Interviewing Fleur Adcock
Maria S. Mendes
I wrote one about the experience of visiting the Tate, which I did quite often anyway. It was not too far away from where I worked, so I could go at lunchtime. Just the way you are walking around in a gallery affects how the world looks when you come out. Everything seems to be in frames, in squares, when you look at it! [Laughter]. Of course, ‘art is what you choose to frame’ is: anything you decide to focus on is art. I had an argument with somebody on a panel. A novelist. Who was it? Antonia Byatt. She was one of the judges of a competition at the TLS. There were three other judges and I said: “Look, there’s a nice little poem”. It was just a short little poem, about six lines. And she said: “You call that a poem? I write better images than that in any page of fiction!” I replied: “Well, yes, but this one has got white space around it”! And if you look at it and it’s got white space around it, you look more closely. So that is art, it is whatever you choose to frame. It’s the ability to choose what you want to look at [Laughter]. I was so pleased I thought of that line before it was too late. [Laughter].
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