A brief history of my friendship with Matt Simpson (1936-2009)

I first met Matt Simpson in 1973, when I attended Christ’s College, Liverpool for a brief but eventful three weeks, having failed to get the grades for York to study English Literature. I was taken to meet him because I was also a poet, though I was too shy to call myself one. He was generous, interested, invited me to read alongside himself and Harold Hikins, at an event they were doing in college. It was the first time I had ever read my poems in public. Matt took some poems away to look at for me, but a few days later I got a phone call from Liverpool University offering me a place through clearing. I immediately accepted and set about winding things up at college. I went to see Matt to get the poems back, and he gave me his opinion, which was that I ‘had something’. He told me to keep in touch and to send him poems.

During my time at Uni, and my postgrad degree there too, we kept in touch, and I went to poetry readings of his, when he would always come and sit with us and ask if he’d ‘been alright’. I was touched he wanted my reassurance, but as I came to know, it meant a lot to him to be appreciated.

We almost lost touch for a while as I went down a black hole of bereavements and other testing experiences, alongside a self-appointed apprenticeship to improve as a poet by trying out different forms, and attending my first Arvon course (where Liz Lochhead  told me I was a ‘born poet’) I had a poem accepted in Orbis, and wrote to him again. A letter came back by return, calling me his ‘erstwhile student’. He’d had his first collection out with Bloodaxe, and invited me to come and meet him and Monika at their holiday caravan in Winsford. He hadn’t changed a bit, and we simply picked up where we had left off.

He invited me to attend a crit group he ran at Runcorn Library, which is where the poems in my first collection were honed. On different occasions, he brought along George Szirtes and U A Fanthorpe, poets he had booked to come into college, and who were kind enough to come and talk to us. It was honest and forthright critique we got from him, but he also defended my poems. I wrote my first sonnet as a result of a challenge he gave me after a heated debate about metre, and no-one was more delighted than he was when it was published in London Magazine under the late Alan Ross. Matt introduced me to Rupert Loydell and told me I was ready for a first book, and Rupert might be interested in publishing it. He was, and I dedicated the book to Matt. Dandelions for Mother’s Day came out in 1988 and was reprinted a year later.

Eventually the group ran its course. Matt became instead my unofficial, unpaid mentor. We wrote to each other frequently, and we would speak on the phone once a week too. He would sometimes ring me up to read me a poem he’d just written. When he eventually got a computer, he’d email them, then ring me up for my thoughts. Over time, our relationship changed from great poet and mentor, to one in which we more equal and would help edit each other’s new poems. He had a small circle of poets he would show his work to, and I was one of them. He said I had the gift for putting my finger on just where the problem was, but this was because he I had absorbed so much from his ever-generously given edits he’d suggested on my own work.

In 1996, I edited a festschrift for him, which was no mean undertaking, because it had 83 contributors and was all done by snail mail. I had to type up the whole book myself, alongside a full-time teaching post and being a mum to two young children. But it was a labour of love, for by this time, after a friendship of 23 years, there was a deep, close and loving relationship between us.

This only deepened further over time. I was a regular visitor to his house and I also went into college on many occasions. I used to attend readings with him, because he wanted company. We travelled to Anne Stevenson’s 70^th birthday party together and stayed at the same B&B. When he retired from full time lecturing, he was even more keen for me to visit, and we enjoyed going for a swim together in his daughter Cathie’s swimming pool. He would always email me afterwards and thank me for coming.

He dedicated one of his critical books to me, as well as a pamphlet. I was heartbroken when he died of complications after a heart-bypass operation we were hoping would make a ‘new man’ of him, as he himself said. It was 2009, the year I left full time teaching and was hoping to be able to spend more time with him. Sadly, that was not to be.

I learned a lot from Matt’s poems and from Matt himself. I learned working class people could be poets, that Latinate lexis could be mixed with local dialect, and never to be ashamed of my education. He wasn’t an influence over my work, but I learned how to edit my own poems without remorse.

I still miss him even though he died 14 years ago this month. I miss our chats about classical music and books. I even miss his terrible jokes. I’d give almost anything for another one of his bear hugs. I miss sharing good news with him.

This poem is from my Rack Press pamphlet, which was a sequence of elegies for Matt, published two years after his death.

Just as a side note, I did eventually find a photo of me and Matt together. He was sitting low in his chair, legs crossed, and I am sitting with my legs folded under me, heavily pregnant with my second child. Some one else in the group had taken it and later gave me a copy. Not sure where it is now!