Poet Interview: Peter Graarup Westergaard
In honour of Poetry Month, we caught up with each of our House of Hallowes poets, starting with Warning Light Calling’s Peter Graarup Westergaard.
What brought you to writing poetry?
Actually, I started writing poetry when I was about 15 or 16 years old. And it all started in school when we were introduced to poetry in the literature classes. I was mesmerized by the enigmatic words and the deep underground of meaning in the poems. We were reading several poems but I was totally intrigued by the fact that you could produce so much meaning, structure and beauty with so few words as poems normally contain. I started writing my own poems, they were not very good in the beginning, but the writing process helped me understand the language and structure of poetry. Later, I started to get my own voice, mainly because I also used my poetry-writing as a kind of therapeutic session where I write all my thoughts, ideas and anxieties out so I am not so much haunted by them internally. This is also the case with WARNING LIGHT CALLING.
How do you find your way ‘into’ a poem, or poetry writing session?
As said, much of my poetry finds its germ in therapeutic writing where I free myself from troubling thoughts. This is at least how I produce the germ of a text and how I created WARNING LIGHT CALLING. I produce a lot of text material, rubbish or nonsense actually, and then I start editing and rewriting. I invent new layers to the text, change the words, and the order of the sentences. And VOILA – at a certain point, a new text has emerged from nothing. It is a mystery, really. However, the creation is also a very slow process, it can sometimes take 10-15 years from beginning to end. The text material that I am working on is seldom less than 10 years old. The time span is important because it gives me an objective perspective on the text material I am working with as if I didn’t write it in the first place. The distance is important. This also gives the poem what T.S. Eliot called an “objective correlative”, I hope. Or you could also say that I strive for a “negative capability” as John Keats would call it.
What is your poetry collection about?
Generally, I don’t know. Much of it is written because the words to me sound great or intriguing! It is up to the reader to decide what it all means. However, I am also a kind of reader. And after the publication of WARNING LIGHT CALLING, I am surprised about how prophetic it is. I mean I finished most of the writing process in 2020, yet many of the themes seem strikingly contemporary, also on points that were never my intention. WARNING LIGHT CALLING is against my original intention, sadly enough, right in its prophecy. I mean, WARNING LIGHT CALLING describes how a Soviet Army occupies the consciousness of the protagonist, Sputnik Peter. At the time of writing, I didn’t imagine that this could almost come true in 2024. I was meant as a fictional element, but it turned out that it is almost true, if you look at the situation in Europe today.
Also, the poems thematize “talking machines with lips” and at the time, I didn’t know how surprised and astonished the world would be by new AI technologies, i.e. ChatGPT. Yet after reading WARNING LIGHT CALLING again, I see that the dystopian aspect of AI definitely is a major theme in the poetry collection. Also, the whole world spirit is much closer to the mental situation of Sputnik Peter than I ever could have imagined.
Who did you write your poetry collection for?
I wrote it for the lovers of poetry, science fiction and speculative literature. I wrote it for those who fear the future. Actually, I also wrote WARNING LIGHT CALLING for those who love Soviet literature. The collection contains a lot of references to Soviet writers and philosophers such as Mikhail Bulgakov, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Lev Vygotsky, Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova, Isaak Babel, Joseph Brodsky, Vladimir Nabokov as well as Bachtin’s Dostoevsky. Among others. WARNING LIGHT CALLING is meant as a tribute to these writers, and today this seems more important than ever, since these writers are at risk of becoming discredited by the world mood after the Russian aggression against Ukraine, although many of these writers were originally Ukrainian writers.
If you could have 1 - 2 take-aways for readers to ponder/feel upon finishing your poetry collection, what are they?
I would like my readers to look into a strange version of the future and enjoy the dystopia of an alternative world which is, sadly enough, not as alternate as I originally intended it. I would like readers to change their perspective on things. WARNING LIGHT CALLING is basically about changing the perspective, looking at things differently by confusing the senses and language, and distorting the ordinary way of looking at the world and yourself. Maybe WARNING LIGHT CALLING is shedding light on something hitherto unseen. The reader could be alarmed and might start to actually see.
I also imagine many readers can identify with the love story which is present in WARNING LIGHT CALLING too. The triangle of love between the main characters Sputnik Peter, Yelena and Don Paris is the main story and topic of WARNING LIGHT CALLING. Most people can probably identify with this story which borrows both from Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita”, Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” and Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”. I might be a little far-fetched here, but nevertheless, that is what I intended. However, WARNING LIGHT CALLING is basically about being young finding your way to love and also about how to deal with unrequited love. I think everyone can relate to that. Basically, I work with stereotypes, but I try to distort them. I hope this will make the reader wonder about stereotypes in general.
Out of your collection, do you have any favourite poems? Why/Why not?
Yes, my favourite poems, the ones I think work the best, are “Mayakovsky, I” and “The Red Space Cavalry”. Both poems are heavily inspired by Soviet writers, as you can probably guess from the titles, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Isaac Babel. In “Mayakovsky, I” I try to transform the myth of Mayakovsky into a Danish setting and the battle between industrialism and agriculture. “The Red Space Cavalry” elaborates on the tone and mood of Isaac Babel’s “Red Cavalry”. I particularly wanted to express how young men can become incredibly cocky and arrogant, especially if they are soldiers in a war situation. Both poems are also indirectly a critique of stereotypical masculinity.
What is your philosophy of poetry?
My philosophy of poetry is mainly inspired by the thoughts and ideas of the German-Jewish philosopher, Walter Benjamin—at least that is the case in WARNING LIGHT CALLING. I wanted my poetry to be “Denkbilder” or “thought-images” as Walter Benjamin defines them. My poetry is to be “phantasmagoric” in the sense Walter Benjamin described the term. In addition, the whole message of WARNING LIGHT CALLING could resemble the points of “The Origin of German Tragic Drama”, namely that “ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars” and also that “in the ruins of great buildings the idea of the plan speaks more impressively than in lesser buildings, however well preserved they are [...] In the spirit of allegory it is conceived from the outset as a ruin, a fragment. Others may shine resplendently as on the first day; this form preserves the image of beauty to the very last.”
Exactly this I tried to mimic in WARNING LIGHT CALLING which is built on the ruins of a great building, a great history projected into the future. Through a love story, I try to unfold a constellation of ideas from different areas not usually combined. Yet also my understanding of the science fiction of WARNING LIGHT CALLING comes in part from Walter Benjamin’s philosophy. I am inspired by Walter Benjamin’s concepts such as the aura, the messianic, mechanical reproduction, profane illumination, theory of technology, state of emergency, etc.