What the heart knows: 10 Qs with Gideon Heugh

Meet the British poet and ecologist who is one of the judges for the TIWD poetry contest

Gideon Heugh thinks your should roll up your sleeves and create. The difficult and fulfilling work is worth it.

In this interview Gideon discusses why poetry needs our full attention, why AI will not replace human creativity, and the beauty to be found in simple, ordinary things. He also shares an original poem.

British writers have given so much to poetry. I’m wondering if you have a must-read poet from outside of the Isles who your enjoy reading or who has shaped your work?

It’s tough to pick just one! The obvious choices would be people like Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry; they’ve been huge influences on me. I also love the Sufi poets—Hafiz in particular. His poems are so big-hearted, but in a deliciously mischievous kind of way.

If you’re going to force me to choose one, however, then I’d have to go with Rainer Marie Rilke. ‘You, sent out beyond your recall, / go to the limits of your longing. / Embody me. / Flare up like a flame / and make big shadows I can move in. / Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. / Just keep going. No feeling is final.”

Enough said.

You recently wrote about the vulnerability of moments in nature and how wonder can so easily be killed when we take out our phones. How does poetry extend wonder or help capture moments that last?

‘Extending wonder’ is a great way to describe what a poem does. A good poem will be both a distillation and an unfolding of a moment; it is an attempt to find the words to describe what the heart might instinctively but silently know. It is then preserved forever, but in a way that can let other people hear that heart-language too. It is the opposite of taking a phone out, because poetry—finding the inspiration for it; writing it; and reading it—needs our full attention.

If nature wrote a poem to humanity, what style do you think it would be in—free verse, sonnet, haiku, etc.—and what do you think nature would say?

I think it would be an elegy. One of deep sorrow. Deep sorrow and deep longing—longing for us to return, to no longer be the lonely species. You can imagine anger for all the abuse and decline it has suffered at our hands, but for some reason I can’t separate that anger from love.

It makes me think of these words from Robin Wall Kimmerer: ‘Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.’

Gideon is one of the judges of the Things I Wrote Down Poetry Contest this year,
lending his expertise to select the three winning poems.

You have strong feelings about artificial intelligence and have wrote thoughtfully about it here.

It seems artists and Christians either fully embrace it or reject it in the creative process, with little middle ground. Do you think there's a world in which AI enhances creativity for poets or faith for the faithful?

In a word, no.

I don’t think there is a middle ground; not if we want to protect the essence of creativity itself. The point of creativity is that the creation part of it comes from within. It is profoundly and uniquely human. Human. Creativity is not only what is created, but the process of creation itself. To remove, delegate or diminish the human element is to devalue the whole thing. What makes the pictures that my daughter draws for me valuable is the fact that my daughter drew them for me. I’m sure the process could be made ‘easier’ for her, and the ‘quality’ improved if she used an AI program to help her, but that would make it worse, not better.

I love technology, but new doesn’t always mean improved. Creativity is part of our humanness; it’s intrinsic to us. And AI adds nothing to it, it only takes away; to use it is an abdication, a giving up—a kind of incuriosity about our own capabilities, a refusal to explore ourselves. Creativity isn’t something that needs to be enhanced; it needs to be cherished, nurtured, set free. The human condition isn’t something that needs to be augmented. You don’t need to enhance love, you just need to get involved and do the loving. Likewise creativity.

In terms of the craft of it—learning the tools and techniques of the trade—that can only come through experience, through doing the thing. Practice, getting it wrong, grit. All that delicious friction that’s very difficult but very necessary. I suppose there’s a world in which you could get feedback on your writing from an AI tutor, but why substitute a human interaction for a non-human one? We’re lonely and disconnected enough as it is without getting rid of even more of our opportunities to connect. Besides, human interactions leave space for the unexpected; they’re messier, so more likely to make something new and unique. The human element is a safeguard against homogeny; the more we lean into machines, the less diverse our thinking and making will become.

The curse of the unimpeded human: AI, creativity, and the end of imagination

As I mention in the essay, I certainly don’t blame individuals for using AI chatbots. They exploit a physiological vulnerability: our desire to take the path of least resistance. Yet if our continued use of AI is because it makes the process of creativity easier or more convenient, then we’ve missed the entire point. Writing a villanelle or a novel or an essay is hard, and it should be hard. If writing wasn’t challenging, if it didn’t engage my full faculties, then I wouldn’t derive nearly as much pleasure, satisfaction or meaning from it. Jimi Hendrix practiced guitar until his fingers bled, but that’s what made him able to create lightning. There’s no spark without friction; if we don’t do the work, the work is not done within us. Why would you bypass your own mind? A neural pathway that is neglected will collapse. I want to keep mine open.

It’s a similar story with faith. Faith is a matter of the heart, the soul, the depth of us. Faith is an experience, an event; it’s not mere information. The more these things are mediated, the less authentic, the less real they become; we become observers, documenters, not participants. I’d like to participate in my life, not be a bystander.

If you want to make something, make it. Wrestle with it. Do the difficult and real and human thing.

---

Ecology

It is becoming clear to me
that the health of my bone marrow
has something to do with cornflowers,
and constellations, and the way
that a dragonfly moves.
I cannot now help but believe
(and I have explored the options)
that the motions of my soul
depend in some way upon the moon,
and the weight of clouds,
and the migratory pattern of swifts.
The flow of my consciousness is reliant
(I am increasingly certain)
upon the cleanliness of chalk streams,
the societies of protozoa in the soil,
and of course the wellbeing
of my neighbour.

©Gideon Heugh, Naming God (2023)

---

Do you remember when you wrote your first poem or considered the word “poet” as a way to describe yourself?

I wrote my first poem when I was 17. I had just experienced my first broken heart, and it just came out of me as a response to that. I seem to remember almost immediately throwing it away. It was a pure expression of grief; what the words were didn’t matter, what mattered is that they were expressed (again, this is why AI is such nonsense. AI is un-expression).

I kept writing poems semi-frequently after that, mostly as a kind of therapy. I didn’t start thinking of myself as a poet, though, until about a decade later. I was doing my MA in Creative Writing, and had to take a module on poetry (my main focus was on writing fiction). One day after a workshop my tutor asked me if I wrote much poetry. I said not really. They said that I should, and in that moment it was like a door opened within me that I didn’t know was there. A few months later, I wrote a spoken word poem that blew up a bit on social media. After that I thought, ‘yeah, this is something I can be.’

Many of your poetic conceits are located in nature. What's one of the most memorable or meaningful places you've been when a poem was born?

The most meaningful place to me is the area around where I live, not because it’s spectacular, but because that’s where my daughter and I hang out. The nature around me isn’t what anyone would call ‘majestic’, but it doesn’t need to be. There’s so much beauty and wonder to be found in the small, simple, ordinary things.

How do you approach writing a poem? Do you need to be in a specific location or frame of mind?

Prepare for a terribly pretentious poet answer!

I’m not sure that I ‘approach’ writing it at all. When thinking of the process of writing a poem, I often come back to this quote from Annie Dillard: ‘I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam’. Without wanting to get too ‘woo’ about it, it’s almost as if the poems approach us. The job of the poet then is to put yourself in situations where a poem might find you. This can be an place within yourself (a place that is quiet, attentive, receptive) as much as a physical place—ideally it will be both. Although inspiration can strike at any moment (always have a notebook to hand!), there are things we can do to make it more or less likely. The more time I spend out in nature, the more poems come to me; the more I’m busy and distracted, the fewer poems come to me.

Sometimes a poem will arrive almost fully formed, and it’s almost a race to write it down before it leaves again. Other times the inspiration might just be a single line, or a few words. In those cases, it’s like finding the end of a thread that I then have to carefully follow. The first draft is always a kind of flow—just allowing the words to come out without overthinking it. The form can then be carved out in the edits. But the more time you spend learning and practicing the craft (the bit that you do actually have to approach and be deliberate with), the more those techniques will become second nature.

What poem or body of work are you most proud of so far in your writing career?

It’s probably the essays that I’ve been publishing recently through my newsletter. Writing poetry doesn’t require much discipline, since you tend only to be writing when you feel inspired. You can’t get away with that with long form writing. You have to sit down and force yourself to write, even if you don’t feel like it; otherwise it will never get done. I always left my essays to the last minute when I was a student—the process was so daunting that I simply couldn’t do it without putting myself under that kind of pressure. So the fact that I’ve been able to write these long essays and enjoy doing it feels like something of a minor miracle.

What’s the best piece of advice about writing that you’ve received, given, or that you hold onto?

Two things: first, if you want to be a good writer, be a good reader. Read widely and voraciously. Second, only worry about quality after you’ve actually done the writing. ‘It’s the work that’s never started that takes longest to finish.’ Just begin. Get something down, and care the absolute minimum about whether or not it’s any good. That’s what edits are for.

What advice would you give to others who want to share their words or poems with the world, but may be intimidated to do so?

It’s a vulnerable place to be, putting your work out into the world. There’s no getting around the fact. Nor does it ever get much easier. I know New York Times bestselling authors who are still crazy insecure about their writing. That’s the life of the artist—it’s not just that we wear our hearts on our sleeves, we pass them around for comment. It’s hard, but you fall in love with it. Because to not share it is a kind of self-denial. The Hebrew prophet/poet Jeremiah described having a fire trapped in his bones, and if he didn’t let it out it would consume him.

Let your words out—you won’t regret it.

---

About Gideon Heugh

Gideon is a poet and liturgist from Berkshire, England. He is the author of Devastating Beauty, Rumours of Light, Darkling, and Naming God, and creator of The Green Chapel newsletter. He has an MA in Creative Writing, and has spent ten years working for international humanitarian organisations.

You'll find him at his happiest walking in the countryside, reading and writing books, and making up silly games with his daughter.

You can learn more about Gideon and support his work by visiting his website, subscribing to his wonderful newsletter, and following him on social media.