Brian Bilston

On Musk, Morrissey and the Reader’s Digest

Interview by Andrew Tucker Leavis

Let’s open with a quick fire round. What's one word that should be retired from poetry?

Maybe it's like one of those slightly pretentious ones, like ‘obsidian’.

Inches or centimetres?

Centimetres.

Which historical era would you visit for a weekend?

I don't think I'd be too adventurous. I'd like to go back to the 60s and take in a few gigs.

Who would you be trapped on a desert island with – Burnham, Starmer, or Farage? Sorry that those are the options.

Those are the only people I could be trapped with?

That's all I've got.

Maybe Farage, but only if I could, you know, club him to death with a sort of tree branch. Would that be acceptable?

I think that's within the rules. Lastly – if you could automate one aspect of your life, what would it be?

To be honest it'd probably be social media, which I've kind of grown to loathe over the years. 

Your work doesn't seem as contentious as some of the people who are trying to stir up division. Does everyone now get a negative response online to some extent?

Well, as soon as I post anything political, it all tends to kick off, you know? I've had, sort of, empty death threats from various people.

Wow. The New Yorker said of Dorothy Parker, to whom you’ve been compared, that her writing was jabbing with pins – but that she jabs with such impish pleasure that you’re pleased to be her victim. Do you ever write, or prod, at particular people?

I have done, in the past. Actually, I did step back from social media for a while. I realised my previous ten poems had been written about Trump, which at the time I thought was a cathartic process for me, but after a while I wasn’t sure that being so fixated on it was helping others, or indeed myself.

I still aim at certain individuals today – Elon Musk is always a good target, for instance. But I try to step back more than I did – partly for my own mental health, but also to try and find more subtle ways about writing about my disquiet, because quite often there are bigger forces at play than just one person.

‘Brian Bilston’ started as a pseudonym you used when writing parody football reports. Do you find there’s a clear line between Brian and the real you?

It was quite helpful in those early days to have a little bit of distance. I'm actually quite shy and unconfident, and I think having the label of ‘Brian Bilston’ enabled me to cast some of that aside. I could pretend that it wasn't actually me who was doing all of this stuff. 

But I think that’s become rather blurred in recent years. Now I'm doing shows, people in real life come up to me and call me Brian. I don't think there’s such a huge distance between the two of us, and I’ve embraced that.

You’ve said it hadn't been your plan to become a writer. When it happened, though, did you feel it was the right role for you?

It wasn't planned, although I did have various spells in my life when I really did want to be a writer. Particularly my 20s, trying to write novels – I’ve probably still got them in drawers somewhere – and not really getting very far, partly because I didn't really know what I was doing, but also didn't have any kind of confidence that I could be a writer.

Then real life gets in the way, and you end up doing a proper job, and you have a family, and so that all recedes. It's a constant surprise to me that I do what I do now, but to a certain extent I've always been writing poems, though I didn’t share them until I got onto social media.

Is there a particular person in your life who do you think might be responsible for your passion for reading and writing?

When I did my A levels I had a really good English teacher. Larkin’s Whitsun Weddings was one of our set texts – there's something about Larkin’s poetry. It was a combination of being quite miserable – as indeed I was, as a teenager growing up in Birmingham – and being quite sweary, and that's always fun to see on the printed page when you're at school.

I didn't really grow up with a huge amount of books in my house. I wasn't always into reading. I do vaguely remember being about 15 when I noticed that my brother had the complete novels of George Orwell in his room, and I thought I'd give that a go, which really got me into reading. It just burgeoned from there, really.

You’ve toured with Henry Normal, who’s a library advocate. Were you a library person?

Up until about the age of 11 or 12, I was often at Kings Heath Public Library in South Birmingham. Then my first proper job after leaving university was as a bookseller, and I worked in publishing too.

So I've always kind of been surrounded by books, even if we didn't really have them in the house too much. We did use to have things like the slightly awful Reader's Digest condensed novels, which I think were for people who didn’t have the time to read a novel in its entirety, so I remember I used to read those, but we didn't have much else beyond that.

I think there'd be headlines about how much our attention was shrinking if we reintroduced condensed novels now. Maybe it offers a way into reading?

Yeah. We had about four spy novels, we had John le Carré and Ian Fleming. It didn't stop me from then searching for the full length novels when I was older, and ploughing my way through the whole 320 pages, or whatever it would be. But you're right, it probably wouldn't go down so well these days!

Would you still pick up a thriller or a spy novel?

I read all sorts, including what’s sometimes called genre fiction, though I hate that term. I’ve been in a book group with some friends from publishing for about 30 years now, and we read all kinds of books: literary fiction, Mills & Boon, children’s books, poetry, and all sorts of nonfiction too…

Is there writing in some of those categories that’s as good as literary fiction, but gets overlooked because it has the ‘genre’ label?

I don’t know why we decide to pigeonhole books in that way. It happens in poetry too. There’s this idea that one type of poetry is ‘proper poetry’ and another is just mildly amusing verse, and that drives me a bit mad. I always think: who are the gatekeepers here, and why are they trying to restrict what counts as acceptable writing? I definitely take issue with all of that.

You mentioned Larkin – there’s a lot that’s funny in his work, but no one would say that weakens the writing.

Absolutely. I’ve always enjoyed humour in writing, whether it’s the zaniness of Spike Milligan or the subtlety you get in the novels of Jonathan Coe or Iain Banks. 

Quite often, if I don’t like a book, it’s because the tone feels completely humourless – something’s missing. Not every book needs to be funny, but I do miss it when there’s no sense of irony or playfulness underneath the surface.

I really enjoy D. H. Lawrence, and he’s our headline Nottingham writer, but I do feel he’d be hard to have a laugh with. There’s something very po-faced there. Do you find that humour is part of what motivates you to write? 

Without humour I’m not even sure I’d still be writing, to be honest. There’s something about making either myself or somebody else laugh that I really love.

There’s a rhythm to landing a line properly - I notice it on stage too. I can have what I think is a funny line, but it’ll get a different reaction on different nights based purely on the order that the words are in. Moving an adverb to the end of a sentence can completely change how a joke lands. I find that process fascinating.

You worked in publishing, where there’s an emphasis on grammatical correctness. But you often deliberately bend grammar or syntax – I’m thinking of poems like ‘The Caveman’s Lament’. Do you think grammatical rules help communication, or can they get in the way of it? 

I’m both drawn to, and slightly appalled by, grammar and by the formal structure of the English language. I’ll definitely notice grammatical mistakes in somebody else’s writing, and sometimes they jar with me. 

But most of the time I think rules are there to be broken. Meaning and voice are far more important, and grammar becomes secondary. Whether you follow the rules or not depends entirely on the kind of writing you’re trying to create.

Sometimes there’s a divide between page poets and spoken-word poets, but I think you bridge that gap well. There’s a lot to unpack in your work, but it’s never impenetrable. Is that something you consciously aim for?

Honestly, I’m not always sure what I’m aiming for these days. Sometimes you begin with a word, a thought, or a line, and you think you know where the poem is going…but by the time you’ve wrestled with it, it’s become something completely different. Usually better, I think. So I don’t really follow one particular route.

That’s one of the things I like most about writing: it can genuinely surprise you. You sit down thinking one thing and suddenly realise you’ve spent the entire day going somewhere you never expected to go.

Sometimes those unexpected left turns are the rewarding ones. You left-turned when you collaborated with the band The Catenary Wires recently – is music something you’d like to keep exploring?

I love music. I was in a few bands when I was younger, so going on tour with the band has been incredible – genuinely one of the best things I’ve done.

A lot of what I’ve written over the years has probably been influenced by music as much as poetry. When I think back to being a teenager, as well as Larkin, I was always drawn to songs lyrics that were interesting, funny, literate. Music has never been far away from my writing.

I’d definitely like to do more of it, although for me it’s more of an enjoyable diversion than a serious career move. It’s just something I’ve always loved and would be happy to keep being a part of.

Were you a fan of The Smiths? There was always something Larkinesque there.

I was a big Smiths fan, though I can’t say I’m much of a Morrissey fan these days. I was also a big fan of Billy Bragg, and I came to Bob Dylan a bit later.

But yes, that Morrissey-Larkin connection is interesting. There’s a kind of misery that becomes funny because it’s so extreme, and they both do a good trade in that.

That feels like a particularly British sensibility, I think. Do you find you have much of a fanbase outside Britain now?

Yeah, to my surprise, quite a few Americans seem to like my work, which doesn’t entirely make sense to me, because I assume they won’t understand half the references. It’s probably still a tiny percentage, but there are Americans who respond to that sort of British humour. I’d love to do some shows in America one day – probably to audiences of about 30 people – but they do exist.

People have also pointed out connections with certain American writers. They mention Ogden Nash, because I like using rhyme in my poetry, and Shel Silverstein, whose work has a playful, offbeat quality.

Is there a current writer you’d recommend? Someone our readers should immediately go out and pursue?

That’s always difficult because I like such a wide range of writers. But one poet I really love is Hera Lindsay Bird. I think she’s only published one major collection so far, but her poems are wonderful. She’s a master of strange and arresting metaphors. I’ll read one of her poems and think, ‘I wish my brain worked like that.’

A few years ago, one of her poems about Monica Geller from Friends went viral – and it was brilliant. It was funny, but it also captured something about neurosis, fandom and popular culture.

Brian, it’s been a pleasure to chat to you.

Cheers, and you.

Brian Bilston will be appearing at Metronome on the 6th of June as part of the Nottingham Poetry Festival – tickets can be bought here.