When the concrete poet, who writes under the nom de plume Childe Roland, agreed to an Absurd interview we were filled with dread. How would we interview such an enigmatic figure? What could we possibly have to say that would hold his interest long enough for a decent interview? Had we bitten off more than we could chew?
It’s far too easy to let yourself get overawed (and then to hyperventilate, faint and decide to quit) in a situation like this so we muster our courage to make the drive over to Childe’s home in Llangollen…

We push open the inner stained glass door to enter the house that the French/ Canadian/ honorary Welsh poet shares with his fascinating wife Sue. It is an enchanting home filled with trinkets, curiosities and books; with walls covered in vast arrays of concrete poetry and a front-room filled with fat sofas enveloped with bright patchwork blankets. It is not long before the poet has us under his spell and we are chivvied into the dining room where paper, glue, card and scissors are at the ready – we are not going to be passive interviewers, we are going to create.

At this point I am going to have to exercise some editorial control and tell you, the reader, that this interview is in no way objective, unbiased or even remotely neutral. In fact any of you without the stomach for some serious sycophantic waffling should stop reading now, go on - there’s certainly more balanced articles out there to read I’m sure.

Childe had performed at a secret Absurd gig, in a barn, at a farm, on the side of a mountain the previous week and what immediately strikes you, apart from his mischievous demeanour and shock of white hair, is that this poet is having fun. There is no sense of elitism, literary snobbery or arrogance (although he would be well within his rights to have that attitude); instead there is a feeling that you are with a man who cherishes life, who looks upon each day with wonder and at each person he meets with gleeful merriment. Once he’d taken to the stage Childe’s The Fair poem was received with roaring applause, and the end of the reading of The Verb to Be was met with raucous cheers and the demand for an encore – to which he happily obliged. This was not an audience of the literary establishment; this was a party attended by over a hundred people who were absolutely determined to have a good time. Childe’s performance was animated, dynamic and vibrant; he stole the show.

Returning to the interview, I sit at a great dining room table with paper in my hands. “Tear it like this!” he commands with barely contained enthusiasm whilst wielding a glue stick like a magic wand. How can we decline? We set to work making our own book-art. I create a river poem that I will cherish for life (I did warn you about the overt fawning), as Sue offers cups of tea and homemade sponge cake with fresh raspberries that were left on the doorstep that morning. We get the sneaking suspicion that this kind of thing happens here often, and to be honest I wouldn’t be surprised if the fairies themselves left these goodies for our very own hatters tea party, such is the magic that this poet attracts.
Childe tells us about his work as we eat cake, “With concrete poetry emphasis is not on meaning but rather on the form. Meaning becomes secondary; the form is primary. The emphasis is on the physical characteristics of literature.” He is ever animated, pausing occasionally to let his words sink in before again speaking with passion, “If it is a visual poem then you’re looking at the shape, whereas with a sound poem it’s about the sound patterns the words make and… investigating those sound patterns in poetry.” He is direct in his appraisal “…so when you see it, when you hear it, that has to be the first thing that hits you.”

Concrete poetry began as a global movement around 1955, or at least Childe tells us it’s 1955 because “1955 has a good sound to it” and who’s going to argue with him? What is interesting about this genre, Childe feels, is that concrete poetry as an artform developed globally at the same time. There are numerous accounts of the beginnings of concrete poetry across many countries, and as the movement developed so did its breadth of scale. The term ‘concrete’ is an umbrella for a vast array of avant garde concepts, “On the one end of the sound scale there is the verbal statement, and at the other are noises such as the cough and sneeze poems by the likes of Kurt Schwitters” explains Childe as the discussion then turns to the merits of the more extreme ends of the concrete artform.

The conversation flows from one topic to the next and from one room to the next with such fluidity that I begin to wish with all of my heart that I’d recorded the afternoon’s meanderings on Dictaphone as oppose to taking notes as I am so distracted and so enthralled by this poet and what he has to say.

We move into the front room as people from the village drop by to visit the couple and the topic of conversation switches to book-art and Childe’s “obsession with the white page”. A number of years ago Childe quit his job to write his ‘great work of art’ but struggled to write – anything. This was when he realised that his “problem was not intellectual, or emotional. It was the physical problem of getting across the page,” he speaks with genuine passion as he says “…I found that anything I wrote marred the beauty of the blank page and decided that it was best to keep it blank!” This insightful self-discovery has continued to reverberate throughout every aspect of the poet’s work to this day. Momentarily, Childe is distracted by a 16month old boy named Joseph who is hell-bent on showing the poet the marbles taken from the fireplace; you immediately get the feeling that a great meeting of minds is occurring here, and Childe wouldn’t have it any other way.

As Joseph plies us all with marbles, Childe begins to pull books from the ceiling-high shelves that sit next to the chimneybreast. I mention that I’d read about his thesis, The Alexander Graham Bell Book and his eyes twinkle as he recounts the tale of how this study of concrete poetry split the educational faculty down the middle. The irreverent and cheeky manner in which he relays this story belies the seriousness of what actually happened. His 100 page major thesis comprised of the word ‘allo’, with the double ‘l’ looping like telephone wire across the 100 white pages (100 pages being the expected minimum length for a thesis).
“I lost friends over this book” he tells us with momentary seriousness. Which is a complete shame because isn’t that the whole point of art - to challenge the expected norms? To question not only established ideas but also the entire framework within which the artistic and literary establishments, including theorists, exist?

Linguistic subtexts are present within the ‘allo’; aside from the obvious allusions to the telephone there are other measures: on one level the ‘a’, alpha, is the first letter of the Greek alphabet and symbolic of the ox; the double ‘l’ then leads this ‘ox’ through to the end, the ‘o’, omega, which is the last letter of the Greek alphabet. So you have the beginning and the end – at the beginning and the end. There is more but you’d have to speak to Childe yourself for any further reasoning; or perhaps I am reading too much into it, maybe I am guilty of searching for meaning when I should just accept the work for what it is. We read and discuss many other book-art creations from Childe including, Backgammon Dragon, Distaff and Un Fleuve Saint Laurent, and we’ve posted a short film from You Tube about Un Fleuve below.

TheAbsurd lose time (definitely hours – possibly days) in Childe’s weird and wonderful world of sound and art, and before we leave he insists that we have another go with the scissors to create some 3d castles with red and orange paper. A trite allusion to a pack of cards would round off the article nicely here, but unfortunately I’d struggled to shoehorn it in and there would be no meaning in it at all. So we set about the task of creating our castles with the enthusiasm of children; this has a lot to do with Childe’s attitude; his cheeriness is infectious, his conversation vibrant and his work mindblowing. We finish the interview feeling exuberant, mentally stimulated and completely in awe of this man… we literally start to dream up new ideas and creations the second that we leave his home. I seriously don’t think that we’ve ever been so positively affected and inspired by spending time with an artist, which is odd really when you consider that ‘meaning is secondary’ in this poet’s work. All we can say, with complete honesty is:
‘long may the legend that is Childe Roland continue!’