I gave myself a straight choice at the age of twenty-two – either I headed for the smoke in search of a mentor a la Lumsden, Donaghy, etc, or I left for the poorest, most remote part of Spain (as described on my travel website at Extremadura Guide), which I knew and loved from my year abroad. I was aware that I’d go for several months at a time without speaking English except a weekly phone call home, living in a dusty town where I’d be the only foreigner. Bear in mind this was when the internet was in its infancy.
I obviously chose the latter route. It might not have helped me in terms of climbing ladders or having someone to tap me on the shoulder and tell me where I was going wrong, but this isolation enabled me to develop a distinctive poetic tone. What’s more, I had no choice other than to write if I wanted to express something in English.
Have you ever imagined how your writing might have developed if you’d taken such a route? Exile sharpens understanding of your home, as it provides an incomparable counterpoint, while immersing yourself for years in a foreign language sheds new light on your original tongue. However, many critics would argue that you lose touch after so long away, that your views lose validity as a result of such a decision. The garden of forking paths, as Borges would have it.
DISPLACED They called her aloof, impractical, clumsy, plain. It was, they
say, difficult for her not to fall in love.In spite, that is, of the first
coughs...
Interesting. I spent five years in Italy (I've only been back in Scotland for 4 years) and my poetry did develop there. It's hard to know whether it would have developed in a different direction had I not gone, although I definitely wouldn't have been able to write certain poems (but may have written others I wasn't able to write due to the decision I took).
ReplyDeleteThat said, chapbook and book publication only happened when I returned. But some writers (e.g. Liz Gallagher in the Gran Canaria - her debut collection from Salt will appear later thia year) manage to get a first publication while living abroad.
John Ash is another writer whose time abroad seems to have changed his poetry radically. He has lived in Turkey for over a decade. The poetry he wrote before going is very different to that afterwards - although both periods are good.
Hi Rob,
ReplyDeleteThere's no doubt that living abroad and learning another language changes the way we write, but my case was even more extreme - for the first few years after coming over to Extremadura I had virtually no contact with other foreigners - total immersion!
As for publishing while being over here, there's no doubt I have to clock up Easyjet miles and get to as many readings in the U.K. as possible - I read at launches for The London Magazine and Under The Radar last autumn and hope to give more readings this year.