Today,
I’m delighted to welcome Julie Kennedy to my blog, to talk about her
novel Ma Mum and William Wordsworth.
Julie has
an impressive writing track record, with poetry and fiction published widely
e.g. in New Writing Scotland, Causeway/Cabhsair, Southword, and
the Poetry Society Newsletter, and she was highly commended in the
Ledbury 2022 Poetry Competition. Ma Mum and William Wordsworth was
longlisted in Mslexia’s 2013 First Novel Competition and in 2022 she was
awarded a Scots Language Publication Grant to publish it as an
ebook.
Review
By turns
amusing and tragic, this is the story of 15-year-old Erin, growing up in an
industrial town in late 1970s Lanarkshire. The oldest of eight children, Erin
is good at school, keen on literature and full of potential, but her life is
rocked by the announcement that her mother is ill.
Erin’s dad is emotionally overwhelmed and out of his depth when he has to step into the role of chief care-giver. He has Erin’s help, but Erin is young, and in many ways an innocent. Alone and adrift in the streets of central Glasgow at night, she naively follows those who approach her with offers of assistance, completely unaware of the danger she’s putting herself in. Author Julie Kennedy is superb at this. Erin doesn’t realise she’s in jeopardy, but the reader does! I thought this was one of the best aspects of this story. We feel huge empathy for Erin. Empathy and affection. We want her to thrive.
Ma Mum and William Wordsworth is beautifully and vibrantly written – Erin’s voice and engaging personality immediately take up residence in your head. I also loved the vivid way the author captures the everyday details of family life in the late seventies. Ranging in mood from anguished to heart-warming, this novel is a deeply satisfying read with echoes of Anne Donovan, Elissa Soave, Des Dillon and Paul McVeigh. I’m sure it will appeal to people Erin’s age and to adults.
.jpg)
And here's a short extract to set the mood -
Ma Da’s
aunt is a nun in a convent in England. She comes an stays wi us fir a week. She
brings plastic rosary beads fir the hail family. We spend ages untanglin them.
She does a fart durin the rosary an evirybudy his the giggles. Ma mammy his the
giggles as well. Ma da runs oot the room and says he left a pot oan. The nun
smiles like we’re in heaven. Nuns don’t hiv bad smells in their farts that must
be cos they’re The Brides Of Christ.
This week
we’re doin haiku in class wi Mrs Kelly. We’ve got a plaque oan the waw in the
kitchen. It says May the road rise to meet you. Ah tell Anna that it isnae a
poem, it’s a proverb. But she says so, who cares? Mum wis readin when she wis
in bed. Ah went tae sit wi her tae keep her company an we laughed aboot the
nun’s farts.
‘Whit yi
readin?’
She turns
over the cover.
Prayers
For the Dying
‘Do you
want to read it?’
‘Ah’ll read
it later,’ ah say.
Q&A
CMcK: Welcome,
Julie! Ma Mum and William Wordsworth is such a poignant novel,
and yet it also had me laughing out loud in places. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
But let's start at the beginning. How did you first get into writing?
JK: Thanks for inviting me to your great blog, Carol
and thanks for the interesting questions.
When I was
12 my mum bought me a Petite typewriter for Christmas (remember those?) I went
straight up the stairs on Christmas Day and wrote my life story ( all of three
paragraphs at that time!) Around the same time, I had a primary school teacher,
Mr Dougan, who introduced me to creative writing in class. I always loved words
and language and was never out of Craigneuk library when I was wee. My mum
wrote letters to her family in Ireland all the time so maybe that is where the
sitting down and writing partly comes from. I think your imagination
as a child growing up is so rich and I was the classic ‘head in the
clouds.’ Now, it might be called creative but then it was a bit
shameful that you lived a lot in your head. It could be a mixture of all those
things or nothing to do with them.
I did not
know any writers or how a person becomes a writer so I did other jobs and would
write the odd poem when I could. The life changing moment came when I found the
M. Litt in Creative Writing course, at the time, jointly run by Glasgow and
Strathclyde Universities. I have heard you saying that as well. I went part-
time from my job; making that commitment, well it’s like a gift to yourself and
your creativity. My fellow students were, of course, yourself, and the likes of
Louise Welsh, Zoe Strachan, Anne Donovan, Rachel Seiffert and Dave Manderson,
along with many other gifted writers. My tutors were Margaret Elphinstone and
Zoe Wickham (Strathclyde University) along with Willy Maley and Adam Piette
(Glasgow University). It was there I developed my confidence and met and learnt
from poets such as Kathleen Jamie and Robert Alan Jamieson. It can
sound a cliché when people talk about voice but it was during that time that I
felt I started to find my voice as a writer. But I’ve always needed to write to
know what I think. There is hopefully an element of mystery or magic to the
whole thing.
CMcK:
Ma Mum and William Wordsworth deals
with the two huge issues of grief and homelessness. What prompted you to write
it?
JK:
My own mum died when I was a
teenager and it was not something people talked about in the seventies. There
was not the same openness about death and grief as there is now. I wanted to
write a book that the young me could go to the local library and pick up and
that she could identify with. I wanted to make a space in the book where a
young person’s point of view would be centre stage. As well as that, I think
there was always an impulse to do something creative with a difficult
experience; maybe, a lot of making art is like that. I mean, transformative for
the writer, and hopefully, for a reader too. I guess I wanted to
write about so called ordinary people with all the messiness but the unsung
heroics, as well; that is, how the characters adapt and survive and, hopefully,
move on with their lives. What I’m trying to say is that I took something that
happened to me and then fictionalised it. I’d tried writing other
things and they felt wooden and never cost me anything but as soon as I started
writing this book I was engrossed in the voices of the characters and it all
just took off from there. I enjoyed my imagination going to work and being on
that journey that writing a novel takes you on.
Thanks for
the question about one of the themes being homelessness in the book. It is very
deliberate. But more generally, that loss of security of home has always been
important to me throughout my life. I worked in law centres for a while
specialising in defending eviction and repossession actions. I was always drawn
to that idea of everyone having a right to a roof over their head and security
wherever they are.
In the
novel, I wanted to shine a light on how precarious life can be for someone
young when family relationships are rocked by a traumatic event; I guess Erin
walks a thin line in that sense. Yes, I wanted to show how thin the line is for
some people, particularly vulnerable young people. There are points in Erin’s
journey, almost of no return, if she makes the wrong move or her luck goes a
certain way. I try to leave some space for the reader to work a lot out there,
without being too obvious.
CMcK:
Did you aim this book at teenagers or adults?
JK: I had both teenagers and adults in mind when I was writing the book. I was trying to keep the story in the point of view of Erin though there are a couple of times the point of view changes to that of her dad, and also, her brothers and sisters. By including Joe, Erin’s dad’s point of view, I wanted to try and look at the experience of loss from different angles. But as I said before, my aim was to write something that felt based on real experience of illness and bereavement from the point of view of a teenager because I felt there wasn’t enough out there. So, I’m hoping young people will enjoy the book and that they will be able to identify with it. This edition of the book is written as an ebook partly to make it easier for young people to access.
CMcK: How
important was it for you to capture Erin's voice through her local dialect and
did this decision cause you any problems with the publishing industry?
JK: When I was trying to write the story in standard
English it felt very constrained. And there’s a resistance to the status quo
that comes when you write in Scots so I felt I was tapping into a tradition
there that was both exciting and more authentic to my story. What I’m saying
is, yes, it was very important for me to write Erin’s voice in her own dialect.
I don’t think I set out to do any of it deliberately, at first. But in the
early drafts that’s the way Erin and Joe’s voices came to me and it felt like that
was the direction the book should go; as well as that, the story is about a
large working-class family and the dialect as a spoken language is very
rich. I really enjoyed working with the language and tried to give
the book an air of spoken voices more than anything.
I always
accepted that my book might not be attractive to mainstream publishers because
of the dialect. And not just the characters speaking in dialect but the whole
novel being written that way. But, saying that, I think there is more of an
appetite now for books that are not in Standard English; there are lots of good
examples of Scottish writers who’ve been successful on that front. But for me
the main motivation was always to get the book written in the voices that
wanted to tell the story. I was never going to compromise on that. Being an
indie publisher, as well, I’ve had opportunities to learn a lot of new skills,
and it really tests your belief in what you are doing.
CMcK: What
are you writing now?
JK: I did a lot of editing for this book so it’s nice to get a change and write some poetry. I’m working on a pamphlet and trying to bring together poems I’ve written in the last couple of years. I’m also working on another novel, nothing to do with this one.
CMcK:
Fab. And very interesting! It’s great to
learn all this about you and your
writing, and about Ma Mum and William Wordsworth in
particular. Thanks so much for guesting on my blog. I wish you well with your
future plans. But let's finish with some links. Where can readers go to learn
more about you and your books?
JK: Okay, here are links to my blog and my page on Amazon. And as I love doing author visits, I'll also share the link to my page in the Scottish Book Trust Live Literature directory. Thank you, Carol. I've really enjoyed our chat.
Ma Mum & William Wordsworth eBook : Kennedy, Julie:
Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store
https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/authors/julie-kennedy
