Spooks - the poet replies

Following on from yesterday's post about Jack Underwood's poem 'Spooks', I did find his e-mail address and did ask him about his inspiration.  Here is his reply, for which I have his permission to reproduce below. I can identify with his comment about wobbly brain activity over which we have no control: our minds have minds of their own.

"Thanks for getting in touch. I'm glad you liked the poem and found it had legs thought-wise.

What the poem might mean I would, of course, leave with you, and even the question of where it came from is tricky, since it is impossible to know how much of an idea is to do with conscious activity and artifice when writing and how much is to do with wobbly brain activity of which you have no control or dominion over.

I think it might be something to do with Litvinenko, and the idea of poisoning and espionage. I think I probably absorbed some sort of horror from urban myths about people injecting people in clubs with HIV. Then there is the image of a battenburg cake being injected with ink from Vic Reeves' Big Night Out*. There is that moment when you discover a small amount of blood wet you bite into a hard apple. All this, plus the slightly odd ways in which desire works relative to other people, how it plays out externally. All of the above, and perhaps none of the above; like I say, impossible to know.

Hope that helps a little, though!"

(* For readers in NC, Vic Reeves is a UK comic who has a rather surreal take on humour - something akin to Spike Milligan**).
(** For readers in NC, Spike Milligan was a UK comic who had a rather surreal take on humour - something akin to Vic Reeves*).

Probably the UK's most original humourist?