Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Ellen Galford and The Fires of Bride

book cover with Celtic knotwork
For writing class we had to write about a work of a writer we like.  I  chose Ellen Galford’s The Fires of Bride for its no-nonsense style, which evokes both a down to earth pragmatism, and an as given magical realism, whether she is writing about kippers or ghosts. Galford (1947 - )writes with a sensory physicality in the present tense: to describe recent remote rural Scotland, an ancient nunnery, pagan or Viking times, with an immediacy that transports you there. Her approach is to use small practical details to create a sense of place, time, and character. She is very good at writing from a range of characters point of view in terms of their language and attitudes. Whether that be a stroppy sculptor Maria, playful blind weaver Isa, or a career driven archaeologist. Something I need to work at – getting inside different characters heads and voices. Ellen Galford's approach makes a range of cultures accessible, fun, and funny, so that you want to go there.

One of the characters Mhairi, is a nun in a scriptorium some centuries ago, learning the illustrated arts of writing as a pictorial calligrapher. To me it is a metaphor about writing generally. In part it says ‘there are 17 different shades of blue’ and then she goes on to describe some of them from calligrapher Mhairi’s point of view. This challenges me to think how I could describe each one, and how to create mood by precise creative distinctiveness, choosing each word carefully.

Galford’s narrative of Mhairi’s apprenticeship as a calligrapher under the tutelage of the stern Bloduedd who for a year only lets Mhairi trace letters others have formed, is a metaphor for me of writing as a hard task master. To begin with you may copy the forms of others, say in poetry using rhyming couplets and writing on topics dictated by teachers. As you gain confidence you may develop your own form, style, rhythm, and narrative. Writing, like all arts may require a period of apprenticeship, it continues to require discipline, dedication, creativity, patience.

In one section Mhairi collects flowers, berries and shells to make the colors for her illustrations, burns her hand on the acid of a red berry while preparing it, which leaves a scar. Hints at the power of writing to change you, not just mentally, emotionally, or spiritually, but also physically. It changes your muscles, how you hold your body, how you sit, how you read. 

As testament of the power of a book to change us, over twenty years ago the Scriptorium in which this scene is set became a kind of magical place referred to among other writers who had read the book. In honour of me going to writers school this year, a fellow writer from far away, had a sign made for my room and mailed it to me, it says: Scriptorium.

In the late 1980’s when we read Fires of Bride, a roommate made a beautiful painted coat based on one of the other main characters in the book – Catriona, a GP who paid her way through medical school by working as a fortune teller. Fires of Bride is full of such  wondrous contradictions which appeal to me. I still have this coat.

So intrigued was I by the remote Scottish Isles where this book was set, I once traveled there just to be amongst the standing stones, the people, the Gaelic, the heaving north sea, and the windswept landscape.  

I can aspire to writing words that could evoke: creative imaginative spaces; artwork; or journeys in others; and speak to the future. 
standing stone circle isle of lewis

   

No comments:

Post a Comment