June 14 2020
NOTES ON A WRITING LIFE | 14
Dear all,
So, another month on into this disquieting summer, what goes on? I read other writers on what a writer’s role is, should be, always has been, and try to arrive at my own thoughts on this. The clues seem to be in what I am searching out to read, to watch, to pay attention to, and how I choose to spend my time. Writers are just ordinary people who spend a lot of time writing or thinking about writing. I’ve been re-reading my contemporary and inspiration Patti Smith, she who always seems to travel so light, throwing a few eclectic items into a bag and setting off into other worlds – or simply into cafés, to read and think about writers who in turn inspire her. I hope she is sitting safely in a café somewhere now, drinking endless coffee and writing in another Moleskine notebook.
““The centre cannot hold; things fall apart…” What, where, how? What was coming at me out of the future, if poetry was this? I wrote to my parents afterwards to say that Yeats came to speak to us, and my mother wrote back that actually he was dead, so he can’t have; but in a real way, it was Yeats who spoke to me that day. ”
I hear the voice of W.B. Yeats in my head. “The Second Coming” is being much-quoted at the moment and I remember when I was about sixteen, hearing it for the first time in the voice of a white-haired Irish actor who visited our school. My hair stood on end. I was transfixed with a sort of prophetic shock. I didn’t understand, I wanted to understand, and I feared it. “The centre cannot hold; things fall apart…” What, where, how? What was coming at me out of the future, if poetry was this? I wrote to my parents afterwards to say that Yeats came to speak to us, and my mother wrote back that actually he was dead, so he can’t have; but in a real way, it was Yeats who spoke to me that day. “Sailing To Byzantium.” That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea. (Key West in hurricane season?) It was like seeing Banquo’s ghost pop up in front of me when aged twelve or so I sat in the front row at the Old Vic to see “Macbeth.” Ghosts, prophecies, voices from the past that might be from the future. I was almost terrified to begin trying to write poetry myself.
But writers are ordinary people, and have to join in with what is actually going on around them too. I don’t think we have any special role as leaders, except involuntarily. There are writers I’d follow anywhere – Rebecca Solnit, George Monbiot, Patti Smith, Margaret Atwood at the moment – but not because they think of themselves as leaders. We all have to pay attention, and learn. I went down to the rally for Black Lives Matter a week or so ago in our town and felt immensely cheered by being among other people for the first time in months, young and old, black and white, all wearing masks, all with a common grief and cause. It’s all about showing up, I think, even if you may take years to know the outcome. Take a short cut from the poets who strike you like lightning, and the words of your forebears, and just go forward, and take a knee in humility, take a risk. Just try – and I’m learning American history as I go – to pay attention, to learn.
We have also had a campaign recently going to “re-imagine Key West,” the place where I live. Can we imagine into being a town where inequality does not rule, where greed is tempered and mass tourism will not overwhelm both us and the natural world it depends on? Can imagination, coupled with political will and ecological knowledge, make the change? It remains to be seen, as does so much else.
On a more mundane note, a box of books arrived unexpectedly on my doorstep. The thrill of unpacking new books again – the paperback copy of Without Her that is due out in July, unexpected simply because I’ve become so used to nothing working as planned, but here it is, my publisher delivered and my spirits rose.
Be well, be safe, and trust the future –
Affectionately, Ros
The new paperback version of Without Her can be pre-ordered here from Amazon or from Delphinium Press.
Grinnell Street Rag
Last night we sat on broken chairs
to hear the guitar man across the street
play us the old songs.
Two tiny girls danced in their skirts,
people paused on their bicycles.
We sipped our wine from jars
and no cars passed.
This is how it used to be, we said,
back in the day. When the island
was quiet and we could play and sing
and hear each other speak
and sit out on the street.
It’s like finding an old love, we said,
or someone we used to love but no longer can.
Here it is, our old love -
the island they call paradise,
stripped of all pretension
traffic, tourists, planes and massive ships-
death ships we call them now -
free of its blight,
calm, as the sun sets, lovely,
ours again tonight.