Wednesday, 10 June 2009
Dot Vomit
Tuesday, 9 June 2009
Finding the Candle
Everybody has a book in them, apparently, and I am no exception. In January this year I started a professional writing master’s degree. I thought I might pull off writing a book if I actually knew what I was doing. I still don’t, but I’m starting to feel a little bit closer to identifying what my book is going to consist of. Words, for one. Hurrah! It’s a breakthrough. It’s so easy to tell people you are writing a book – and, as I did, to leave work in 2002 telling everyone with smug certainty that’s what you’re going to do – but it’s not so easy to admit, seven years later, that not only are you nowhere near achieving your goal, you haven’t even started, and furthermore, you don’t actually know what kind of book you want to write. I have been in the dark for a long time.
This week, everyone on the MA course had to pick a specialism, and for me, that choice came down to fiction and non-fiction. In order to make the decision, I had to look very closely at my motivation for writing. The reason I’d given up work to write a book in 2002 was because my daughter had died, and I desperately needed to write and tell the world about it. At the beginning, I shared everything: the grief was my guiding force, and I couldn’t believe anyone wouldn’t want to read about it. I even sent one of my heartfelt poems to the New Yorker: that’s how good I thought it was. (Now I know I was mistaking depth of feeling for good writing. I don’t know anything at all about writing poetry for public consumption.) As time went on, I began to feel embarrassed about my wretched prose as well, and I didn’t want anyone to see my naked grief any more. Deciding to do the master’s course was a push to make good on an old resolution in a way that wouldn’t be just writing-as-therapy. The grief is a guiding force for my writing, but now I understand it is not the only one.
I browsed my bookshelves looking for a sign, something that would inspire me to make the right decision. I came across Isabel Allende’s Paula, a book she began writing while her daughter was in a coma and finished after Paula died. I pulled the book down to examine it again. I’ve read it many times. It is a book mired in sadness, but it is also a book about the joy of living. One reviewer described it as “beautiful and heart-rending…Memoir, autobiography, epicedium, perhaps even some fiction: they are all here, and they are all quite wonderful.” For me, the book was like a grief potion: as soon as I opened it, familiar waves of loss came streaming out of the bottle. I sat curled up in my favourite armchair, lost in the narrative and sighing at Allende’s prose, and realised this was a format I wanted to explore. It reflected something I wrote in my MA application, and somehow I’d forgotten: I want to document my daughter's story and help others understand and deal with grief and loss; I would like to help others avoid feeling, as I did, like an undignified, invisible, stupid human being. Then I wrote to Isabel Allende in bold sorrow and told her I was going to write a memoir.
To my astonishment, Isabel wrote back, not just to tell me she was sorry about Maia’s death, but also to offer some advice. Could I have received a clearer sign? I don’t think so. I am finally going to get my words down on paper, although I am well aware that the hardest part is yet to come: I’ve got to start looking the facts in the eye again. Isabel told me this: “Writing a memoir about loss is like going into a cavern with a candle, illuminating every corner slowly, finding your way in the darkness.” I haven’t gone into the cavern yet, but I’m glad to have found the candle.
Wednesday, 13 May 2009
Poetry at Large
Have you seen the BBC's campaign advertising their poetry season? I saw one of the ads the other day. Frank Skinner was giving directions to a cabbie in the form of a poem. For an instant, it was mildly disturbing to hear the football-mad comedian reciting poetry, but I realised that was because there was something curiously sad and lovely about it. The sadness was in the poem, but I also felt a little sad because we don't encounter much poetry, these days; perhaps the Arctic Monkeys hit the spot every now and again, but it isn't enough. There was loveliness in the language, and in hearing someone 'ordinary' deliver it. I find I encounter the most poetry when someone has died, or another awful thing has happened, and it's so uplifting to enjoy a poem in an everyday way. (I'm so inspired, I just ordered 'A Poem A Day', a book of poetry for children by Adrian Mitchell and illustrated by the wonderful Lauren Child among others.)
Here's a link to the Skinner ad. The verse he recites is from 'Where Are the Waters of Childhood' by Mark Strand:
On the subject of poetry at large, I still haven't managed to track down Mary's dots, the subject of a poem I mentioned in my last post, although I did have a bit of a breakthrough. It was rather exciting, actually. I sent a note to the late poet Adrian Mitchell's agent, and guess who replied to me? Celia Mitchell - his wife. I felt honoured, because not only had she bothered to reply, naming the poem, the collection in which it was published and the page number it was on, she also said I could contact her if I had any problems finding it. (The book is now out of print.) The problem is, the poem she cited - Song About Mary - is not the poem I am looking for. Not a dot in sight. I have ordered a second hand copy of Poems (1964) to make sure, but I fear the mystery deepens.
For the record, here's a link to the Song about Mary that I think Celia is talking about:
http://vulgarmarxism.blogspot.com/2009/01/adrian-mitchells-liberal-christ-and.html
Methinks this is becoming a bit of a poetry obsessed blog, so next time perhaps I'll venture elsewhere. Till then, I bid you adieu.