In 1997 I wrote I wanted to perfect the art of writing humorous absurd tragedies about important things where nothing really happened! I think that is still a good aim, and I may be well on my way towards it.
I took a creative writing class that year, in response to my short story submitted for grading, the tutor exhorted me to publish, and wrote amongst other things that my writing had clarity and vividness, was powerful and moving, containing a dark intelligence. I am not immune to such flattery, but me and my creative collaborators of the time, T and, A, did have a lot of fun with it, spending some time debating if we should have an art competition amongst ourselves to see who could create the best image of what my dark intelligence might look like! In the end we didn't, but included above are two images of me drawn around that time by minimalist extraordinaire T, during a session in which we each drew portraits of each other in a set number of lines, in this case 5, and 7. Which illustrates what I might have looked like at the time my dark intelligence may have been in evidence! Yes I still have these things, in journals full of: writing, cards for exhibitions, tickets to movies and plays, photos, leaves, feathers, drawings - mine and others.
Before email, when living at a distance we perfected a way of sharing our writing via the telephone answering service for free. Each of us had voice mail with the same telephone company, which had only one access number for the whole country. We recorded our stories in a series of 3 minute messages on our own voice mail. Then T and A, would call up the system, enter my voice mail number and passcode and listen to the story of the day or week. I could do the same with them, erasing the messages as we went, and leaving messages in response to the stories for instant feedback.
A good 12 years earlier, I was 18, in my first year at university living on campus in the halls of residence, in small wooden room on the second floor, cluttered with posters on the wall, a purple plastic cup and saucer upside down on the ceiling impersonating a light fixture, it was the 1980's so there was some lime green and pink chiffon which were in vogue thanks to Cyndi Lauper. During a one week break from classes, I took all this down from the walls, and put up 7 of my photos of nature, one for each day of the week, along with literary quotes relating to the images under each photo. I had not quite exited christianity at this point so I believe the quotes were from the bible, the poetic parts, song of solomon, pslams, proverbs perhaps, lay me down in cool water etc.
I dragged the single bed in to the middle of the room on a diagonal, and put the desk and chair beside it, I put everything else away in the capacious built-in wooden wardrobe. I bought a hard covered journal with blank unlined crisp pages. Out the window I could hear performances of Shakespeare's A midsummers nights dream, being staged in the open-air by the university drama club. I am not a fan of Shakespeare, but it did make for a nice backdrop. For one week I wrote in to the book, the poems I had written since I was 15, from the loose leaf pages they were recorded on. Now that I would not return to my family's home, and it was safe to do so, where previously such poems had been hidden in a plastic bag in a box, on shelf, deep in the wardrobe. My mother concerned perhaps by my unexplained absence, upon driving up to visit one day looked nervously around my room, and asked if i had become a nun. No not disciple, disciplined. Which brings me to the present day, 27 years and 15 or so journals of writing later. Five of these journals are already deposited with an Archive, and the rest will be one day too, but like Janet Frame, no one gets to read them until I am long gone!
I have a high school English teacher to thank for my earliest literary encouragement. Mrs D, where are you? I had the pleasure of being in her class for two years, she really did love writing. I was one of few who actually enjoyed being left with creative writing assignments, on rainy days, when she had to leave the classroom. While my classmates gossiped, ate, threw things, I moved my desk to face the wall at the back of the class, far as I could get from the hub bub, and wrote. Whatever came into my mind, it was such a relief, creative expression, the release from strictly structured lessons. My work was always met by Mrs D with useful pointers, encouraging comments and humorous retorts to my sometimes satirical writing about the class.
She was amused by my audacity and gave me credit for originality at least on a set assignment in small groups to read part of a Shakespeare play, it may have been Macbeth. I rewrote the lines in the language, accent, slang of the present day I heard on television sitcoms. Each character in a different voice, Cockney, African American, Jewish, New York Italian, stereotyped renderings I know, and talked my group in to performing it thus, Shakespeare updated. We also had to study Aeschylus' Agamemnon, which was a bit to close to home and caused me to have a small nervous breakdown.
I wrote studious book reviews about the life of Ghandi and such like. It may have been Mrs D who was instrumental in having eight of my poems published (anonymously) in the school magazine in my final year. I will always be grateful for her literary nurturing, and recognition of possibilities, that writing had it's own value.
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