BROB Interviews the BROB (Part Deux): Poetry Guy Liam Murray

Interview by Luke Frostick, Editor-in-Chief

What pieces outside of the poetry column did you like this year?

I’ve really enjoyed our non-fiction and interview sections this year. Jean Jacques Charles’ exposé of Turkish graphic novels was a delight, and I say that as someone who never got into comic books or satirical cartoons in a big way. It was eye-opening. Similarly, I loved your interview based on this year’s exhibition of Turhan Selçuk’s unique gift for sharp and sometimes unnerving cartoons that strike a chord.

I always make sure I have a cup of tea and settle down before I start reading the work of Merve Pehlivan (of Spoken Word Istanbul fame). Her review of Nezihe Muhiddin’s “Sin of Being a Woman” made me yearn to get back into history reading. I decided to ween myself off consuming vast amounts of political literature for the last few years in order to better explore the truths that fiction can offer, but I think it’s time to get real again. In that vein, Iljas Baker’s look at how Rumi gained fame in the West over the years was a riveting read, and it was nice to see that his non-fiction is as engaging as his poetry.

What have found challenging about working as the poetry editor and what have you learned through the year? 

When I started in November last year, the struggle was getting enough contributions. I was making calls and asking poet friends and even sniping poets as they left the stage of the Spoken Word and Slam Poetry Istanbul events. As we’ve grown in success and raised our profile, however, I find the opposite problem. I’ve stopped being able to read each poem as it comes in, because they just start to build up – as, given the tumults life throws at you, you are not always in the best mood to enjoy poetry. It’s not like checking your phone for messages, it requires a mind absent of distraction, I feel. And that’s really hard to plan ahead for.

 What do you think we can do better? 

I think we need to engage with our community in a broader sense. As an English-language lit mag, we of course have a prevalence of people who write in English. That, of course includes Turks in the city, and we have a nice amount of contributions from them, but I worry we give the impression we are another rag offering a foreigner’s take on the city. Which is absolutely not true, but we need to communicate that and engage a bit more with Turkish language lit mags and groups.

Tell me a little bit about your own poetry. Your inspirations, methods and about what your trying to say with your poetry. 

This year, I’ve been able to publish in several zines and journals here and in the UK, and thanks to this new attitude of being able to wear my heart on my sleeve that I’ve developed woefully late in life, I’ve actually been more pleased than ever with what I’ve done. I think it’s going in a more unabashed direction and I’m no longer afraid to linger on a negative point.

In terms of what I’m trying to say, I think a lot of it is a certain rejection of the worst aspects of the Enlightenment – namely, the mechanical and the ordered, the narrowing down of substance to that which can be classified and quantified. Basically, the things that distance ourselves from what makes us human. Weirdly, I’ve found I’m drawn to a lot of scientific metaphors in order to do this, so there’s a funny juxtaposition there that’s not intentional, but just seems natural and is fun to play with.

I’m dragging myself away from the safety-rail provided by metre – which is partly drawn from my very first encounter with poetry in Birmingham, where many Jamaican-roots poets who are heavy on rhythm and word play enjoy success, such as Benjamin Zephaniah, Linton Kwesi Johnson, and Lemn Sissay. I’ve since freed myself with a broader mix of influences: The tweedy charm of people who tap into a simple idea in a playful way that drops the emphasis on structure, such as Wendy Cope and Billie Collins. There are also recent discoveries I would give my right arm to match, such as Tanja Balić and Jane Wong, who have a gift for transforming very specific experiences into universal notions. Which is what we’re all looking for in a good poem, I guess. 

Poetry is an extremely subjective art form. There is lots of poetry out there that I find really hard work, but that other people love. Are you able to put aside your own feelings on poetry and make selections based on what other people might like? 

Yes and no. In terms of style, I am open-minded to a fault, and I do enjoy having my private prejudices challenged by a good poem in a format I would otherwise glide past if I wasn’t in the position of editor.

For instance, I’ve published rather Gothic pieces I would otherwise dismiss as a bit “teen-angsty,” as well as haikus, which I often find a little bland and unfinished. Similarly, I’ve published stream-of-consciousness stuff which can sometimes come across as a little self-indulgent, as well as pieces whose attachment to metre and rhythm would, in a lot of other contexts, come across as kitsch and formulaic. So I have very little trunk with snobbery on that level. But it has to speak to me – so in that sense, despite everything – it is subjective.

To illustrate the point, last month, I emailed someone for the last edition whose work I had published a few months before. While I was rooting around my paperwork at home, I stumbled across another one of the pieces he had submitted to me and it suddenly moved me. I asked if we could publish it and his response was one of astoundment. He said that in all his years, an editor had “never changed their mind about a poem”. But it wasn’t a question of me having “changed my mind” about it at all! I was simply in a better place to recognise its value when I read it a few weeks later. I don’t know if that’s because it said something pertinent about what was going on in my own life at that moment, or whether I had just had enough coffee to pay attention better. It is so subjective, even with a healthy open-mindedness, judgement is dependent on so many external forces. This is why I would tell any budding poet not to lose heart when they get no reply from a literary review. After all, as I believe Austin is often misquoted as saying: “The reader does half the work.”

You've included some poetry in formats that are new and interesting. One of the advantages of being online is that we can use other formats. Would you like to see more of that in the future?

Absolutely 100%. In fact, I will make extra efforts to track down people who can contribute video poems, spoken word footage, and visual works in the year ahead. Hopefully, this will pave the way for more such contributions to start to filter in naturally.

Are there any submissions you would like to see more, or indeed less of? 

I want to see more Turkey born-and-raised contributors, for sure. This could even come in the form of translations of classical or modern works, but I would prefer living and breathing artists in the city – of which there are many. I think this could serve as a bridge for us to showcase international work alongside those from the city, and there’s opportunity for great amounts of fusion there. As I said above, I’d also like more mixed-media work of the sort we would have to have a geeky conversation over about which category it fits into. Each edition is really a treasure trove and I want readers to wonder whether what they are going to click on might or might not be purely text-based.

In terms of what I want to see less of, my only peeve is the fashion in which some very well-published authors address us by in the emails. Sometimes they don’t even say hello and just paste a 200-word bio with a piece attached. I wish people would remember that this is a people-focused endeavour and a labour of love on all sides, and to treat it as such!

Although, now I think a little further, in terms of submissions; as much as I have a cheesy attachment to Istanbul’s natural charms (it’s hard not to); works that focus on bridges, cats and seagulls have started to lose their charm on me.

You have been talking to me in the last few months about producing a chap book of poetry using some of the work we have produced this year. Can you talk a little bit about that? 

I really think this would be a resounding success if done well. I look at the sheer amount of literary zines in this country and can totally see us as having a place within that community. Like us, many of the people behind these 20-page or so chapbooks filled with artworks, poems, and essays, see there endeavour more as a labour of love and means of getting art out into the wider world rather than a profit-based thing. There is also a sense of camaraderie, rather than competition, between these magazines. So something tangible, as simple as a small, printed journal, would land us in good company. I’m looking forward to digging my teeth into the project, especially as I think we have enough material stockpiled to be able to come up with at least a quarterly, themed zine that could engage people looking for something different on the Turkish literary scene and who wouldn’t automatically come across our site online. There is much work ahead, though, so I’ll keep you posted.