Absolutely
CULTURE
POETRY IN MOTION I
Edward Lyon meets Al Alvarez, one of the 20th century’s most enduring literary icons
t’s a particularly British day for weather. The morning starts with proper spring sunshine, some of the first we’ve seen this year, and as the air warms, life begins to divert towards London’s green spaces. Then comes the deluge. In a few short moments, the sun vanishes beneath a blanket of cloud. Down comes the rain, then the hail. Thunder cracks, and people cower – but not for long. Ten minutes later, the sky is blue, the sun bright and the storm so completely disappeared it might have been a figment, the bad dream of someone sleeping in the grass. I’m one of those soaked in the downpour, but it’s hard to mind; indeed, it seems fitting to experience such extremes while on my way to meet Al Alvarez. One of the last century’s most fascinating literary personalities, Alvarez was Poetry Editor of the Observer for nearly twenty years. Then and afterwards, he championed emerging writers including Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (most notably in his era-defining 1962 anthology The New Poetry), wrote several acclaimed novels and non-fiction works (including The Savage God, a study of suicide, and Feeding the Rat, on mountaineering) and published a much-lauded volume of his own poems. His latest book, Pondlife, is a journal covering several years of almost-daily trips to swim in Highgate Ponds – and the book is filled to the brim with weather. Alvarez has been a Hampstead resident since his youth, and has lived in the same elegant townhouse since the 1960s. I step inside and find myself in a bohemian den filled with books and pictures. I’m greeted by Al’s wife, Anne, a psychotherapist and leading authority on the treatment of child trauma, before being shown through to a cosy kitchen nook where Al sits at a table strewn with newspapers and magazines. A few years ago, Alvarez suffered a stroke. Undaunted, he recovered his strength and returned to swimming. More recently, another
stroke has kept him from the ponds, probably for good, but he nonetheless greets me in fine spirits, and is very soon telling me how his parents moved to Hampstead when he was a child, and how his long association with the swimming ponds on Hampstead Heath began soon afterwards. ‘As a child, I didn’t swim there as regularly as I did later on,’ he says, ‘because, you know, I was sent away to school at 12 or 13 and there were other things going on. But I have always swum there, yes.’ The affection Alvarez feels for the ponds and the heath is clear throughout Pondlife, as he uses the changing seasons and his
experience of the scenery as a launch for broader reflections on life, relationships and the hopes and fears of old age. His writing suggests a deep but unsentimental respect for the natural world, I suggest. ‘Yes, I suppose that’s one reason I’ve always lived in Hampstead. It’s a lovely area, so many trees. It’s not like I’ve always been obsessed by nature more than other things, but I have a good eye. I see what’s going on around me.’ Do you still visit the heath now, I ask. ‘Oh, yes!’ We go on to speak about Alvarez’s youth, as detailed in his 1999 memoir Where did it All Go Right? I ask if his reputation as a literary man of action is justified. Was he really the ‘Boy’s Own Adventure’ type?
‘When I was young, yes. I’m an old, old man now, of course, but I had a lot of fun when I was younger, put it that way.’ To be honest, there’s still something youthful about Alvarez today, at 83; a glitter in the eyes and a gusty, irrepressible laugh that make him enervating company for all his attempts at selfdeprecation. Clearly, age and the infirmities that come with it are a bugbear, but is he glad to have lived when and how he did? ‘Well, there aren’t as many chances to have fun these days,’ he says. I mention that my grandmother is set to turn 86 the next day, and that when she talks about her childhood – poverty-stricken as it was – it’s as a golden age of romance and discovery, when the world seemed far more wonderful than it does now. ‘What she and I both have in common,’ Alvarez says, ‘is the war. Everything got taken apart and resettled, as it were. You had to find stuff out, when we were younger. It very much feels like another era now.’ We’ve been talking for over half an hour and it’s probably time for me to leave; for the first time in a decade of interviews, I regret it. We squeeze in a few more minutes of conversation, skipping from poker (‘I played for high stakes; I lost for high stakes sometimes’) to contemporary poetry (‘I don’t follow it anymore’) to the US poet Frederick Seidel (‘Oh yes, he’s rather good’). We also touch once again on the allure of the area – Alvarez professes himself a fan of nearby bookseller, Daunt’s, and speaks warmly of the local literary heritage. Eventually, we come to what he is reading at the moment: ‘[John] Le Carré’s new book [A Delicate Truth]. He’s marvellous, it’s a very elaborate spy story.’ I can’t help myself. ‘Have you met him?’ I ask. ‘Oh, yes,’ Alvarez answers, ‘he lives just down the road.’ Pondlife is out now, published by Bloomsbury. 17
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