Reflections of a working writer and reader
For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and Things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly, and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning. You must be able to think back to streets in unknown neighborhoods, to unexpected encounters, and to partings you had long seen coming; to days of childhood whose mystery is still unexplained, to parents who you had to hurt when they brought in a joy and you didn’t pick it up (it was a joy meant for somebody else -); to childhood illnesses that began so strangely with so many profound and difficult transformations, to days in quiet, restrained rooms and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along high overhead and went flying with all the stars, - and it is still not enough to be able to think of all that. You must have memories of many nights of love, each one different from all the others, memories of women screaming in labor, and of light, pale, sleeping girls who have just given birth and are closing again. But you must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and the scattered noises. And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves - only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them. Rainer Maria Rilke
‘If the Nobel prize came from Scotland they would give it to a writer of fucking detective fiction or else some kind of child writer,’ author James Kelman told his audience at the Edinburgh book festival.
Previous post: The Angel of St. Crux
Next post: Bolaño’s Movie Theatres
Powered by eShop v.6
Interesting. I’m just putting the finishing touches to a post about writing in writing in dialects – Scottish dialects specifically – but I couldn’t find a quote from Kelman that fitted and so he just gets a nod and passed over. I can see his point up to a point. We have some damn good writers but world class? Mibbe no.
His point was that we have good writers but the prevailing culture promotes those with commercial success rather than those with talent or innovation. I don’t know if I totally agree- there’s Don Paterson winning the Forward Prize, for instance. I do feel, though it’s maybe just green cheese, that it’s hard, if you’re not well connected, to break through to get recognition, or work.
jb says: I think I did understand his point, Hugh. And it is a great pity that most of the prestigious prizes seem to follow the money.