Nine Questions
In
the fourth episode of our new series, Ink Sweat & Tears talks to
practicing writers about their process and craft – and asks them nine
questions…
1. Where do you write? (do you have an office, room, bus or train journey that you find yourself and your writing? etc)
We have a converted attic in our small house where I have my books, CDs, sounds machine, computer, two writing desks facing away from each other and a couch. Sometimes if I work late into the night I sleep there as it has shower and toilet. I don’t like to disturb my wife, if she goes to bed earlier.
We also have a cabin in the forest and I do a lot of writing there as I am usually completely on my own. I also have books there and I take some music with me.
Once a month I have to go to Bratislava and I often write on the train journey which takes five hours. It is one of the most beautiful journeys in Europe, at least between Presov and Trencin.
2. How do you write? (into a notebook or straight onto a computer? etc)
I started writing in the 1960s before I could afford a typewriter. The first poems I had published in a magazine (Poetry and Audience) were submitted in a hand-written manuscript.
I haven’t changed my writing habits all that much. I write with a fountain pen in black ink in a small notebook and then when something looks as though it might become a poem I write several drafts in a larger notebook until a poem has a satisfactory form. Then I copy it on to my computer and save a back up copy on a USB. Every time I copy I make small adjustments to the poem.
3. Roughly how much time do you spend each week on creative writing related activities? (writing, editing, correspondence & submissions – give a daily average if possible)
As I’ve just had a Creative Writing course proposal accepted at the local university my time is about to change. If I don’t have a poetry translation commission or a batch of books to review probably about 3 or 4 hours day on everything including administration. Now it’s likely to be a about 5 or 6 hours for the next semester. If we have a translation with a deadline or a reviews or articles to write then 8 hours a day two weeks before the deadline.
4. What time of day do you usually write?
For the physical act of writing preferably in the evening although I do a lot of thinking before I write. Often I will ’work’ for an evening and not write a line even in the small notebook.
5. Do you set yourself a daily target for writing?
No. I always make sure something is written, but never my last thoughts as I like leave something for my subconscious to mull over or forget. Forgetting is very important.
6. What does it feel like to write?
When I was in my twenties it was a highly emotional activity. But I could only bear to live with less than half of what I wrote. Now I wait and when a poem has gathered itself into some form of coherence just below consciousness I sit down and try and tease it out. It feels very dispassionate. Yet it must be still very emotional because I have to make sure I do something fairly mindless immediately afterwards, (a movie on TV or the DVD player) because I cannot sleep after writing something, which I think might just work.
7. Are there any stimuli that will usually trigger you into writing?
Rain. The hillside view from the attic window. Favourite poets. Science. The forest round my cabin. The noise of the stream beside the cabin.
8. Do you work in silence or have background noise? If you do have sounds, what are you listening to now?
There’s no such thing as silence except when you’re dead. I don’t try to reduce noise to an extreme minimum, but I don’t like being disturbed. I often play music while writing, preferably baroque, Stravinsky or neo-classical French composers. I recommend Poulenc’s chamber music.
Just now I’m listening to the rain.
9. What are you working on now?
I’ve just finished a 99 poem sequence, which I began about 10 to 12 years ago. As each poem in the sequence consists of 3 verses of 5 lines each I have to haul in the sheets, come about and catch a different formal breeze in my sails. Viera and I have just translated a sequence by Mila Haugova, Slovakia’s most distinguished living poet, where her starting point was Mallarme’s “A Throw of the Dice ….” Not easy. I have some semi-legible prose poems in the small notebook based on a jumble of reading on symbolism, alchemy and what I’ve seen in the forest around my cabin. I have to see if they’re worth working on.
My friend Shamil Khairov, who teaches Slavonic languages at Glasgow University and I have collaborated at a snail’s pace on photopoems over the last 15 years. Recently, I began to feel more energy over his photographs and there are a dozen or so I’d like to work on. I have to go to Bratislava tomorrow and I will take a couple of his photos with me and try something on the train.
*James Sutherland-Smith is a poet and reviewer, and with his wife Viera translates from Slovak. He scrapes a living teaching at his local university and examining in Slovakia. His most recent collection is Popeye in Belgrade (Carcanet). Two selections of poems by Mila Haugova (Slovak) and by Ivana Milankova (Serb) are in a very long publishing pipeline.