Nighthawks Jilted City: bits of Jensen Wilder Interview 9/8/2012 What is it about Patrick Mcguinesss jilted city that interested you? Well I’d heard his name before, but I was in a bookshop in Heswall. He’d recently been there for a signing. There was a pretty girl behind the counter and I mentioned how was sorry I was to have missed him. She told me that there were still some signed copies. I'd looked through the copies on the shelf and none were signed. She told me he'd signed labels to stick into the books on purchase. I found that quite funny, I'm still not sure why. What about his poetry? Well, I liked the way he was responding to the memory of his mother. Place as well. I think his mother represented his home. Travelled around but she became 'home' to him. I enjoy exploring the idea of 'home', how someone can make you feel you're there. Was there a particular poem that stood out? No, even now I couldn’t quote anything from it the collection. I haven't had it that long. It’s the over arching themes I enjoy. I haven’t sunk my teeth into it. Poetry is like hard candy, you take your time with it. Some poets that are punchy and snappy, the best are to be savoured. What do you think 'jilted city' means? I think it means leaving the marriage of place behind. I think he's very bound up in places, I think he sees them as relationships. He seems like he's in a restless state, leaving the place where he is to move into his memories. Like jilting someone at the alter. The idea of home for him is slowly becoming memory, you have to forget/withdraw from where you are in order to recover memory; to return home. You jilt anything you give up on. What does it mean to you? This idea of jilting a place where you are in favour of another is one of my themes. Life themes, I mean. I left Liverpool, the place I first made love, the place I made memories… it was a relationship. I went to study in Bath and excommunicated myself from Liverpool. I had this feeling I'd never return to Liverpool. So, thinking back, I connected my sadness’s with the place, to give myself the excuse not to look back. I was in Bath for 5 years. I had manic patches, bouts of depression. I connected to Bath like a new love and when that love went sour, when I had my last mental break-down, I came back. So I jilted Bath, like I had before. I was so depressed, I didn’t think I deserved to live down there. So again it was a jilted love. Sometimes we don't leave because things have ended, we leave because we don't want to fight any more. We go into a coma. Ultimately 'jilted' to me, is a forced exile however it comes about. Whether that is because things got bad, or you did, or they spurned you, or you just got nerves walked toward the bride. What does the city at night mean to you? “Caffeine is the fuel of the city by day, alcohol is the fuel of the city by night.” - 'Identikit Manchester, Mark Rainey.. The city at night means opportunity. Well no…. actually yeah. (laughs) the city comes alive at night. The people are a lot less inhabited. I think desire and camaraderie is elevated and
accelerated. Men you’ve never met, who you knock into by accident, start a fight with you and then two seconds later they want to take you around with them and buy you coke. And with women, desire is elevated, they're less inhibited. A lot of what people think is debauched behaviour, is so much more natural. The city at night to me is a landscape of impulse. It’s the hardest to capture. You can paint in the day because the landscape is lit up by the sun. Everything is there for the eye. But night… we can't see everything. The only light is signs advertising this or that activity. I think the most important thing to remember about the night is how much more we are in control of what is seen at night. If we don't want to see it, we don't illuminate it. It's a limited perspective in one sense and at the same time we're wholly in control of what is seen. Jensen Wilder is a writer and poet based in Liverpool http://la-voliere.tumblr.com/
Edward Hopper Nighthawks 1942