Don Paterson, 59, is one of our most outstanding poets, a winner of the Whitbread poetry prize, the Costa poetry award, all three Forward prizes, the TS Eliot prize (twice), and the Queen’s gold medal for poetry. He is about to publish Toy Fights, a memoir of his life up to the age of 20. The book should carry a warning: anyone wanting a quiet book should read elsewhere – it will make you laugh aloud. It describes growing up on a Dundee council estate, an unruly school life and the beginnings of his obsession with music (Paterson was later a guitarist with the Celtic-influenced, Euro-jazz band Lammas). His gloriously gnarled humour never upstages seriousness, particularly in his account of a psychiatric breakdown as an adolescent, recalled with unself-pitying precision.
Can you explain why this memoir has been years in the writing?
I lost interest in myself – and in autobiographical writing – unfortunately after the book had been commissioned [laughs]. But after my father died, three years ago, I had a sudden blast of perspective that helped; made it seem more necessary.
You live in Kirriemuir, Angus, with your partner, and have twin sons from a previous relationship. Why does being Scottish matter so much to you?
I live in the home town of JM Barrie and Bon Scott of AC/DC. But it was only after I’d moved out of Scotland that I started to construct a Scottish identity. Then I got sick of it and the only way I could not worry about ending up as some sort of caricature of myself was by coming back to live in Scotland. I should add that I’m a “vile separatist” and an SNP member. I love England, but Westminster is another matter. My boys are identical twins – they’re 23. They play guitar in a trio called Stuffed Animals.
The next question applies particularly to their generation: why describe social media in your book as a “disaster for the species”?
I’m not against all social media but Twitter brings out the worst in all of us – it was idiotic to set up social media as an unchecked social experiment. It’s an echo chamber: tribal allegiances are reinforced in sinister ways, sometimes by stabbing someone in the tribe as a blood sacrifice. I’m appalled by where it is leading us. Social media is also narcissist-enabling.
You write intriguingly about narcissists; why give them space?
I was already up to speed on this stuff for personal reasons, and had become aware of my encounters with narcissists as a recurring theme. And we’re living in a golden age of narcissism now – it’s a good time to be more conscious of how many structures arrange themselves around the most narcissistic person in the room.
It cannot have been easy writing about your breakdown and remembering the time in hospital.
It was very hard. I had studiedly avoided thinking about it for so many years. It would have been better – healthier – to look at it earlier, but given my task was to write up to the age of 20 it was hardly an episode I could avoid because it was formative. I thought: well, finally, this is where you have to turn and face it.
You write: “My state in repose is bored, slightly afraid, agitated, and for some reason really dehydrated.” What’s with the dehydration?
An acupuncturist once told me I was addicted to the feeling of being dehydrated. I don’t know! It’s weird, but thanks for reminding me to take a swig.
As we are now on to health, a word about your sugar intake – your paragraph in praise of your mother’s tablet [a sort of Scottish fudge] is a masterpiece. Have you ever cooked it?
I almost included my mother’s recipe, but I wouldn’t dare try to cook it. It’s a semi-secret process. I’m still a sugar addict in quite a serious way. Stuff has to be hidden. If I know it’s in the house, I’ll turn the place upside down. It’s straightforward drug addiction. Sugar is a working-class analgesic and what I was raised on.
You were a whiz at origami. Why?
For obsessives it’s a focus – I could latch on to it to stop my brain from eating itself. I still do it. At the last school council at St Andrews [Paterson is soon to retire as professor of poetry at the university], I found myself folding an alien tortoise.
You got involved in Pentecostal Christianity as a teenager. Have you left religion behind for ever?
For those of us who have had belief, you can’t indulge agnosticism. You’ve either got to keep on believing in some form or you’re an atheist. I still think the spiritual arises from the material and that we live in a spiritual universe but I don’t have any religion.
Why do you say: “Poets’ brains have a wiring error that makes them think words are real things”?
Poetry is unlike other art forms because you can’t really do it for a living. It seems more a helpless disposition. I always think poetry may be one corner of a larger syndrome. It often involves obsessive and addictive personalities – and mental illness. Most poets can’t drive a car and the ones who do drive shouldn’t.
Do you see being a poet as second best to being a musician?
Music is the thing I love more, but unfortunately you don’t get to choose what you’re better at. Poetry is the science of nuance in language. The habit of careful listening to nuances in music can attune you to that. It is one transferable piece of knowledge.
The violence at your school, though you are funny about it, sounds horrifying. Do you feel scarred by it?
I was very fortunate in that I escaped nearly all of it. I was quick enough to understand the importance of being protected. But many others were scarred by it.
Do you ever think of the life you might have led had music and poetry not taken you to where you are today?
Oh God, it is horrible to contemplate.
I’m hoping there will be a sequel to this memoir?
Really? OK, I’ll take that encouragement. But there would be problems in terms of who is still alive. Maybe I could do it as science fiction, that could be the solution.
What do you read for sheer pleasure?
Shirley Jackson, JL Borges, Clive James’s Cultural Amnesia, Freddy Bentivegna’s The Encyclopedia of Pool Hustlers.
Which genres do you enjoy?
I’ve read for a living for decades [Paterson was, until recently, poetry editor at Picador] so I’m picky. Mostly nonfiction and memoir and stuff on music theory and tech, to be honest. I don’t read a lot of fiction these days. When I do, I’m like, “Just tell me! Stop dragging it out!’”
Which contemporary poets do you admire most?
In the UK, Alice Oswald, Kathleen Jamie, Michael Longley and Paul Muldoon. Everyone should read Douglas Dunn. Of the North Americans, too many: Kay Ryan, Yusef Komunyakaa, Billy Collins, Terrance Hayes, Timothy Donnelly and Karen Solie. Jury is out on the younger cats.
What book did you expect to like but didn’t?
The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa.
Which author do you always return to?
Robert Frost.
What book might people be surprised to find on your bookshelves?
I’m a US billiards nut, so have some strange titles, of which Pleasures of Small Motions: Mastering the Mental Game of Pocket Billiards has to be the worst.
Toy Fights by Don Paterson is published by Faber (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
