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- Winged
with Death Reviews
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If you will cling to Nature, to the simple in Nature, to the little things that hardly anyone sees, and that can so unexpectedly become big and beyond measuring; if you have this love of inconsiderable things and seek quite simply, as one who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier, more coherent and somehow more conciliatory for you, not in your intellect, perhaps, which lags marveling behind, but in your inmost consciousness, waking and cognizance. You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within yourself the possibility of shaping and forming as a particularly happy and pure way of living; train yourself to it -- but take whatever comes with great trust, and only if it comes out of your own will, out of some need of your inmost being, take it upon yourself and hate nothing.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To a Young Poet
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An Interview at the Yorkshire Post
john baker, March 16th, 2009. 2 comments. Filed under blogging, writing.
Sarah Walters recorded a podcast interview with me recently. It is mainly concerned with the writing of Winged with Death, but she has questions about the writing process generally, as well as delving a little into my early career, blogging, and to what extent creative writing can be taught to would-be novelists.
I also read aloud from the novel.
You can listen to the podcast/interview/reading on the Yorkshire Post site.
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I am entranced by your descriptions of the dance in ‘Winged With Death’. Still half-way through the novel – it flows back and forth, in and out – just like the dance. Years ago I read the memoir of the Chilean singer, Victor Jara written by his wife after he disappeared. I am in Leeds and fell in love with the dance 5 years ago. Wonder where you dance now….
Stephanie
Hi Stephanie, I don’t know the Victor Jara book, but I’ll keep an eye out for it. Glad to know you are enjoying Winged with Death, though. I dance everywhere, though in fact I don’t dance regularly anywhere at the moment.