This is a post I was going to … um, post … quite a while ago, but then life overtook me. And then (metaphorically) ran me off the road, and I’ve been trudging my way back to (metaphorical/mental/temporal) civilisation ever since.
It comes from discussions with my students about what it means to be a writer. And with some of my (SVP) authors. And recently reading a book that made me fan-girl (Meantime by Majella Cullinane, in case you’re wondering). It also involves a wee call to action, for those who are interested. Think of it as a possible New Year’s Resolution.
One of the most rewarding things about publishing a new collection is when people get in touch to say not just that they’ve read it and enjoyed it, but why. I’ve had a couple of examples of this for tumble – from friends, from students, and from critics.
And each time it has made me sit very still, here in my office chair, reading the words and feeling that little fluttering of joy in the base of my throat. (It’s what this expression was all about at the Ockhams, when I heard them mention me in the same sentence as Louise Glück.)
So much of writing is a solitary activity. You write for yourself first, always, but you also want your words to touch other people.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, and what a strange way it is to spend your life – hours trying to shape the words, then polish them, and then you send them out into the world hoping that someone somewhere will feel them catch in their own life. And most of the time you will never know. Maybe an editor will take the poem for a magazine (hooray!), and say something about why. Or a judge, if you’ve sent it into the maelstrom that is a poetry competition, and manage to do well. Or, if you have enough work, a publisher might say not just yes! but also what it was that made them say it.
I have a mental image of all of us as castaways on tiny desert islands, writing and revising and tucking our words into glass bottles, which we throw into the ocean. Except the ocean is largely made of glass, and so most of the bottles smash and are lost. Only a very lucky few manage to find their way into the water, and survive the journey to another island. And fewer still make it to the shore of a continent, to be read by people who aren’t also marooned on islands in the middle of a wine-bottle sea.
But we keep on writing, and hoping, and scouring the shores of our own islands for other people’s words, and for news of the words we’ve sent out. We aren’t looking for rescue: just that moment of connection. And then we stare into the water, or the sun, or the sand that’s largely made of ancient broken bottles and from which more bottles will be made. And we start writing again.
A lot about the world really sucks right now. But not all of it. So here’s my request to you. If you’ve read something recently that moved you – poem, novel, biography, whatever (erm, not if it was a manifesto). Think about what it was that you loved, and why, and let the writer know. Send an email to them directly if you know them or their contact details are public, or through their publisher if you don’t want to appear to be taking the whole parasocial thing too far. (Always good to let publishers know that they’re doing things right too!) But do it – let them know that what they’ve written reached you, and why.
Happy New Year, y’all. Good luck with the bottles.
A Dark Feathered Art 