Anita Holford, “Whatever people say I am…” (from 26 Treasures)
Welcome back to A Writing Life, and to the second of six guest articles from long-time 26 member Anita Holford. Each month, we invite her to share stories from her writing life, reflecting on what it means to live as a writer today.
It’s 4 in the afternoon as I begin this blog, and it’s dark in my little garden office. The clouds are so low it almost feels as if they’ll give up and just flop over the landscape, enveloping us all in damp, grey, marshmallow-like softness.
After Inverness
So, last time, I teased you with ‘more on what happened next and how important if infrequent my participation in 26 projects has been’. I left you/me 20 years ago, at my first Dark Angels writing course in Inverness.
Well, after that, I seemed to regain my poetry mojo. My computer files and notepads are filled with fully formed poems as well as scraps of words, phrases, thoughts and ideas from around that period, some of which are still waiting, hopefully, to be connected into something more solid.
That impulse to write creatively has stayed with me, but oh it’s a fickle creature, a wisp of a thing dancing just out of reach, coming and going on its own terms.
My first first 26 project: 26 Treasures Wales
So, six years after that first experience, I took up the challenge to be a writer for 26 Treasures Wales, a 26 project, as well as part of the team running it. I’m sure many of you will remember it and 26 of you were part of it. Based on a previous project run with the V&A, the idea was that 26 writers, 13 in Welsh and 13 in English, would each write 62 words about a particular ‘treasure’ from the National Library of Wales.
In the narrative accompanying my poem, I began: “I was really pleased to have a map as my object, because it offers so many possibilities for writing: about journeys, connections, things being viewed from different perspectives and great voyages.”
It really made me chuckle to re-read that. It was written with the benefit of hindsight. Because the truth is, my initial rather less gracious reaction was more like Harry Enfield’s Kevin the Teenager: “Ugh. A map. I hate geography. I hate maps. I’m rubbish at directions. I hate maps.”
It just goes to show what John Simmons always says, ‘constraints liberate’. I was constrained by this darned map and forced to create something that now doesn’t feel like it came from me. A feeling which I know you’ll all recognise.
I remember a word that kept popping into my mind was ANOMALY and that was the word that kick-started my poem – so thank goodness it rhymed with CARTOGRAPHY!
The more I found out, the more my response to the map was about things – particularly distances – being not quite what they might seem. And as I’m a big music fan, I couldn’t resist the Arctic Monkey’s reference in the title, ‘Whatever people say I am, that’s what I’m not’.
In the end, I became quite fond of this map. I liked the idea that, if we were to believe Ptolemy, the world is smaller than we think. It chimed with something that happened to me during the process of researching the poem: rediscovering Shirley, my childhood pen pal, after 30 years – still living over the other side of the world in Singapore. Yet we were able to shorten that distance with Zoom, encouraged by my daughter who had connected with Shirley’s same-age daughter and had already video-called her.
You can read my final poem and all about the project here: 26 Treasures: bringing objects to life through poems and creation stories.
So once again, 26 created a pivotal moment in my writing life. So many firsts – writing poetry with constraints, having my poetry translated into Welsh (and then back into English so I could read the beautiful interpretation), having a poem published in a physical book, reading my poetry out loud to an audience (at the V&A no less).
I’m pretty good at staying in my comfort zone, in all sorts of aspects of my life, but this pushed me outside it in so many ways.
Together we go
Is that enough for now, do you think? You’re tired. I’m tired. Let’s finish here.
But two things before we go. Firstly, who are you and what do you want from this blog? I find it hard to write without knowing these things. So I’d love to hear from you. What are you curious to know, if you’re curious about my writing life at all? Maybe I’ll hear from you, but more likely I won’t – and it may be a good constraint to not know.
I realise that, so far in these blogs, I’m looking back a lot. I promise I’ll get to ‘A (current) Writing Life,’ soon. We have four more moments together from March to June. Next, I’ll tell you about Dark Angels in Spain three years later; the 26 Neurodiversity project nine years later (if there was a school report for 26 members, mine would say ‘infrequent but enthusiastic participation’). Then for the final three months I can share what’s been going on in my current writing life. That’s my plan anyway. Have a lovely rest of your month and thank you for reading.
Anita
If you’d like to know more about Anita’s writing life, explore her website or connect on LinkedIn.