A Goodreads user
asked
Adriano Bulla:
Are you more of a poet or a novelist? The Road to London is fantastic, by the way. Very original, very beautiful, full of passion and unique. Your style: it's superb. Very personal and compelling, I've never felt so driven by the words and imagery before..lis there any secret to it?
Adriano Bulla
Thanks, Jeremy,
What a difficult question... Let's say that I am by nature a poet. This said, although the two forms of Art are different, I feel there is osmosis between poetry and prose.
My style...thanks again, first. I don't know if there is a 'secret'. I think it's mainly a matter of open-mindedness not just when it comes to themes, but style as well, and my experience as a poet has influenced my style as a novelist as well.
When you write poetry (and I know mine is pretty extreme in terms of style), you tend to go slowly; the sound, the imagery, even the smell of every word and combination of words is so important that even a comma can make a huge difference (in fact, one of my flickers is in two versions, the difference being just a comma), and I think I've applied what I learnt by writing very intense shorter texts, poems, to my prose, even if, of course, in prose you may want to be more explicit, less hermetic, more accessible. There's also, I think, the idea of never refraining: if a swear word is needed, I never thought twice about using it; if a complex metaphor is needed, the same applies. Here, the word 'needed' is maybe the core of the style of The Road to London... There are many principles one applies when writing a text, but two basic principles of The Road to London are that for a word to be there, there had to be a necessity; more a process of boiling down the stock to the juices than diluting it to increase the word count (very counter productive, in financial terms, trust me). The second principle was accessibility and enjoyability: I knew I would write a novel that came, oddly enough, and I say this because in many ways they are opposites, was at risk of becoming very complex, so, the idea was to keep its simplicity, for the sake of readability, and add meanings, references etc by layering them into the words rather than by inserting them within the written text. The two principles balance each other out, I feel, producing a main story which one can read just by following the words, and then producing a 'second-take-effect' where readers can choose (but don't have to) read The Road to London at different levels.
As to the 'drive', again, it comes from poetry, and the trick is simple: rhythm. Rhythm is at the heart of poetry: there is no poetry without music. The Road to London was mainly not exactly written, but 'orchestrated' a bit like an opera, where the rhythm of each passage is a priority of the composition, not a random consequence.
What a difficult question... Let's say that I am by nature a poet. This said, although the two forms of Art are different, I feel there is osmosis between poetry and prose.
My style...thanks again, first. I don't know if there is a 'secret'. I think it's mainly a matter of open-mindedness not just when it comes to themes, but style as well, and my experience as a poet has influenced my style as a novelist as well.
When you write poetry (and I know mine is pretty extreme in terms of style), you tend to go slowly; the sound, the imagery, even the smell of every word and combination of words is so important that even a comma can make a huge difference (in fact, one of my flickers is in two versions, the difference being just a comma), and I think I've applied what I learnt by writing very intense shorter texts, poems, to my prose, even if, of course, in prose you may want to be more explicit, less hermetic, more accessible. There's also, I think, the idea of never refraining: if a swear word is needed, I never thought twice about using it; if a complex metaphor is needed, the same applies. Here, the word 'needed' is maybe the core of the style of The Road to London... There are many principles one applies when writing a text, but two basic principles of The Road to London are that for a word to be there, there had to be a necessity; more a process of boiling down the stock to the juices than diluting it to increase the word count (very counter productive, in financial terms, trust me). The second principle was accessibility and enjoyability: I knew I would write a novel that came, oddly enough, and I say this because in many ways they are opposites, was at risk of becoming very complex, so, the idea was to keep its simplicity, for the sake of readability, and add meanings, references etc by layering them into the words rather than by inserting them within the written text. The two principles balance each other out, I feel, producing a main story which one can read just by following the words, and then producing a 'second-take-effect' where readers can choose (but don't have to) read The Road to London at different levels.
As to the 'drive', again, it comes from poetry, and the trick is simple: rhythm. Rhythm is at the heart of poetry: there is no poetry without music. The Road to London was mainly not exactly written, but 'orchestrated' a bit like an opera, where the rhythm of each passage is a priority of the composition, not a random consequence.
More Answered Questions
A Goodreads user
asked
Adriano Bulla:
Long time... Any live 'performances' scheduled? I saw you at the Sussex Guild of Poetry recital and I could do with some more of your eccentricity.
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