As a poet, if you cooperate with language you end up ‘saying things you didn’t know you were thinking.’ So claims the multi-award-winning poet Rachael Boast, in this interview with Suzannah V. Evans. But although poetry may emerge from somewhere unconscious, the course of their conversation draws to the surface Rachael’s life and works.
The discussion highlights the biographical background to some of her poetry, its close affinity with music and sound – and how Rachael’s breakthrough came after living in a crofter’s cottage with just a copy of Geoffrey Hill for company.
Rachael reads three of her poems at the end: ‘Snow’, ‘Ranchera’ and ‘Attic’.
About the Interviewer
Suzannah V. Evans is a poet, editor, and critic. Her writing has appeared in the TLS, The London Magazine, Eborakon, The North, Coast to Coast to Coast, Time Present, New Welsh Review, and elsewhere. She is Reviews Editor for The Compass and an AHRC Northern Bridge doctoral student at Durham University, where she runs the T. S. Eliot reading group and The Poetry Podcast.
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