When I heard it for the first time, hair grew on my body where there was none before, and the mug on my desk with a skull that read “sorry” suddenly felt a lot more intimidating.
My first encounter with Sometimes a Wild God (read the delicious poem here) was in Sophie Strand’s 2022 course Rewilding Mythology. Yet ever since it was written 10 years ago, Tom Hirons’ poem continues to wander and spread wildly across Earth. Last Summer, Nick Cave talked about it in his Red Hand Files and swiftly followed the outpour of love and bewonderment. This is what Nick Cave himself had to say:
“Tom, I have often returned to your poem since that rainy afternoon in Cassadaga. It is a beautiful, deep, raw thing, full of unruly life, and I feel a genuine connection to it. I love the feeling of ordered humanity at the mercy of this ancient, chaotic, pagan force – of ‘wrens singing old songs in the mouth of our kettle.’ Reading it is a particular pleasure because it gives weight to my own ‘Wild God’, pouring meaning into it and deepening and intensifying it, and I find reading your poem aloud and listening to my song at the same time to be a powerful experience. I see you wrote your poem about ten years ago – clearly, we are travelling down the same road, you’re just a bit further along than me! Hold your lantern high, Tom Hirons. We need it.”
For our upcoming EcoGathering, we will be joined by the English poet and storyteller. For who better to accompany us with lantern and wellies into the dark night of myth and story than the bard himself? We all know you don’t travel into the Underworld without first learning the appropriate etiquette. That’s why we sat together with Tom for a conversation that reaches into the depth of the poem and his poetic life. Trading with the muses, it turns out, isn’t as romantic as Tumbler makes it seem. “There have been times when it has been excruciatingly hard to picture making a living from my words”, says Tom. Yet, when poetry is your soul’s devotion, ignoring the impulse to create is a direct attack not just on one’s soul but also on the soul of the world that longs for “truth spoken with power.”
Niels: What is the role of the poet and the poem in challenging times?
“While there isn’t one role of a poet or poem, I think of poetry as truth spoken with power. That function to speak truth; to find ways of speaking truth that make the subtle focus of reality sing, doesn’t really change over time.
There are also calls to speak what is unspoken, to name what is in front of us, to say things about the emperor’s new clothes in whatever way that might be, to unmask denial, to build stepping stones or bridges or ladders from one place to another – to begin here and to move there in such a way that other people can make that journey as well. This is part of what I love. At the same time, I acknowledge that there is also a rhetorical need in me to make animal or creature noises in response to what I feel, or as an expression of what I feel. Without purpose, role, or anything other than sheer participation and authentic expression.”
Niels: What kind of storytelling do we need to meet this moment/this time humbly and honorably?
I’m interested in what ways of storytelling we might rediscover and play with that have a different function rather than carrying some kind of symbolic meaning or encounter with the personness of the story –stories in which the storyteller presents the story and the audience meets the story, and has some kind of soul contact with the story spirit or person. This increasingly strikes me as a kind of colonization of storytelling by one particular model and usually the big, white, charismatic male storyteller coming in and dispensing a story as wisdom. However much they might call themselves a story carrier, essentially, it’s like “I’m a wizard, here I come from my liminal place. And this is a thing that has been called for.” What if there’s a different way of storytelling where the prime purpose is connection and weaving of community, rather than individual soul growth or transformation? This is something I want to talk more about in the EcoGathering on story.
Niels: Where, and when, might we meet the Wild God? How do we know when he is near?
“Essentially, we meet the Wild God mostly under duress – in situations of voluntary or involuntary tension where the normal order of things collapses. We experience such moments where in one form or another, and to one degree or another, we are faced with the reality of how much we have lost, how much we have traded in the bargain of civilization and domesticity, and the cost of living as a well-behaved zoo animal in external and internal ways. We know the Wild God is near when we tremble – when we are excited and terrified. If we were a Tarot adventure, we would feel the tower itself shaking. There is this fascinating crossover from the internal to the external: the powerful crackle, hum, shake, or vibration of the natural world and the way that the curtain between this and the Otherworld is thin in certain places and thinner, by and large, in the natural world. But let’s not forget the incredible mad crucible of the inner city too, the way that that can unexpectedly crack us open by compression or catastrophe or through joy.”
Niels: When do you know a poem is finished?
I know a poem is finished when I can’t bear to look at it anymore. Sadly, by the time a poem gets out into the world, I usually hate it because I’m sick of it, and I’ve tried to wrap my brain and heart and soul around it so much that it’s time for it to get out of me and get out of my house. I have been around pregnancies enough to know that there comes a point where it really isn’t fun or sacred anymore. It’s just time to get this baby out. And that’s kind of how it is.
Sometimes, poems go out into the world before they’re ready. It’s painful and I regret it. Sometimes, they just have to go out because there is a deadline, and others just because that’s how they happened. I wrote and edited the poem ‘Sometimes a Wild God’ once, and it’s now been published in a few different editions. For each edition, I make small tweaks, but I think it has now settled into its final form. There’s nothing more that I want to do with it that isn’t a separate poem. Other, fresher poems, like “The Queen of Heaven”, I can still feel jiggling about and dancing as if they have the potential to change. But as time goes on, they kind of settle down, people stop dancing, and they form a more orderly pattern.”
Niels: What inner blocks did you have to overcome in your career as a poet?
“Writing poetry is a constant inner navigation, and there are things constantly vying to pull me off course – insecurity, self-doubt, annihilatory voices of self-criticism that may or may not be allied with that which propels me forward and actualizes my soul nature. I’ve had to learn how to stay alive and make ends meet; and, at times, have necessary jobs without completely killing the poetic function and capacity of my life. That’s tricky.
About 30 years ago, when I started writing, I made powerful choices that allied me to this apprenticeship with language. From that point onward, it’s simply been holding fast, regardless of what was going on. There have been times when it has been excruciatingly hard to picture making a living from my words. The rewards were in the soul’s satisfaction. I occasionally shared my work at open mics, both awkwardly and triumphantly. I found a way of using language that helped me become a storyteller so I could fulfill some aspect of that apprenticeship and have some air in my lungs as well and then used my actual tongue, rather than just being a solitary writer in my cave and shitty flat with water pouring down the walls.
Niels: Do you have any life advice for beginning poets and writers?
“Who are you addressing, who are you trying to impress? I think it’s bullshit to think you shouldn’t be trying to impress anyone. We are all trying to impress someone. I, for one, know who I’m trying to impress: I call her the Queen of Heaven. She exists in some territory shared by Baba Yaga and every woman I’ve ever loved and who has ever loved me and ever will. There is a character, some divinity. Let’s call her. I want to impress her. I also want to impress my long-dead grandfathers; I want to impress my sons so that they will know who I really am outside of being a father.”
Join our EcoGathering with Poet Tom Hirons, a free community conversation exploring the realms of poetry and story. we’ll dive into a particular story as one form of entry into the world of spirit and mystery.