Poem of the month - May 2007

About the Poet Roddy Lumsden's most recent publications are 'Mischief Night - New and Selected Poems' (Bloodaxe) and a new pamphlet, 'Super Try Again' (Donut Press). He teaches at City University and Morley College in London and is organiser of the monthly reading series, BroadCast. His fifth collection 'Third Wish Wasted' is due from Bloodaxe in 2008. He works as a puzzle and quiz compiler and reference editor.

Roddy says: 'My second collection of poetry, The Book of Love (2000), begins with a series of poems about love and sex. I looked for fertile ground among the erotic-isms and recalled someone looking askance when I described myself as a voyeur. Of course, it's a vague word, covering everything from someone with a keen visual sense to someone with a serious kink. This is how the poem began. Miscommunication between man and woman has been a strong theme for me, and in Voyeur, the male questioner struggles to pin down the woman's elusive answer. I tried to use arresting visual images to offset the awkwardness of the question and answer format of the piece. My favourite lines are those which probably don't stand up under the miscroscope of actuality ('the long cosh of a thaw' and the 'foreshore' image). I wish I could find a formula to explain to my students (and myself) when it is effective to use such small, inexact metaphors. The 'lone, long walker' makes an appearance from Duncan McLean's story 'Hours of Darkness', a favourite with both myself and Alan Warner, who was inspired by it for his novel 'The Man Who Walks'. But my main memory of writing Voyeur is of the months it sat on file, lacking an ending. The last four lines came only when I had a deadline for the book and I can still see the join, like a row of clumsy stitches. I hope others can't!'