Q&A with Chris Emery discussion
Writing habits and processes
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Mar 19, 2012 01:31PM
All questions about the how and why we write kind of stuff.
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Hi Chris, just curious to know what started you to write and if is it something that you have to work at or does it just flow like ticker tape, as if taking diction from God, as Muriel Spark once said, but she wasn't talking about poetry, of course ;)Did you start because, like Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah, who said "I started writing poetry because I didn't like poetry"? or because you loved it?
Cheers
Hi Marianne,
Thanks for the question.
Warning: long contextual intro coming. Like most writers of any type I started writing young and at school, where writing was showing off, really, either to yourself or your class. But I became serious about it when I was around 18. Writing is, for me, always about discovering something other, other than oneself and one's own experiences.
So I trust the accidents and voices that the imagination draws upon and it can feel like you are being written more than you are doing the writing. But I think there's a significant counterpart to the idea of vatic and oracular writing and that's craft, and you have to be in yourself and build your skills and experience there. So there's a kind of interplay between the imaginative release, of being possessed by the writing and standing outside of this experience and steering it. And, of course, there's a great deal of editing and adjustment that goes on after the event, where poems may sit around for decades before finding the final nuts and bolts that hold the chassis together.
The writing I trust, or always plan to take forward, is the pieces which start with a compulsion, a phrase that emerges in the mind, a scene or sound that niggles away at you and demands to be explored, excavated, examined. I don't always love poetry, but poetry has never really left me alone — the poets I love have become a kind of permanent fabric of my mind, how I see and feel the world.
After writing some poems, I can be left exhausted — I think a lot of writers can find the act exhausting, not at the time, as time disappears, but when you return to yourself, you realise that you've been running in the mind, and sometimes running wild.
Thanks for the question.
Warning: long contextual intro coming. Like most writers of any type I started writing young and at school, where writing was showing off, really, either to yourself or your class. But I became serious about it when I was around 18. Writing is, for me, always about discovering something other, other than oneself and one's own experiences.
So I trust the accidents and voices that the imagination draws upon and it can feel like you are being written more than you are doing the writing. But I think there's a significant counterpart to the idea of vatic and oracular writing and that's craft, and you have to be in yourself and build your skills and experience there. So there's a kind of interplay between the imaginative release, of being possessed by the writing and standing outside of this experience and steering it. And, of course, there's a great deal of editing and adjustment that goes on after the event, where poems may sit around for decades before finding the final nuts and bolts that hold the chassis together.
The writing I trust, or always plan to take forward, is the pieces which start with a compulsion, a phrase that emerges in the mind, a scene or sound that niggles away at you and demands to be explored, excavated, examined. I don't always love poetry, but poetry has never really left me alone — the poets I love have become a kind of permanent fabric of my mind, how I see and feel the world.
After writing some poems, I can be left exhausted — I think a lot of writers can find the act exhausting, not at the time, as time disappears, but when you return to yourself, you realise that you've been running in the mind, and sometimes running wild.
Hi Chris, I'd be interested to hear more about how the 'possession' comes about - more particularly is there anything you do to make yourself more receptive, to summon/invite the poem? Des
Hi Des,
I suspect that writers, well, poets for sure, go through big swings where they are writing or not writing. Of course, the not writing periods are also part of the process, too. And there's a lot of reading to be done in those fallow periods. But I think as you get older you do get better at understanding the things that trigger this kind of heightened state — call it whatever you're comfortable with — mindfulness, flow, the muse — there's a very interesting psychologist called Csikszentmihalyi who is good on this stuff.
Now for me, I'm often triggered by being outside of my own habits, so travelling, visiting somewhere, but also other art, film and music. Perhaps especially film, which I think has some very close connections to poetry and the idea of the visual imagination. I sometimes, not always, have a sense of a poem after seeing something, the seeing is the portal, the way through into the sense of otherness that the poem occupies. So you step into the poem's world and look around and see, and smell, what it's like. You come back with the goods and you push them around to see what you brought back with you, from one world to this. Sometimes this leads nowhere, and all writers are left with scraps. Sometimes, you have to push through and give the scraps a shape, and sometimes that shape will move off at a tangent to the original impetus, find a new place, a new world to capture. But poems are kid of sufficient to themselves, when you finish them, it's like closing a door on a room you have just decorated and from which you step free, distanced and slightly bereft. And alien.
Oh lord, this all sounds rather portentous! I certainly have my touchstones: the films of Tarkovsky, the music of Tippett and Shostakovich, certain books (and certain physical copies of those books), and certain authors.
I love the natural world, but also hotel rooms, hotel corridors, car parks, overpasses, certain sights can trigger a sense of being other than me — I imagine it's a kind of empathy — I think short story writers sometimes imagine themselves occupying the physical space of their characters, and see out of their eyes. Poets do this, too. Does this make sense!?
I suspect that writers, well, poets for sure, go through big swings where they are writing or not writing. Of course, the not writing periods are also part of the process, too. And there's a lot of reading to be done in those fallow periods. But I think as you get older you do get better at understanding the things that trigger this kind of heightened state — call it whatever you're comfortable with — mindfulness, flow, the muse — there's a very interesting psychologist called Csikszentmihalyi who is good on this stuff.
Now for me, I'm often triggered by being outside of my own habits, so travelling, visiting somewhere, but also other art, film and music. Perhaps especially film, which I think has some very close connections to poetry and the idea of the visual imagination. I sometimes, not always, have a sense of a poem after seeing something, the seeing is the portal, the way through into the sense of otherness that the poem occupies. So you step into the poem's world and look around and see, and smell, what it's like. You come back with the goods and you push them around to see what you brought back with you, from one world to this. Sometimes this leads nowhere, and all writers are left with scraps. Sometimes, you have to push through and give the scraps a shape, and sometimes that shape will move off at a tangent to the original impetus, find a new place, a new world to capture. But poems are kid of sufficient to themselves, when you finish them, it's like closing a door on a room you have just decorated and from which you step free, distanced and slightly bereft. And alien.
Oh lord, this all sounds rather portentous! I certainly have my touchstones: the films of Tarkovsky, the music of Tippett and Shostakovich, certain books (and certain physical copies of those books), and certain authors.
I love the natural world, but also hotel rooms, hotel corridors, car parks, overpasses, certain sights can trigger a sense of being other than me — I imagine it's a kind of empathy — I think short story writers sometimes imagine themselves occupying the physical space of their characters, and see out of their eyes. Poets do this, too. Does this make sense!?
I used to write all poems in Red&Black A4 hardback jotters, with 2B pencils, but I hated the fact I couldn't overwrite and was left with the residue of bad lines scrawled out in a smudge of grey graphite.
Moving to a desktop computer, an old Macintosh LC 475, allowed me to overwrite constantly. However, I always wanted to return to the seventh draft and not the 45th I was left with. My world became a sea of paper, drafts printed out change by change on a clapped out laser jet that could only process pages with one font on them.
Eventually, I moved to a laptop and discovered writing was more fun when mobile (especially lying on the sofa) and gave up a desk altogether. Soon I mourned not having a desk or a study or any private space.
Then came the children.
Years of nomadic writing led to the great indulgence: I bought a shed. A BIG shed. The shed was a great big reminder that I wasn't actually writing very much, so I gave it up for my daughter's sleepovers and lazy afternoons of reading, staring at the pond.
The I got an iPad — marvellous, but for the fact that when anyone else synched their devices with my account all my writing disappeared into the ether. Now there's this strange combination of pencil notes in jotters, scraps on my phone, scraps on the iPad and the most productive session are typesetting new pieces on a Mac using InDesign and worrying about the letter-spacing.
Moving to a desktop computer, an old Macintosh LC 475, allowed me to overwrite constantly. However, I always wanted to return to the seventh draft and not the 45th I was left with. My world became a sea of paper, drafts printed out change by change on a clapped out laser jet that could only process pages with one font on them.
Eventually, I moved to a laptop and discovered writing was more fun when mobile (especially lying on the sofa) and gave up a desk altogether. Soon I mourned not having a desk or a study or any private space.
Then came the children.
Years of nomadic writing led to the great indulgence: I bought a shed. A BIG shed. The shed was a great big reminder that I wasn't actually writing very much, so I gave it up for my daughter's sleepovers and lazy afternoons of reading, staring at the pond.
The I got an iPad — marvellous, but for the fact that when anyone else synched their devices with my account all my writing disappeared into the ether. Now there's this strange combination of pencil notes in jotters, scraps on my phone, scraps on the iPad and the most productive session are typesetting new pieces on a Mac using InDesign and worrying about the letter-spacing.
Chris wrote: "Hi Marianne,Thanks for the question.
Warning: long contextual intro coming. Like most writers of any type I started writing young and at school, where writing was showing off, really, either to ..."
Thanks, Chris. Very interesting! Yep, exhausted is a feeling I can identify with!
Oh lord, I hope I've not exhausted you ;)
ha ha ...oops, sorry, not exhausted by you at all. As if!;) I meant, of course, that feeling of emotional exhaustion after a period of intense creativity. btw I laughed at your big shed which became your daughter's den for sleepovers, because I have a big floored attic area which is supposed to be my writing studio, but which my son thinks is a place for him and his chums to hang out. Ah well, It does seem a tad self indulgent to have all that space just for me and my computer. Thanks again :)
I think my shed was a great indulgence, and my new study here in Cromer was taken over, too. I'm resigned to being studyless. It's never stopped me writing though. Perhaps we need some degree of resistance to make things as necessary as they can be...
Chris wrote: "Hi Des,I suspect that writers, well, poets for sure, go through big swings where they are writing or not writing. Of course, the not writing periods are also part of the process, too. And there's..."
Yep, makes perfect sense. Thanks for the generous response. Des
Chris I came across one of those coffee table books on writers - the when, why, how and the like - good old Babs Cartland would write from the comfort of a sofa - dictating to a secretary - some write while in bed - on the porch - next to the swimming pool with a cool martini nearby - the very tall American novelist Thomas Wolfe used a fridge as a desk - I scribble and think every time I have a gap in an activity - on anything at hand - life bounces in and out of writing - reading of course informs writing - and some like the structure of canonic forms - like Blue Peter readymades - the sonnet template, the haiku, others take risks - abandon ship and drift into uncharted territories. I think the writing of poetry arises and is created in all kinds of conditions. Some of it is put in a drawer and forgotten like an ex-flame - and then it reappears with all the intensity of before - or not...Being studyless - ah the freedom! :-)
I love the idea of that, Stephen. I used to stick bits of poems on walls, covering the walls of one place I lived in. I like the idea of having notebooks and scrap books for poems, too. Kind of like source material, or source codes. And I like aleatory processes, dreams and collisions, but I also like craft and order. And, ultimately, I want the reader to be able to find room in there.
When I entered the Red Bull paper aircraft competition yesterday - I should have as a friend said, written a poem on the plane - which gave me an idea for a paper plane poetry event whereby people throw planes into an audience - and they must stand up and read the poems aloud - or something like that - in Denmark some guerilla poets placed poems in the Danish version of Exchange & Mart - so if you thought you were in the section for combiner harvester parts - suddenly you came across ... a poem
I love things like this. There's a nice YouTube video of someone sewing poems surreptitiously into the lining of clothes in Miami.
