{"id":7962,"date":"2022-12-01T13:00:38","date_gmt":"2022-12-01T13:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/?p=7962"},"modified":"2025-05-20T07:32:48","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T07:32:48","slug":"peter-hodgkiss-interview-with-chris-torrance-for-poetry-information-1977","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/7962\/peter-hodgkiss-interview-with-chris-torrance-for-poetry-information-1977\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Hodgkiss: Interview with Chris Torrance for Poetry Information 1977"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Peter Hodgkiss:<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I started <em>Poetry Information<\/em> in London in January 1970 as a modest broadsheet listing recent poetry publications. \u00a0Moving to Swansea in the mid-1970s gave me the time to expand the magazine to include critical articles on poets involved in what has (rather grandly) been described as the British Poetry Revival (i.e. poets outside the mainstream of the established presses and literary magazines). \u00a0With this in mind I discovered that Chris Torrance, whose work I already knew from his Ferry Press collections of the late-60s, had recently moved to a cottage in the Vale of Neath high above the Swansea valley. \u00a0What could romantically called a hermits life. \u00a0He made the occasional visit to the \u201cbig city\u201d \u00a0and we linked up, got on well, and I was able to organise several readings at different Swansea venues including the No Sign Bar and the Buffalo Social Club, as well as the more \u201carty\u201d Swansea Arts Workshop. \u00a0When I decided to do an interview issue of the magazine Chris seemed an obvious candidate having spent his earlier life in South London before moving to South Wales. \u00a0To me the interview works well and, together with the other interviews (Thomas a Clark, Tom Pickard, Barry MacSweeney, Ken Smith) provides an interesting insight into the \u201calternative\u201d poetry scene at the time.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Further information is provided in the Book <em>CUSP<\/em>, edited by Geraldine Monk. \u00a0Also for those involved in further research the Peter Hodgkiss archive is available at the British Library.<\/p>\n<h4><span style=\"color: #993366;\"><a style=\"color: #993366;\" href=\"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Torrance-Interview.pdf\">Torrance Interview<\/a><\/span><\/h4>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>An earlier issue of Poetry Information has a short article on Torrance by Barry MacSweeney.<\/p>\n<h4><span style=\"color: #993366;\"><a style=\"color: #993366;\" href=\"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/MacSweeney-on-Torrance.pdf\">MacSweeney on Torrance<\/a><\/span><\/h4>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h4>Click here to go back to:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/8008\/contributors-and-links-to-pages-1-4-4\/\">Contributors and Links to Pages 1 &#8211; 4<\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Peter Hodgkiss: I started Poetry Information in London in January 1970 as a modest broadsheet listing recent poetry publications. \u00a0Moving to Swansea in the mid-1970s gave me the time to expand the magazine to include critical articles on poets involved in what has (rather grandly) been described as the British Poetry Revival (i.e. poets outside [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8145,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[67,12],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/images.jpeg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42xiC-24q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7962"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7962"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8284,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7962\/revisions\/8284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}