Author Michael Ondaatje talks about ‘A Year of Last Things’, his collection of poems

NPR’s Scott Simon asks “The English Patient” author Michael Ondaatje about his new collection of poems, “A Year of Last Things.”

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Michael Ondaatje, the Booker Prize-winning novelist, has a new volume of poetry, “A Year Of Last Things.” And it may reveal much of his wide-ranging life – from his childhood in Sri Lanka during World War II to his adolescence in London, his life in Canada and travels all over the world. Let’s ask him to read from the first poem in the book – “Lock.”

MICHAEL ONDAATJE: (Reading) Reading the lines he loves, he slips them into a pocket, wishes to die with his clothes full of torn-free stanzas and the telephone numbers of his children in far cities. As if these were all we need and want, not the dog or silver bowl, not the brag of career or ownership. Unless they can be used – a bowl to beg with, a howl to scent a friend, as those torn lines remind us how to recall. Until we reach that horizon and drop, or rise like a canoe within a lock to search the other half of the river, where you might see your friends as altered by this altitude as you.

SIMON: Michael Ondaatje, author of “The English Patient” and so many other novels, joins us now from the studios of the CBC in Toronto. Thank you so much for being with us.

ONDAATJE: Thank you.

SIMON: What puts a poem into your mind?

ONDAATJE: I wish I knew, you know? The main thing for me is that if you know where you’re going, then that’s not the way to go, you know? I mean, Robert Creeley has a line – if you know what the last line of the book is, you take that line. You make it the first line. The writing of a poem is a sort of a discovery or reconnaissance. You’re not quite sure where you will end up. And I’ve always believed that’s the central rule of writing, especially poetry. In a novel, you have large plots to contend with. But in a poem, it’s all to do with language and a tone or a gesture.

SIMON: Is this volume a kind of…