Walking into verse

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, July 23rd.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: the process of a poet.

Malcolm Guite has long white hair, a well-kept beard, and spends a lot of time walking.

MALCOLM GUITE: I usually get the first lines of a poem when I'm out for a walk. Walking is a really key part of my day. I'm lucky to have a bit of woodland not far from me, and I generally do about two or three walks a day.

He lives in Norfolk, England, with his wife… and is working on his second ballad set among the knights of the Round Table. His first book is Galahad and the Grail, a long-form poem about the knight known for his purity in the quest for the Holy Grail. The book topped publishers’ lists and nearly sold out before its release last spring.

GUITE: I had to tell them that you know the “unique selling point,” which is that “USP”—they always want that you know, the USP—which is that nobody's done this for 150 years

BROWN: He says that might also be his “unique sinking point” and there’s a reason no one has done it for 150 years.

His poems often start iambic, following the beat of his steps.

GUITE: An iam is like a heartbeat. But um, but um, but um, you know, shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. You can hear it.

When he gets those first few lines started, he retreats to what he calls his “Temple of Peace.” It’s a small structure near his house with no electricity or wi-fi. Inside, there’s a table and chair at one end and a big comfortable chair at the other. He sits and gets out a fountain pen and a journal.

GUITE: When I'm composing a poem, I'm composing, as it were, first off on the left-hand page as the two pages look at me, and I'm keeping the right-hand page for sort of revisions and other lines, and ‘oh, I should have had a line there, and there's other thing on,’ and a sort of arrow through, you know, go in there.

EICHER: He tries to keep his inner critic silent at this stage. He says if there’s no room to experiment, he won’t come up with anything creative. He tries to love it before it’s perfect.

GUITE: You have to love it into being in the hope that it might become perfect, which is the way we are with our children. You know, we don't. You know, we don't ask our children to give us 10 good reasons why they should belong to us and be loved. We love them and belong to us, and then because we love them and they belong to us, they give us all kinds of reasons to be loved.

Eventually, he will edit and transfer it to his laptop and then edit again. He says he can write small poems anywhere, but his Arthuric poetry takes time, patience, and the right environment. He has to reread what he’s written to get back into the rhythm. Sometimes that can take a whole day.

GUITE: I have to block out—this is actually quite difficult to do, you know—two or three days, where I can really go for it, but once I'm in the zone, it's a huge pleasure to do it.

BROWN: Guite dedicated Galahad and the Grail to his mother. When he was young, she would recite poetry to him. Especially the stories about the knights of the Round Table. From a young age, he identified with Galahad. Someone with his own special quest—someone who wouldn’t be captain of the football team, like Lancelot.

When he was about eight, his mother decided he was ready for the story of Sir Balin. He begins in court with the other knights, but…

GUITE: He ends up killing somebody, and he's banished from the court.

EICHER: Balin is desperate to get back into the court, so he goes looking for an act of heroism. Instead, he wounds King Pallam, bringing destruction to the king’s people and land.

Eight-year-old Guite asked his mother:

GUITE: But mum, how could there even be a world where one man so rashly could do such havoc? What about all those innocent people who are suffering because how can that even be?” She looks me in the eye and says, “I'm telling you this story because you need to know that you and I live in just such a world.

Then she told him that before Balin becomes fully aware of what he’s done, Merlin says to him:

GUITE: But the day will come when the good knight comes, and the good knight will make it through the wasteland, and he will achieve the grail, and he will reverence where you didn't reverence.

BROWN: Guite says his mother told the real version of these stories without edits or embellishments—and that taught him about love, consequences, and the proper order of the world.

Now he is never scared of a blank page because it’s filled with the poems of the past. He says all he has to do is have a conversation with them.

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