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Douglas Dunn sat down with Ian McMillan and our Poetry Book Club audience in Media City, Salford, to discuss both his debut collection ‘Terry Street’ and his latest book, ‘The Noise of a Fly’ (Faber). 

Over the course of the conversation they consider how his writing has changed now he has retired from teaching, the reality of writers block and the importance of patience in overcoming it. They discuss his increasing interest in secular mysticism in poetry, the search for perfection and the importance of deviating from the rules. Douglas looks back to the poet he was in 1969 when he wrote Terry Street, reflecting on his outsider status and considers how he would write the poems differently today through the process of maturing and ‘learning from ones mistakes’. Throughout the interview he also invokes his poetic heroes, talks about his relationship with Philip Larkin and his feeling that writing poetry ‘isn’t really an activity for a grown man’.