Christopher Reids…
An amiable fellow, Christopher Reid, the English Department’s Poet in Residence this term, sits opposite me in the sunshine outside Langwith. I ask him about his beginnings in poetry, and what precipitated the publication of his first collection (Arcadia, 1979). It seems that the poet Craig Raine, a good friend of Reid’s, has been a key factor in a number of events in Reid’s life. It was a phone call from Raine shortly before Reid was thirty that told him time was running out on his chance at getting an Eric Gregory award. Reid quickly amassed a collection and, after winning an award, was offered a contract by Oxford University Press. And so began the illustrious career that brought the poetry world’s very own superman to our university.
With eight years of experience as Editor of Faber, again brought about by a phone call from Craig Raine, Reid does a good line in spotting talented poets and cultivating that talent to achieve world recognition. The perfect qualities for a man running creative writing workshops all term, which many of you have signed up for. Too many in fact, so Reid has generously offered to take more students on than he originally planned. It seems he is enjoying these sessions, with the mix of students new to poetry and those already serious about their art. When asked about his feelings on the youth of today’s apparent ambivalence to poetry, he wonders whether it is ‘not handled right by teachers’. Perhaps they don’t make it fun enough, perhaps it’s too constrained, too formal. Reid himself claims to be a bit of a risk-taker. When talking of his time at Faber, he says that he thinks that the greatest thing about having that kind of power was being able to use it ‘differently’. Taking risks on people that other publishers might not, knowing that those he turned down were guaranteed publication elsewhere. One such poem that he remembers fondly was Hubert Witherford’s ‘A Blue Monkey For the Tomb’. Reid excels at quirkiness, his own poetry finds humour in unlikely places, and as such is immensely enjoyable, literary enough to entertain, but nothing like that alienating type of poem that reminds you of why so many seem to despise this particular art form.
In the reading that took place in the University library on the 14th October, Reid read many previously published poems and a series of works in progress. Hopefully there will be another reading at the end of term, which many more will attend, learning that Reid is a man who appreciates that the poetry world can appear precious and closed.
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