Dear Kasper
I have reread your email of Fri, May 21, 2010 02:28
I read there "I sought inspiration"; and I recall in my last post saying
something dismissive about inspiration.
There was no connection and if I had had the memory to keep in mind what
you had said, I would have expressed myself differently. My apology.
I'm answering, trying to, your set of questions. I think they're
interesting and valuable.
I'll start with my home / travel circumstances and then see if I can
connect it to what I do.
I'm a Londoner. I was brought up in inner London, in a semi-slum, semi at
least, close to the river, and have moved out, first with my parents and
then on my own.
Interestingly (as an example of perception, not as interesting biography!)
I think of myself as moving out as an ongoing thing but actually I sort of
stuck as far out as I am years ago, merely changes the bases, just on or
beyond the edge of London. That is, I have been away but I come back here.
If I moved further out, I'd most likely end up deep in Conservative
territory. I'm on the edge of it. The constituency was contested by
LibDems and Conservative. What that means now remains to be seen.
I am a long way beyond the underground system and rely on a bad railway.
It's a bit salubrious. Leafy.
I am not that much of a home person. I did that for some years. Patter of
tiny feet. Miaows of a cat. Screams. Tantrums. Who’s moved the bread
knife? I like all that; but take it away and I am ok.
I like to travel... I have been thinking what I mean by that. I like the
movement, I think, the travel itself.
I lived with cats until I was in my 40s. There was a cat in the house back
to when i first remember; and that is early in my life. Long lived cats,
too. My last, whom I inherited as "mine" had to be put down at 22. *She
was 22. Then there was an interregnum. A friend pointed a chapter in The
Unbearable Lightness of Being where a couple is said to have been kept
together by the existence of their dog, and their connection breaks when
the dog dies. She suggested that's what happened with me and my then
partner when our cat died.
Since then I havent had a cat -- this is a major decision for me --
because of my tendency to wander; and it's not fair. If you make as much
fuss of a cat as i am inclined to and try to cross the species barrier of
understanding, as I try, the cat is in some trouble when you don't come
home. So I have relationships with all my friends cats. I house sit cats
when their humans go away. I am bonding with the young feline three doors
down from me
I am unusually - for me – heavily-based at my present home just now; and
that's because of the project I am employed on. It's very demanding. I may
work on it *at *home. Or I may be at the university long hours and then
just go home to sleep and then straight back. My neighbour says she never
knows if I am in or out – when I am there I am quiet and working.
I find that I have to settle into a place to write. Now I often write on
the train though not necessarily about it. The amount of work depends on
the noise of my fellow travellers and that's a problem.
I certainly think of my work office as a comfortable place to work -
mentally comfortable, I mean. But I write on the hoof, into a notebook,
and then set aside time to work on it - or for writing something like this
The amount of stuff I write at home is minimal now. I may revise there;
but I don't originate much there. & it’s getting less.
Between 2000 and 2006 I was in Cornwall. I was very lucky. It had a
completely different view - well, different landscape. But it was an
astonishingly beautiful view - I mean all those words. I was, somewhere in
me, wondering almost how it was possible. A realistic photograph of it
some days would have brought accusations of Photoshop.
It wasn't an emotionally tranquil time for me though.
I did get a great deal of writing done and slowly what I was seeing
changed what I was writing in as much as I took notice of what I was
seeing as potential subjects. (I remember studying the writing of Alaric
Sumner, who died in 2000, and coming to the conclusion that he had been
living in the west penwith landscape without it affecting him as a writer
and seeing that as a difference between us.)
Before that I spent some long summers in Greece. (I planned it and built
my whole year - FE teaching -- around not having things to do in the
summer, by working weekends and so on.)
Some people want always to see new places. I like seeing new places but am
happy to go somewhere that I know. These summers I speak of were in a
place I knew well from earlier holidays there with my long-term partner...
I made a mad bus trip out of Thessaloniki up towards the Turkish border,
and then Jugoslav and then Albanian. I wanted to get down to the very
south of mainland Greece but didn't make it. And then to a remote island I
know and put down some roots
Once I got comfy i began to write extensively
I have a number of places I go to in this country over and over again and
I tend to work on the same sequences, sequences specific to those places,
not necessarily directly related to the environment
Am I answering you, I wonder. I wonder, too, if I have an answer.
Certainly, I am taking the landscape – urban included - as my subject
A friend on Isle of Wight who likes some of my poems about or of Cornwall
urged me to write of her island
Trying to oblige has helped me to see IOW. (It’s a place I was heavily
prejudiced against… I only went there because I was offered a gig. Then I
found I liked it!
There is an insularity; but I know that from other places
>do you think travel opens the poetic mind to the world
probably
> and to language because of the (literal) change of scenery
?
>and to language
is an interesting question
when you went on
> and to language because of the (literal) change of scenery
I wasn’t so sure
> becoming intimate with a single, specific environment an equally valuable
> way to channel the urge to craft language into specific, peculiar forms?
I was going to say “yes” and then got to “specific forms”
I’m not sure about that
Intimacy with specific environments is *very important to me as a writer
> how okay is it to grow attached to a home environment, and how important
> is it to occasionally break away and discover new, "greener" (or any other
> comparative colour adjective) pastures?
I think this can only be answered individually & I have probably said enough
I do like travel as I said and am still cross about missing a week + in
Ohio courtesy of the Icelandic volcano. That would have been a good input
I’ll shut up now!
L
--
"The desire to testify": interview with Chris Goode
http://intercapillaryspace.blogspot.com/2010/02/desire-to-testify.html
["the fullest, or at least the broadest, account I've yet given of what it
is I think I do and what questions underwrite it" Chris Goode]
‘a song and a film’ by Lawrence Upton -- Veer Publications / Writers Forum
ISBN: 978-1-907088-05-6 A5 84 pages. 2009. £6.00
"water lines and other poems" by Lawrence Upton - Pdf_16x16 111 pages
free download http://chalkeditions.co.cc
‘snap shots and video’ by Lawrence Upton -- Writers Forum
ISBN: 978-1-84254-113-5 A5 52 pages. £6.00
Lawrence Upton
AHRC Creative Research Fellow
Dept of Music
Goldsmiths, University of London
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