Declan Ryan in conversation with Rory Waterman

RW: You’ve just become the poetry editor at Cape. Congratulations. You’ve previously worked in several university jobs, among other things, though of course you’ve edited magazines before.

Thank you. Yes, I’ve always edited really, more or less as long as I’ve been writing, and as you’ll know from doing this sort of thing so much of the work in creative writing teaching is a form of editorial work: that close attention and line-level attention to people’s poems, or prose, or whathaveyou. I’ve been editing, with Alan Jenkins, a little magazine for the last while, Free Bloody Birds, and done quite a lot of private work for mentees and things, so it’s always been there. I think probably, temperamentally, I’m better suited to being an editor than a teacher.

Free Bloody Birds, the first issue of which appeared last year, is a new print poetry magazine, aesthetically simple and elegant, and I think the opening issues are exceptional. What made you want to start up a new magazine, though? What was missing? What excites you most about that venture?

We’d spoken about doing something for a long while. We met initially because I was writing a PhD on Ian Hamilton and Alan had edited his collected poems and was a friend of his. We both admired (and admire) Hamilton’s little magazines, The Review especially, and thought there was a need to put out something that was focused on paying serious attention to poems for what we maybe laughably call ‘the general reader’. But which is led by enthusiasm, longish ...