possible. Don't forget: the poet himself will remember even less.

7.   Do not expect the poet to speak in entire sentences.

8.  Be prepared to stitch together bits and pieces from different parts of the conversation. This will prove to be quite a painstaking business. If you are a good interviewer, the poet will be proud of what you have made of his fumbling words.

9.   If the poet insists on seeing his quoted words before the interview goes to press, by all means let him do so. By no means let him see what you have said about those words.

 

   10. Make sure that you are clear where the interview is

         to take place. If the publisher has failed to book a

         room, and you are at a loss for where to go, do not

         invite him back to your home. Domesticity, with its

         spread of eager, caterwauling children, sits uneasily

         beside the more serious considerations of prosody.

 

    11.  Above all, feel thankful that you are interviewing a

          poet, and not some other category of human

          being. Poets are, generally speaking, inclined to tell

          the truth about themselves and their work.  

          Although occasionally arrogant, vainglorious,

          nervous and impatient to be gone, they are

          inclined to listen when you speak to them. They

          genuinely care about what they are saying. They

          tend to reply to the questions you have asked.

 

    12. And, last but not least, what to wear. Always

         conduct your interview in 21st century cycling gear.

        The poet will  think you are a fool. That should work 

         greatly to your advantage.