"My Writing Process"

Poet Dan Wyke invited me to follow him in answering these four questions about my writing process.


What are you working on?

I have a poetry collection in progress titled The Weather in Normal, addressing family, home/place, climate change and death. It builds on my pamphlet/chapbook, Homecoming (Dancing Girl, 2013). I also occasionally nurture the seeds of several other projects: a series of poems expressing grief over my mother's death, Grief's Alphabet; poems on the memorials at Bath Abbey and questions of commemoration and place; and an erasure of Esther Summerson's chapters in Dickens's Bleak House. One of the pleasures of these embryonic projects is that the poems' styles are wildly various, and I wonder if I can sustain that range throughout each project, especially Grief's Alphabet and the Bath Abbey poems.


How does your work differ from others of its genre?

I think it's highly unusual to have three books so wildly different from one another in style, especially one's first three books. I worry when someone likes one of my books and says she's going to buy another that she'll be disappointed in its difference. On the same principle, I'm delighted and relieved when I learn someone likes two or more of my works.


Why do you write what you do?

I have a choice? I write what engages me both intellectually and emotionally; I tend to take less pleasure from writing, art, etc. that seems to draw solely from the intellect or the emotions.


How does your writing process work?

It comes and goes. There are periods during which I'm writing regularly, periods in which I hardly write anything at all; the latter usually because of university commitments, especially marking, which seems to diminish my creativity. I don't understand writer's block--if I have time to write, there's always something and indeed usually some things I'm eager to grapple with in one form of writing or another.



A week from today, my poet-friends Zoe Brigley and Jackie Wills will answer these same questions on their blogs. 

Waking

I've had a winter of illness after illness, leading to a gap of months between composing poems. It feels strange when that happens, but I'm not one to worry I'm going to stop writing. I've been writing poems for over thirty years, and they always come back to me.

I'm not sure illness is the only reason for the pause, though. I've spent the better part of the last year revising my manuscript Imagined Sons through the exchange of the final manuscript and various proofs with my editor at Seren. Given the content of the work, I find each read through emotionally exhausting and wrenching. And for the last couple years, whenever I have the impulse to write poetry, I almost always write about my parents. 

In my father's case my family won a wrongful death settlement for his paralysis and pain the last two years of his life. I still feel so much anger, pain and regret almost five years on. 

My mother died most unexpectedly two years later. One week she was ill with what appeared to be a stomach virus; the next week, going in for a colonoscopy, she was dead. She was my closest friend, and every day I still feel her loss--the world seems far less generous, far less kind without her. 

So I think I may try to get away from what comes naturally to me to write and pursue one of the projects that's been welling at the back of mind, such as the erasure of Esther Summerson's chapters in Dickens's Bleak House or to address in poetry the plan to relay the Bath Abbey floor with all its memorials. I'm sure, as always, updates will follow.

Even Supposing-- and the new issue of Blackbox Manifold

Some months ago (I believe it was April), I spoke of a new project I'd embarked on, an erasure of Esther Summerson's chapters in Charles Dickens' Bleak House, which I've tentatively titled Even Supposing-- (both Esther's last words in and the last words of the novel, including that splendid dash). The first chapter from that project appears in the new issue of Blackbox Manifold, and I have wonderful company, with Ray DiPalma, Anne Gorrick, Paul Green, W.N. Herbert, Tony Lopez, Erin Moure, Ian Seed, Aidan Semmens, and John Wilkinson, among others, as well as a special feature on Peter Robinson. I'm delighted to be a part of it. 

NaPoWriMo: Done. Dusted.

In the thirty days of April, I wrote 16 independent, prose-poetry sections (of which we used 14) for the commissioned piece, "Meditations," on Peter Coker's 1958-9 painting, "Sunflowers," eight sections taken from the words of Esther Summerson's first chapter in Charles Dickens's Bleak House (I didn't realise till today I'd completed the chapter!), and five independent poems. Thus it turns out that for all my activity in April, I missed the 30 in 30 goal by one, but I'm nonetheless delighted. I think "Meditations" has turned out well (if not excellent, as I'd hoped) in spite of the time pressure I faced, I'm excited about the Bleak House project, and several of the independent poems I think are good. So hurrah! How did others fare? 


Thanks to everyone who joined me. Stories of your own experiences consistently encouraged me to strive for my best and to make the most of the time, and I dearly appreciate them. Thanks so much. 

NaPoWriMo blown (sort of)

A few days ago I no longer could manage a poem a day, as the sinus infection I thought I'd conquered at the start of the month had returned. However, the intense projects I've been working on--a montage of pieces on Peter Coker's painting, "Sunflowers," for Sylph Editions and a series of poems using Esther Summerson's narration from Bleak House--mean that I have 28 pieces on day 26. I think that means I'll make 30 poems in 30 days, if not a poem a day, and I'm thrilled with that. How are others getting on?

NaPoWriMo, day 9

Nine days, nine poems or sections of a longer poem completed. Whew. When I began, I thought I'd be writing individual poems, but a few days in, I accepted a commission to write for a Sylph Editions' booklet on Peter Coker's painting "Sunflowers." It looks to be a series of poetic prose meditations, that will hopefully also operate as independent prose poems. As my deadline is the 17th, the timing of NaPoWriMo and Bath Spa's spring break really help.

My second project is one I've long thought of, using fragments from Esther Summerson's chapters in Bleak House to create individual poems. Some critics have found her voice cloying, but I, as a fellow illegitimate, have felt her behaviour and voice motivated by the senses of not belonging and abandonment. I have been able to draft and revise the sections, but so soon after completion, and with writing so much, I find it hard to judge their quality at the moment. As others have said, that can be done once the month's over, poetic material to rework over the summer.

How are we doing now? Who's still on course at day 9?