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ISSN 1543-6063 |
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Kay Sexton invites B.A. Goodjohn to talk about poetry, creativity, borders and boundaries: KLS: How did you get into writing?
B.A. Goodjohn: This is a tough one because it depends on one’s definition of “into writing.” I began to write creatively, I think, when I was in the first form at secondary school. My parents were called in to speak with the teacher because of the content of my stories. It seems I had a preoccupation with death and women. Not a lot has changed. My parents are still concerned! But if we think about “into” as in terms of writing as a way of life, I think it was probably in 2000. I’d written a few poems before then, but nothing on a regular basis. I went back to college in 1999 when I emigrated to America. I was thirty-nine and considering a journalism second career. But I was seduced into the English department in my second semester and didn’t look back. I wrote the first draft of Sticklebacks in my senior year. KLS: How has emigration affected your use of language? We’ve talked about this from time to time, as you’re a transplanted Brit and I’m a Brit at home, and I know your view changes depending on where you are (geographically) and what you are writing, but do you think the subtle difference between British English and American English helps or hinders your poetry? B.A. Goodjohn: I think it helps—but only with a creative audience and that’s more often encountered in terms of poetry. It’s a negative in fiction – the fiction reader wants to read the story and doesn’t give a damn who’s written it. In poetry, the reader wants a piece of the poet. I’m a hybrid—half Londoner, half Virginian. That’s who I am. That’s who turns up on the page and who the reader gets to go home with. It’s very liberating to have access to two languages and to be able to combine them without the need for overt translation. KLS: What’s the best thing about being a writer? B.A. Goodjohn: Most of the time, writing is about sitting down and tapping on a keyboard. It’s not fun and you can tap for hours before a decent word, let alone a line, appears on the screen. But sometimes, something happens when I’m at the keyboard. I start to type and I think it’s going to be one of those tapping days and suddenly, it starts. It’s almost audible. Like something crawls up onto my shoulder and whispers “go go go go go go go go go” in my ear and then slides away. And I pause for a moment and then the words and images start piling up in that weird place between your ears and your eyes and then they’re there, on the screen and you don’t really feel as if you’re the one typing them but you’re the only one in the room, the only one with their fingers on the keys and the words are about you and yours and people you’ve never ever met before…it’s fucking magic! KLS: What’s the worst time? B.A. Goodjohn: I’ve finished writing something I love. I’ve printed off the final version, maybe I’ve read it to myself seventeen times and I’m feeling good and real and, yeah, “authentic” and I think that maybe I AM a writer and then Crawly Boy slides up to my ear again but this time, he whispers, “That’s the last good thing you’ll ever write.” It happens every time. Every single time. It’s hard to get back. To run the risk of him being right. KLS: Who do you most admire as a writer, and why? B.A. Goodjohn: I have real problems with this question. I feel as if I should have this one writer who I can hold up as a personal icon of something – tenacity, skill, craft. But I don’t. I think it has something to do with my late arrival at the trough. I didn’t write until I hit my forties and really, I didn’t read until then either. Since then, I’ve been playing catch up because I’ve finally realised that in order to be a good writer, you have to be a good reader. And culturally, I’m such a mongrel. I’m a died-in-the-wool Brit who didn’t start reading until she got to America. So my influence is American. It has to be because that’s my environment today. What happens is that I read someone and if they’re good, I fall in love with their work and they become the person who I most admire as a writer. And then I read someone else and THEY become the “one”. A disgruntled boyfriend once described me as a serial monogomist. He was right. I was. Maybe I’m still like that with my favorite writers; I love them until someone new and shiny comes along and then I love them. It will probably end in tears. Today’s literary lovers are Charlie Smith for poetry and Hardy for prose. Me and Hardy go way back. KLS: How do you know if something: an idea, a ‘spark’ is going to be a poem or a story or a novel – what determines the form, for you? B.A. Goodjohn: Usually, when the spark flares, content suggests form. If I get some idea that is firmly stitched to emotion—especially something dark like excess, loss or love—it’s likely to move towards poetry. If the flare is character, I need space to discover who they are. And that space, for me, has to come through fiction. I’m not an epic poet. I can’t sustain the level of energy that poetry requires across multiple pages. The novel is a different animal entirely. The short story is to the novel what a mobile home is to a housing estate. I can bone out a short story in about an hour. There’s no flesh, but I know how many legs it has and where it’s heading. But a novel takes more than a spark. A novel is a commitment – from the writer and from the characters. Can I keep all those women and their dogs and the shopkeepers and the boy with the gammy leg in the same landscape for long enough for a story worth telling to coalesce? Do I want to? KLS: And do those sparks sometimes transmute between forms? If so, what’s the process of discovering that a poem really wanted to be a story or vice versa? B.A. Goodjohn: Yes. They transmute because the form they’re in isn’t working. And that’s usually because I’ve got in the way of the process. Maybe I was sitting at the keyboard tapping away wanting to get to a poem and Crawly Boy suddenly pours the beautiful words into me and even though I know the words are fiction, I want them to be poetry. So I gather them all up and start cutting them up into lines and stanzas and what they really want to do is form themselves up into paragraphs and rising action. So I sit there and keep bending them and ordering them around until I give up. And let them be what they need to be. KLS: How do you revise your work? B.A. Goodjohn: Unwillingly! It’s the grunt work of writing. I have to let the words cool a little…lose their magic…before I can approach them. Otherwise, I can’t see the flaws. So I put the rough first draft away for about a week. Then I drag it out again and read it aloud and see where it sings and where it whines. I know when it’s working and I also know when it’s not. I’m blessed like that. There is no doubt for me. Especially with fiction. With poetry, it’s a little different. I tend to print off about five copies of the first draft and stick it on doors and walls around the house. Then I live with it for a week or so, changing words here and there. I rarely “overhaul” a poem. When I walk past it and I don’t wince, I know it’s probably about done. When I walk past it and can’t help but stop and read it aloud, I know it’s a good one. Fuck, doesn’t that sound pretentious? That’s the poet in me. We’re allowed. KLS: This interests me, because there seems to be something about ‘discovering’ the reality of a poem, a sort of accidental process that involves fleeting glances and unexpected sidelong views, that’s completely different, for you, to the intuitive right or wrongness of fictional narrative – can you explain what’s involved in ‘I know when it’s working’? B.A. Goodjohn: I’ve always felt fraudulent—in many different areas of my life. It’s as if the Sweeney is going to turn up in an stream of Jaguars and tell me I’ve been rumbled and that the world knows I’m a crap daughter/sister/wife/teacher/friend/lover/writer of fiction. And I’d throw my hands up and take the rap. But if they accused me of being a fraudulent poet? I’d be done for assaulting a police officer. I know I can write poetry. It’s a translation of my heart. A short story is a translation of the head with some heart thrown in. There’s no head in poetry. KLS: You seem to enjoy giving readings – what are the differences between poetry and ‘book’ readings? B.A. Goodjohn: I’m not so sure there is a huge difference. Of course, with poetry, it’s easier to time your reading. If the event starts late, you can cut one or two minor poems, or if you end up with an extended slot, you can usually add in something, maybe something that’s still in draft. That’s harder to do with fiction. I found myself running out of time a week or so ago and having to think about cutting entire paragraphs while I was reading. That’s tough, and a recipe for disaster. I suppose the answer is preparation, preparation, preparation. Time yourself, give yourself a plan B or plan C, and always run short rather than long. KLS: If you were abandoned on a desert island, with just one book for company, what would it be? B.A. Goodjohn: Ah, the desert island discs question! I think it would have to be poetry. I can read poetry over and over and find new themes and images. So maybe Milton’s Paradise Lost. Or Dante’s Divine Comedy. Either of those would do it. Bunny Goodjohn, is an adjunct professor at Randolph College and at Lynchburg College in Virginia, and a transplant from London, England. She has a BA in English from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College and a Master of Fine Arts from The University of Maine. Her first novel, Sticklebacks and Snow Globes, was published by Permanent Press in Fall 2007 and is due for release by Scribe Publishing (Best Small Publisher 2006) in Australia in March 2008. it won a BookSense Notable Award in December 2007 and made the Kirkus Best of 2007 list as well as being nominated for the fiction category of the Library of Virginia Literary Awards. She is currently working on her second novel and a poetry manuscript entitled The Weather House.
As well as writing for the UK's premier sustainability journal, Green Futures, twice Pushcart-nominated Kay Sexton has recently completed ‘Green Thought in an Urban Shade’, a words and pictures exhibition with Irish painter Fion Gunn that explored parks and green space in four cities around the world. ‘Green Thought’ was shown at two London galleries, Dublin’s National Botanic Gardens and the Tsinghua University, Beijing. In the four years she has been writing, Kay’s fiction has been chosen for over twenty anthologies ranging from ‘Mexico, a Love Story’ to ‘Tales of the Decongested’ and recent magazine publications include Ambit, Frogmore Papers, Lichen (Canada), and Mindprints (USA). She was a finalist in the 2007 University of Hertfordshire Writing Award and has just been commissioned to write a short story for national radio broadcast. Her novel, Gatekeeper, is currently with an agent and she is working on a second novel about pornography and rivers in 1920s Hampshire.
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