Earlier this year, on cold, sunny January morning, I visited Ruth Fainlight in the rambling, book and print-lined London flat she shared for 40 years with her husband, the writer Alan Sillitoe, who died last year. Under Alan’s benevolent bronze gaze (a bust of him sits in her living room) we talked about her New and Collected Poems, recently published by Bloodaxe. As I read and re-read the poems, caught time and again by their integrity and candour, I was struck by how deeply embedded her life and work have been in the 20th and 21st century canon, counting among her close friends the poets Robert Graves, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. A recent poem, “The Empty Lot,” shows the writer as a young American girl (she was born in New York and spent the first 15 years of her life in the US) surveying her wild kingdom, fearless and ready for whatever the world may throw at her. I started by asking her about this poem and the influence of her childhood and family on her as a writer.
Jenny Lewis
That poem is about the time I lived with my Aunt Ann who introduced me to culture and whose bookcase, which is over there [she points to a crowded rococco mahogany bookcase] contained everything that influenced me when I was a girl. That was such a rich time for me compared to the subsequent three years in England of which I have no strong memories except conflict with my father…
About what?
Mainly Judaism and sex. Because of the war – he was called up and went into the RAF – I hadn’t seen my father for six years and I turned up, this child in bobby sox with strong opinions… you can imagine. Before coming to England, we lived in Arlington, Virginia, right on the edge of town. My aunt and uncle were a childless middle-aged couple and suddenly, atomising their life, my aunt’s younger sister (my mother) turned up with her children – me and my younger brother Harry! During the war my mother was involved in a serious accident and lost the sight of one eye. Harry and I were at boarding school on Long Island at the time, and no-one came to visit, so we sat under a tree crying until my aunt came to rescue us. My uncle was working at the Pentagon then. He was an engineer and I remember lots of blueprints in the house. He also had pistols. There was a drawer with bullets in it and he taught me how to shoot. I loved shooting at targets. Just with shot. Bullets appear in my poems now and again. He used to sit on the porch drinking himself into a passive acceptance for the weekend while we were all shouting at each other in the house. As well as learning to shoot I went every Saturday morning into Washington to go to art classes at the Corcoran Gallery. Saturday was my culture day. I went to my art class from 9am-12pm. Afterwards I’d walk round the gallery and look at the sculpture and paintings, sometimes now I see those paintings in exhibitions in London when they’re on loan and it’s a delight. Then I’d go back home to my aunt’s house and the two of us would listen to the matinee from the Metropolitan Opera House. When I heard it again here it gave me such a start of joy and recognition. So I would say the greatest influence on me in terms of culture was my Aunt Ann.
How about other writers? Which one book or writer would you say is really important to you?
When I came to England at the age of 15, one of the books we had to study for the School Certificate exam was Milton’s Minor Poems. I thought they were absolutely marvellous. I loved their sonorous sounds and elaborate vocabulary. A really important book for me -but of course, this is much later – was Adrienne Rich’s Diving into the Wreck.
Would you say you’re a feminist then?
My response to feminism and ‘consciousness raising’ was: I don’t need to have my consciousness raised. I’ve been a feminist from birth.
Like myself, you started out as an artist and studied at Birmingham Art School, then Brighton – does this explain why artists are inspired by your work?
I did go to art school but I don’t draw any more and sometimes I feel I can’t entirely express what I want to say just by using words – but anyway, the good thing is that I’ve done several collaborations with artists I admire. The first, with Leonard Baskin, was because Ted Hughes had told him that I was the person to talk to about sibyls. Leonard wanted to make drawings and prints for a book on that subject. Ted and I had spent much time talking about religion and witchcraft and shamanism, so he knew I could do it. I’d already read many of the books dealing with the subject – and also it meant that I could do more research, which I enjoy. Leonard was living in Devon at the time and he and his wife and children used to come up to London and rent a grand house in Connaught Square. It was a very satisfying collaboration which went on for a year or more. The book was never published; but his drawings were taken by his gallery and dispersed and that was the end of that. But I had produced a group of almost thirty poems, and I was pleased with them. They became the core of my next collection, Sibyls and Others, which was published in 1980. Then about ten or twelve years later when he was back in America and I was in Nashville, Tennessee at Vanderbilt University as Poet in Residence, Leonard said to me, I’ve started doing sibyls again, will you write some more poems, can you inspire me? I thought, we’ve been through this before Leonard dear… but when he sent me the proofs, they were irresistible. So there they were, pintacked onto the wall of my apartment in Nashville and they inspired me, and this beautiful book was produced and sold for thousands of dollars, 27 copies were printed. I have one. That was my first collaboration.
Later, Alan and I had a house in France and I met the American artist, Judith Rothschild, who is a master of mezzotint. We became friends, and she asked if we could do something together. I’d written a poem about two pomegranates – that was the trope; but it was really about my dressmaker in Majorca, because when I lived in Majorca it was cheaper to have your clothes made than to buy them in a shop. Judith loved the idea of doing engravings of pomegranates, and so that was our first book. Then we did a book about leaves, and another based on a postcard she had sent me from Tunisia. The most recent one, which is in French and English, is called Nacre. She sent me a couple of proofs of oyster shells and that started it off. At first I kept close to the subject: pearls and stories and legends about them. As I went on writing the poems became freer. The engraving you commented on was inspired by the poem “Nacre III, First Forms,” about a young girl’s budding breasts. Then I wrote one about my aunt making clam chowder, then my mother’s button box (“Cowrie Shells”) which is really just a riff on the idea of pearl buttons. Another very satisfying collaboration was with the Brazilian print-maker and sculptor Ana Maria Pacheco. Our book started when she was Artist in Residence at the National Gallery in London, and became interested in the subject of Sheba and Solomon. Again I was very happy to research and think about this, and wrote a long sequence of poems, which were later included in my 2002 collection Burning Wire. Her exquisite hand-painted and gilded prints for the book we produced make it a real treasure.
Most of your poems are free verse but when you do use form, for example your sestina, “Blossom and Technology,” you do it brilliantly well. How do you decide whether or not to use form?
The sestina I wrote about Japan was about the contrast between fine traditional Japanese art – the beautiful painted screens, the fantastic ceramics, the fact that everyone gathers to see the cherry blossoms – and the other side, this harsh, 21st century industrialisation and technology. I used form in this group of poems – it also includes a sonnet and a poem in syllabics – because I thought it suited the formal nature of Japanese culture. There’s a film I like, called Bladerunner, inspired by a novel by Philip K. Dick, obviously based on contemporary Tokyo. I am very interested in films. There’s a terrible B movie based on a Mike Hammer book, very violent, it’s called Kiss Me Deadly. It’s so irrational and has such violence in it: I think it’s something to do with the cold war. There’s a wonderful final scene on a beach in California shot from out at sea. The characters are trying to get hold of some fissionable material in a briefcase. They meet on the beach and the case is opened and that’s the end of the film. At the end of the poem “Midland Contemporary” I’ve written about the ‘furnace glow’. It’s to do with the atomic bomb, I suddenly realised. Apocalyptic. Also to do with Blake. I’ll have to watch Kiss Me Deadly again. It’s a terrible confession for a feminist and a socialist to make, but that’s one of my favourite films.
You talked about India, did you enjoy your travels there?
I went to India in 1985 on a British Council tour with my husband Alan and we were there for a month. We were in Calcutta and Orissa for ten days. When we went on to Bombay afterwards it was like going back to Europe. There’s a special green I associate with India. Many of the contemporary Indian paintings I’ve seen have this green in them. The last week, after we’d finished the reading tour, which took us to Delhi as well as Calcutta and Bombay, we went to Rajasthan. We went to Jaipur, where we met Michael Holroyd at the Pink Palace, then we went to Udaipur and stayed at the Lake Palace. We rode on the elephants. We spent our entire British Council fee! Since then I’ve always wanted to go back to India. I’d love to go to the south to see those opulent temples packed with imagery. I think I could do it alone now.
That could be your next step?
Yes. Possibly.
