leesmithwriter

Photo

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 06:44:41 +0000

I’m currently writing and directing a short film called...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 07:02:00 +0000

I’m currently writing and directing a short film called ‘Seedling’, due to be finished in July. Videos, photos and more information is here

Photo

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:25:31 +0000

Photo

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 06:30:58 +0000

looking out across Victoria on my first full day as an...

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 22:52:55 +0000

looking out across Victoria on my first full day as an Australian resident

reading at The Compass in London, my final UK appearance for a...

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 20:09:00 +0000

reading at The Compass in London, my final UK appearance for a while

reading at The Compass, Islington - 14th November, 7.30pm

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:36:00 +0100

reading at The Compass, Islington - 14th November, 7.30pm

some poets have asked me questions

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 17:27:00 +0100

Mark Burnhope:

A lot of your poems seem rather minimal. When they’re not ‘short’, they often consist of taut, clipped lines, or short numbered sections. One of them is a haibun. There are photographs included in the collection too, which add to a kind of ’travel journal’ feel, where these elements might be collected together to chart a journey. Do you see visuals as an inherent part of your practice? Could you tell us something about your composition and organising principles?

Away from the City is indeed a travel journal, an account of a year spent in two cities. I wanted the poems to form a series of images, short instances of emotion, movement, or even nothingness, that transport the reader through these urban environments. This journey is very much a visual experience.

The photographs create an atmosphere within which the poems emerge. This process reflects how many of the poems were written - observing and capturing visual exchanges, and then interpreting these elements in poetic form.

I can’t write long poems. The images get lost in the writing. I don’t have a huge attention span, so the more immediate these observations are, the more they are allowed to resonate.

Claire Trevien:

The title seems deliberately misleading considering the predominance of urbanity in these poems, but then as one realizes that it’s a tale of two cities, it seems perhaps as if the title captures that sense one has when ‘belonging’ to two places: of always missing one when with the other. Did you write your Cambridge poems in Melbourne and vice versa, or where they done in situ?

The title does hint at that sense of belonging in two places. Indeed I did write some Cambridge poems in Melbourne, and vice versa — which led to a number of interesting links between different poems. I think the title also tries to convey the feeling of movement in the series as a whole. I felt sometimes that by merely walking and observing the people who inhabit the city, I was moving further away from it.

Adrian Slatcher:

We’re used to a “transatlantic” language writing between Europe and America, I wonder to what extent you felt you had to choose or develop a “trans-pacific” language to write about two such distant, and distinct cities as Cambridge and Melbourne. There seems a consistency in your writing between the two places, but its quite impressionistic - as if you’re seeing both the new and familiar for the first time. To what extent was this deliberate?

When I first began writing these poems in Melbourne, I had been there a number of times previously. I was familiar with most of the city, but I still felt like a tourist every time I returned. I tried to harness these feelings of alienation, but apply them to local, everyday situations. Perhaps it’s this element of alienation that ties the language of the two cities together. Or it may be that influences on my own dialect had seeped through when writing this series — I felt very strongly connected to Melbourne after I returned to Cambridge.

I like art/text collaborations - for you was this always an important element what you wanted to do? I’m interested in how the exhibition, and then the pamphlet emerged, and whether you had to write within those constraints, or found this enabling?

The collaboration with photography was an essential element in the germination of this book. I felt inspired by the way that these two cities had very clear visual identities (architecture, fashion, business etc.) and the power that photography has to capture poetic visual images. The original exhibition of Away from the City contained 24 photographs, and only eight poems. I wanted to experiment with the way that people navigated around the images and text, and what parallels they would draw between them.

With the pamphlet, I constrained myself to including only twelve poems from each city. Here I wanted the images created by the poetry to be in the foreground. The choice of using only eight photographs was a difficult one, and perhaps I would choose eight different ones for a new edition.

I’m just interested in what other poetry you like/read - particularly given that you must have come across a lot working for Salt. I published some of Chris McCabe’s early poems for instance in Lamport Court, and his approach to how the poems look on the page, as well as the kind of short poems he does, seems to have something in common with your work. Did the Salt list/or particularly other poets feed into your work is it something in parallel?

Working for Salt obviously exposed me to a huge array of contemporary styles. And to an extent, I guess editing and typesetting the Salt list allowed me a broader knowledge of the range of poetry being published. I remember, not long after joining, reading Luke Kennard’s The Solex Brothers and thinking how completely different it was from anything I had studied at university. It encouraged me to experiment with style, and I remember writing many more prose poems after reading that book.

I’ve tried hard not to emulate poets that I enjoy reading. It spoils my experience of their poetry. However, looking back on the poems now, I can see elements of Matthew Sweeney, Tobias Hill, Bashō. I believe I first read McCabe’s work after writing Away from the City.

On the whole, I’d rather remove myself from style comparisons and influences. My fear is for a reader who stops mid-way through one of my poems (or anyone else’s) to consider who the poet has been influenced by.

I believe you’re returning to Melbourne. Where next for your artistic practice then?

I’ve just invested in a new camera, so more photography/poetry collaborations. I want to experiment more with exhibitions and digital. There may be room for a ‘spin-off’ pamphlet, but I certainly couldn’t manage a full collection.

Melbourne’s a perfect place to develop the visual aspect of my writing. Also, I’m looking forward to having a huge range of creative artists (music, art, design) to collaborate with. The poetry community in Melbourne is very different to the UK. I like the idea of not having to conform to a particular school/publisher, developing new audiences, and generally not being outcast by an antiquated poetry establishment.

Photo

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 17:58:32 +0100

I asked a poet some questions

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 18:59:05 +0100

I asked a poet some questions:

Claire Trevien and I posed a few questions to fellow Salt poet JT Welsch, as part of an interview for our up-coming tour.

New camera is here!

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 18:52:35 +0100

New camera is here!

family

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 21:19:42 +0100

family

My old Kiev camera has been broken for a couple of months now....

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 19:00:40 +0100

My old Kiev camera has been broken for a couple of months now. I’m saving for a new one. I’ll probably go for something like this. I’ve been holding off some projects until I get the new camera. The better I save, the sooner I’ll be able to crack on.

Mon, 16 May 2011 21:17:00 +0100

employability

Sat, 14 May 2011 17:36:20 +0100

Talked to a group of students yesterday about graduate employability in publishing. Hope I managed to inspire some of them to pursue a career in the creative media industry. Some good points made by all - work experience is vital, gain as many skills as you can, especially digital, and have patience.

Glad to share my experience with a keen group of people - wish I had the chance to listen to people in the business while I was doing my degree.

I spent a few weeks back in Melbourne recently. Visited old...

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 14:31:23 +0100

I spent a few weeks back in Melbourne recently. Visited old friends. Cleared my head.

Utterly enchanted.

new portfolio and CV pages

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 15:45:27 +0000

I’ve been working on creating new pages to showcase my skills and experience. I thought it was a good idea to have an online CV, something a bit brighter than your average cv.doc. I spent a long time playing around with different formats, but decided in the end to keep it simple.

The job market is very competitive at the moment, and with a record number of unemployed graduates, I think it’s important to try to stand out.

Please take a look: CV portfolio

new photography page

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 13:30:01 +0000

I’ve added a new photography page to the site - take a look in the menu on the left. I’ve posted a few of my favourite photographs from the last two years. Hoping to add more soon.

remember ... we're real people too

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 18:37:20 +0000

Just before Christmas I was sitting on a train back from London with my boss, Chris. Next to us was an elderly lady, reading the poetry section of the London Review of Books. Before long we were discussing her favourite poets. I asked her how she buys poetry: I go into Heffers, or occasionally Toppings … bookshop staff are very helpful and will order in anything I can’t find … I’m not fond of Amazon at all.

The lady was keen to know about my own writing, and at the end of the journey, I was sure to pass on my contact details. The next day she emailed me with an order for my book. I popped a copy in the post, and a couple of days later I received a cheque in return. Paper-clipped to it was a colourful postcard and thank you note.

The coincidental nature of this real-world transaction charmed me. In fact, it’s the most pleasurable book sale I’ve made. This lady had no interest in my website or facebook page, and many other potential ‘customers’ will be the same. I quite like the idea that the internet isn’t everything.

But it’s also a reminder that I’m not meeting enough people. Over the coming weeks, I’m going to be stepping up my online and physical presence. But firstly, I’d like to share my thoughts on how these two very different methods of self promotion can work together:

The importance of physical and web presence for creative practitioners

I’m slightly uncomfortable with the way people are using social media as a tool for relentless self promotion. Surely there’s a limit to the number of ‘hey, check out this link’ tweets you can post before your followers decide they’re not going to bother anymore.

For most of us, having a website, twitter and facebook account is vital in order to communicate content, update news and generally remind people we are still here. But we must also remember that we’re real people too. It’s no use spending all our time grooming our digital profiles, if we’re not meeting people in person.

Social media is becoming increasingly important to the way artists communicate with their audience. It’s how we tell people about our events, our latest projects, sell our creations. We use these platforms to promote our physical appearances, report our reactions to events, share photographs of our real-world activities. And generally, it’s this content that encourages people to return to our websites - these things evoke an emotional response - rather than posting links to other online content that forces you to open another tab… to watch another stupid music video.

The trick with social media is to be hospitable. To welcome people, let them know that you’re doing things in real life. (There’s a line here, and no one needs to know when it’s time to go to bed.) Regular, personable blog posts will persuade your audience to return to your site on their own accord. And this will eliminate the need for constant facebook and twitter posts that eventually become more irritating than informative.

If this doesn’t happen, we risk becoming obsessive social media spammers who, instead of showcasing our talents, are reduced to re-tweeting super-slow-motion videos of a guy being slapped in the face.

I’m going to challenge myself. Over the next month, I’ll be writing regular posts in response to my efforts in self promotion. I have four targets:

1. Give out postcards to 30 real people

2. Add 30 virtual people to my facebook and twitter accounts

3. Sell 10 copies of my book

Let’s see how I get on.

back doora snowmelt of shoes * on separate chairsthey awaitthe fire’s demise

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 20:18:24 +0000

back door
a snowmelt
of shoes

on separate chairs
they await
the fire’s demise