What I’m reading and where I’ve been.

I always have way-too-many books on the go, but in terms of poetry, the current go-to is The Gorse Fires by Michael Longley. I have, for many reasons, a love of the poetry that comes from Northern Ireland, and Longley’s poems are amongst the most lyric but also moving. To quote Carol Ann Duffy “He may not yet possess or want the international glamour of some of his contemporaries…” but I believe his poems are amongst the best not just to come out of Northern Ireland, but from anywhere. The collective impact of the book is stunning. The non-fiction is Hannah Critchlow’s The Science of Fate, a study of neuroscience and how our brains and our inherited and developed “hard-wiring” affect our daily lives and the choices we make or, indeed, are able to make. Fascinating stuff. The most recent novel I have read is Normal People by Sally Rooney. (It’s Ireland again, I know) I haven’t read any of her other work, and I found this one a complete change from the books I normally read. There was a lot I enjoyed, not least the confusion and the chaos of life as a young adult. What I struggled with was the format and the fact that, for me, the characters of the two central protagonists are always kept on the surface, primarily through the staccato dialogue and narrative. So much so that (spoiler alert) when Connell goes off to study writing, it seems like a random act, as too is Marianne submitting to the sexual violence in some of her affairs. Maybe life is random and directionless like this, but fiction isn’t life. As my daughters said, “It’s not written for you, though.” And certainly it isn’t; I can see how the book was seen as a starting point for film or a TV series, but as a novel, it left me uncertain of it’s narrative arc. However, Sally Rooney won’t be bothered too much. She is obviously a successful writer and all the best luck to her. It’s great to see at least someone make it to the top of the pile. Meanwhile, back to my own fiction…

I recently re-visited Edinburgh and, near the top of Leith Walk (not too far from one of the police stations that Ian Rankin uses for his Rebus novels) is a fantastic independent bookshop called Typewronger Books. It is a superb and stimulating place and the staff are so passionate about everything about books and writing. I had a long and fascinating chat with Elsa about all things book-ish and came out inspired. Also came out thinking hard about taking my books off Amazon. Thanks so much for nudging me back onto the straight and narrow.

Whilst in Edinburgh I also visited the Andy Goldsworthy retrospective at the National Gallery. His work is absolutely sublime. The relationship with the natural environment and the transience of much of his work is thought provoking and humbling at the same time. It almost looks out of place in the confines of the gallery. Interesting, too, was the relationship with his early work and the later pieces. There are similarities, but what is far more evident today is the confidence and the certainty that comes with his works. The series of images taken over many years of the rotting elm tree and his response to it was particularly poignant. Brilliant exhibition.

The stimulus to write comes, for me, from a variety of places. I have just finished reading Ursula Le Guin’s book about writing; Steering the Craft. I know that it isn’t technically a visual stimulus, but many of the examples she uses are drawn from some of the great descriptive writers - Hardy, Woolf, Austen as well as other genres (see the next section, Re-reading for example) and even non-fiction writers. The descriptions in these quoted texts made me re-view the landscapes I am familiar with and learn more about the the ones I encountered while reading her book. Places such as North Northumberland (where I live) the cityscape of Edinburgh (where I used to work and where I was visiting) and the north east coast (where I do much of my walking) are all familiar. All are the subject of many tales, myths, fiction and narratives and are endlessly stimulating and inspirational in new ways. I occasionally need reminding to look up, look longer and look harder.

Just been to visit the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield too. The sense of place in the work of all the exhibitors is palpable and it is impossible to come away without being inspired to strive even harder to capture the genius loci of wherever it is that inspires your work.

Many new books pile up, waiting to be read for the first time, but an equally large pile is that for the books I want to re-read. Often, the stimulus is from other writing, from a chance comment or seeing them in a bookshop window. I always have too many books on the go at anyone time; typically a novel, a book of poetry and some non-fiction. At the moment the novel is a re-read of Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence. I sometimes have difficulty reading Lawrence’s prose as it can be rhapsodic but also masks the true meaning (at least for me) I also find his ( and any writer’s) attempt to replicate the midland’s vernacular impenetrable…but, but...I find Lady Chatterley’s Lover to be his best book by far because both of these issues (again, for me) are subservient to the plot and the three central characters and their roles in the dialogue. I am re-reading this after having re-read A Wizard of Earthsea. I am not usually found reading fantasy novels, but these were prompted by Ursula Le Guin being quoted in an article, reflecting on the fact she has written over seventy books of various genres; her writing and her technique are fantastic as too are Alan Garner’s. Add to that, Alan Garner writes about the Peaks and the Cheshire hills - a part of the world I know well - and he loves words for their own sake, too. Good writing is good writing, whatever the subject.

One of the books I read recently was about quantum physics. Now, I’m no physicist, but quantum mechanics seems, to me, to be particularly difficult to grasp. The idea that light, for example, can be both a particle and a wave at the same time. Then I read Ursula Le Guin writing about Virginia Woolf’s prose - how the words as individual objects have power in their own right, but also how, in Woolf’s writing, they form a rhythm. So much so, that the words and the passage can behave in different but complementary ways; as both particles and waves, perhaps. This relationship between individual particles/moment/memories and their combined effect is part of what I am exploring in a novel I am working on, but one which is currently hard going. With a working title of Headland, the book is exploring the memories of someone in the early stages of dementia and how these memories inter-weave with the current reality and how, like particles, they inter-weave to create new patterns and new truths. Sort of Virginia Woolf meets Richard P. Feynman.