Last month, Sheffield-based poet Charlie Parker released It’s Like This., his debut collection which uses searing prose to provide challenging takes on everything from the quirks of day-to-day northern life to the most pressing political issues currently facing modern society.
When did you first begin writing poetry?
Not all that long ago, in the grand scheme of things. I began an Access to HE college course in English, Creative Writing and Media in 2016, and it was there that I came across what the course referred to as ‘urban poetry’. I was introduced to writers such as John Cooper Clarke, Tony Harrison and Toria Garbutt. Frankly, it was the moment I realised you could use accents, swear and read poems that talk about issues that we see around us every day. It destroyed the image of the snobbish nature that is often given to poets, and told me this beautiful medium of short phrases, sweet descriptions and delicate licks not unlike that produced by a rock’n’roll lead guitarist can also seek forgiveness from nobody. I started writing at this point, about things that affected me – zero-hour contracts, awful bus routes, terrible bosses, adolescent angst, etc. Some of those early poems will never again see the light of day – God, they were abysmal – but as any Sunday league football hero will testify: get your mistakes out first. I’d like to think I’ve become a better writer since then!
One incident in particular sticks in my mind where at a student-ran open mic, two scaffolders had come to the evening to see what it was about. They said they weren’t into poetry at all ‘but what you did were oreyt, pal’.
How long has this project been in the works?
Around a year ago I saw a submission request from Bent Key Publishing asking for chapbooks of around 15-20 poems. Since my first few weeks of university a few years ago I’d had a growing collection of poems that I’d written with no particular idea of what to do with. I quite often sat in the university cafes or even dull lectures scribbling away in those little A6 notepads you can fit in your inside coat pocket. I didn’t know what to do with the poems once they were done, nor what real purpose they had; they’re just some pencilled ramblings, who cares? I started performing some at open mic nights and got decent feedback from the audience. One incident in particular sticks in my mind where at a student-ran open mic, two scaffolders had come to the evening to see what it was about. They said they weren’t into poetry at all ‘but what you did were oreyt, pal’. It gave me a huge boost in knowing that the things I wrote were resonating with my intended audience. Fast forward to the chapbook submission request, and they responded saying they were interested in publishing a full collection. The first poem in the collection is also chronologically the first poem I wrote with purpose and meaning. This was done in 2017 so, give or take, about six years or so.
Charlie Parker performing as part of Bent Key Publishing at Leeds Poetry Festival 2022, Left Bank Leeds. Image: Bent Key Publishing
What sort of themes are explored throughout the collection?
Fundamentally, a lot of this collection is my document on the state of modern England, and all it entails. Austerity, national legend, broken town centres, dilapidated school systems, post-Brexit fallout, nostalgic childhood and family myth, the impact of the 2019 General Election, and the feeling of a country still reeling from the vice of a conservative government. I wanted to write something that other working-class people would write if they had the time and energy themselves, or even if, like the two scaffolders at that open mic, people find a home in a literary medium that commonly alienates the working class, is regarded as elite, or that you must be educated in reading poetry to, ironically, read poetry. On top of a lot of this is a feeling that I’d be a fool to deny: anger. I don’t think anybody can ignore the surging anger that seems to be flowing through every street nowadays, culminating in all the strikes we have at time of writing. While anger can become toxic, it was important for this collection to hone that outrage and frustration into something positive and beneficial. After all, isn’t that most art, in the end? I feel this way, do you feel it too? I wanted to express the sheer rage that hits me now and then in a literary form that historically has a lot of rules. Pentameter, rhythm, rhyme, anaphora, iamb, and so on. We’re in a unique time in society where, perhaps for one of the first times ever, we have the ability to communicate widely about the issues we all face (as opposed to just reading newspapers or grumbling in the local pub), we all by and large know the issues and how to solve them, we know that the people in charge often aren’t very intelligent or, in English politics, all generally went to the same school and are all part of the same club…and yet things continue to exist unabated and in some cases are made even more cruel. It makes no sense. During COVID lockdown, we had a government who created rules, broke them, denied they broke them then admitted they broke them. So, to come back to the collection, I very loosely wanted to replicate that – poetic rules are there, vaguely, but they don’t matter so long as people get the message. In my poem ‘Sigh’, I had no time for any poetic rules, nor of what the intention initially was other than pure rage. ‘June 2016’ was an attempt to replicate the madness of that month. Everything seemed to happen in the space of about a month, and it was chaotic to say the least. I have tried to recreate that fractious nature of current English life.
“I wanted to write something that other working class people would write if they had the time and energy themselves, or […] people find a home in a literary medium that commonly alienates the working class, is regarded as elite, or that you must be educated in reading poetry to, ironically, read poetry.” Image: Charlie Parker
Never lose sight of what it is you want to achieve. Find artists that are doing what you’d do if you had the time. Find your voice and write what you know. Nobody can ever take it away from you. There are too many people gatekeeping what art should and shouldn’t be, what it should look like, who should be the ones to create it. Don’t listen to them, they don’t know a thing. And if they claim to know a thing or two, there’s a good chance they should be ignored even more. Some of the greatest and most poignant art ever made have been creations and artists that have paid no attention to how it was done before, or have run roughshod over the rules.
Charlie Parker’s ‘It’s Like This.’ is available to order here, and his book launch is on 20th January at Crookes Social Club.
@charlieparkerpoet
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