Day 2 – Andrew Pidoux
Andrew Pidoux has published poems in the anthologies First Pressings (Faber and Faber) and New Writing 10 (Picador) and stories in two Doctor Who collections for Big Finish. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 1999 and was a Crashaw Prize winner in 2009. Year of the Lion is his first full-length collection of poems. He currently lives in Harlesden in west London.
We asked Andrew about his experiences as a writer and his inspirations for his Crashaw Prize winning book Year of the Lion:
“I began writing while I was at Norwich School of Art, where I was lucky enough to have some great teachers who encouraged me. I won an Eric Gregory Award when I was pretty young, but then I went abroad for almost a decade, lost my English accent and even lived on a ranch in Arizona for a couple of years. I came back to London about three years ago and began sending poems out to magazines – picking up where I left off, basically. I hadn’t stopped writing during my time abroad, so I had a lot of material to bombard the magazines with, and luckily some of it got through. Stand Magazine has been particularly supportive, as have lively outsiderish magazines like the Delinquent. My friends said it was overdue when I was given a publishing contract, but really I considered myself lucky to have been picked up so quickly after so long in the poetry wilderness. For that, I am grateful to Salt.”
“In terms of my inspirations, it’s difficult to put a finger on because I don’t approach it in a systematic way. Having said that, there are quite a few poems about paintings in Year of the Lion, so this represents a definite pattern with me. I enjoy using paintings as a starting point for a poem, even if the actual writing process takes me quite far from the source. I may be idly surfing the web and glimpse a Picasso or Frida Kahlo work, and it will stand out so vividly from everything surrounding it that I will immediately switch screens and begin writing”.
The broad array of poems on show in Andrew Pidoux’s Year of the Lion—from wickedly humorous to darkly meditative, from tightly controlled terza rima to loose cascades of ideas and images—attest to a compelling new voice. Drawing inspiration from painters, philosophers, cartoon characters and pop singers, Andrew Pidoux’s poetry is at once accessible and strange, like a public dream.
The 2010 book launch of the Crashaw and Scott Prize Winners will take place at the Phoenix Artist Club, Phoenix Street, London, on 11 November, from 19:30 until 22:30. For further details, please click here or go to the Facebook event page here (will require Facebook login).
