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| FEATURES | BY SEAN SMITH |
 Paul Birtil |
Collected Poems 1987-2003 by Paul Birtill. Hearing Eye, £10.99 AMERICAN poet John Ciardi once wrote: “You don’t have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.” But Paul Birtill – whose anthology Collected Poems 1987-2003 is released next month – is a living antithesis to this widely held view. In fact one could argue that he kick started an entire career on the back of a teenage affliction and has managed to maintain an optimal level of angst throughout his career. “I drifted into poetry when I began to go through a very difficult patch as a teenager,” he told the New Journal. Since he drifted into the London rat race from his home town of Walton, in Liverpool, he has been sifting through the sewers for material. “I’m a heavy drinker and I smoke 40 cigarettes a day and if I don’t change my life I don’t expect to be here much longer,” he says. These days he’s a regular at The Stag’s Head, on Fleet Road or the Sir Richard Steeles on Haverstock Hill, but most bars from south Camden to Hampstead have felt his elbows in the last two decades. It is a lifestyle that smacks out at the reader from every page of his latest collection, which is an amalgamation of all his best work so far. His dark and punchy style has won critical acclaim all over north London – his subject matter the core of the land he inhabits. Kicked cats and satanic firemen; psychotic sisters and eccentric fathers; rotting neighbours and missing mums; lavatory attendants and pathological women scream at the reader with a bitter intensity. But can anyone really be so dark and twisted? “People don’t really know where you have drawn the line between autobiography and fiction,” he says. “I have had people ask if I have ever done these things or feel them – some of it is fact, some of it is fiction.” Born in 1960, Birtill moved to London in 1983. He lived in Kilburn, Hampstead, Maida Vale, Kentish Town and Camden Town before finally settling in Belsize Park. “I came to find a bit of anonymity and privacy. But in my 20 years living here I have felt very lonely, particularly when I was younger.” Birtill has also managed to court controversy throughout his career: most recently when a play he wrote for BBC Radio Four was dropped because the producers thought it was creepy. “I couldn’t believe it, they called it creepy, anti-naturalistic and slightly surreal. It was supposed to be, it was a black comedy,” he says. The play, called The Lodger, was saved by The Pentameters theatre in Hampstead and can be seen in November. It is the story of a lonely man looking for love; a theme that runs right through his work – and his life. “I spent nine months in Glasgow during the Year of Culture in 1990. I was drinking very heavily then and Glasgow was the place to be for that,” he recalls. “And I was chasing a girl.” Unsuccessfully, it seems. “It never seems to work out when there is a woman involved,” he adds. His family also features heavily in his work. “One of my sisters developed schizophrenia and my mother died when I was a teenager. My father was an eccentric and I hated school,” he says. Life hadn’t always been so rocky. “I had a very happy childhood,” he muses. “Liverpool was wild to grow up in during that time. There were lots of kids around.” His career has shown glimmers of acceptance, too, particularly when his play, Squalor, was shortlisted for the Verity Bargate Award. He has also written plays for Radio Four, London Live, Radio Merseyside and Radio 100 Amsterdam. His poems have featured in national newspapers and reached a wider audience when they appeared on London Buses as part of a national campaign in 1995/96. The theme of accessible poetry – which Poetry on the Buses advocated – is one that meets Birtill’s approval. “I was on the number 73 and number 38. Some of the poems were stolen from the buses – which is a good sign,” he says. “I like poetry to be accessible and not too obscure. It should be from the heart and based on experience.” A sentiment achieved throughout his collection. |
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