Gutter? Cancelled

 News in last week is that Gutter Magazine cancelled the review they were featuring of Polly Clark's latest poetry collection Afterlife. They had included it in their monthly Substack mailout, but pulled it from the actual magazine and their website. This, after Iona Lee gave it a glowing review.

The reason? Apparently something Polly Clark said - not in the poems, but in social media - offended them. Didn't fit with Gutter's world view. It wasn't illegal, what she said and the views she held, but they didn't like it, so they withdrew coverage. You can read Polly Clark's own take on this here.

You might think, fair enough. They can publish what they like. Yes, but what about the fact they are supported financially by Creative Scotland?

I don't have any answers for this. But it makes me uneasy. I trained, and worked for many years, as an information specialist. A chartered librarian. I've also studied and written journalism, and taught creative writing. I believe giving people access to information is the way to build strong individuals and communities. It leads to tolerance and understanding.

So, given that I've been a 'Friend' of Gutter Magazine since 2017, paying a higher subscription to support the magazine, how does this latest episode of 'cancel culture' make me feel? Do I really want my name on the inside back cover, as a supporter?

I wrote them a letter. It's mostly about me, but I'll post it here in its entirety.

Dear Gutter team,

I've cancelled my 'Friends' subscription. I'm sorry about this. Since its inception, I've loved Gutter, and Gutter, for the first 23 issues, loved my work. I had the honour of being the writer whose story (Frozen Waste) was the opening piece in the very first issue. My poem Holding All the Aces (issue 23) attracted huge interest and positive feedback for Gutter (and me) on Twitter. In between, Gutter published another six pieces of my writing, both poems and short fiction. 

But since issue 23, you've taken nothing of mine. Creative writing markets change, and widen, and refocus, and it's probably just that my work no longer reaches the standards needed. I accept that, though I have had work rejected by you which has gone on to be published in e.g. Causeway/Cabhsair and by the University of Strathclyde CW dept.

I was also disappointed that you didn't review my pamphlet Reading the Landscape. One of the poems in it - 'Ceilidh' - was chosen by the Scottish Poetry Library as one of the 20 Best Scottish Poems of 2022, so that suggests to me that the pamphlet was of a sufficiently high standard to be worth Gutter considering.

Ageism. Misogyny. I certainly hope Gutter's team wouldn't be guilty of those. When I was in my 20s, the ratio of men to women being published was 20 to 1. By the time I did my MLitt in 1998, the gap was less - about 5 to 1. So I've faced difficulties in being published all my life. 

I know how hard it's been for women to be regarded equally. When I went for my first mortgage for a flat with my partner, I was told my income wouldn't count. Full stop. Because I was a woman. I had to argue fiercely to make them take it into account. The 'success' was that our mortgage offer was based on three times my partner's annual salary and one of mine.

Like all women, I've been subjected to unwanted male attention - dirty phone calls at work, abuse in the streets, a poet in a position of power passing me his email address with a certain look in his eye and suggesting he might help me if I got in touch. Women have a lot to lose. I was briefly trans sceptical. I have four daughters and admit I was concerned that some man might take advantage of the trans movement to enter the women's changing rooms in shops to assault them. But I quickly moved on from that and see it for the flawed logic it is. I'm very fond of the trans people I have in my family and friendship circles, and see them as fully equal human beings.

I was concerned, however, by a report that you notified a poet you would review her poetry collection, then you withdrew that when you heard that she had expressed anti-trans views. If her poetry collection expressed anti-trans views, then I could understand you might do that, but I can't agree with you cancelling someone otherwise. Free speech is a thing to treasure. By listening to different views - as I did - we can persuade people to our case. As writers and publishers, we must be open-minded.

Have you blocked me because I once had concerns about what I perceived as the trans lobby setting back women's rights after a hard struggle to win them? Or am I just invisible? I've won the Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship, had a Scottish bestseller, was shortlisted in Oct 2025 for the Wigtown Festival's Alastair Reid Poetry Pamphlet Competition, am included on the Scottish Poetry Library's list of Scottish Poets, have won Creative Scotland and Magnetic North bursaries, have two poetry collections out with a third one being launched later this month, etc etc yet you don't mention me in any of your lists of writers you've published, and my name only appeared on your front cover once out of eight acceptances. Hmm. 

Well, for whatever reason, I think it's time I ended my association with Gutter. I'm genuinely sad about this because I do think you do great things. But something's gone wrong somewhere, and I would ask you as a team to consider the wider points I make in this long email.

I felt it would be wrong of me to cancel without giving you my reasons.

With best wishes,

 

How did they respond? They didn't ignore it, which was good. The managing editor wrote me a nice reply.

Dear Carol,

We’re really sorry to hear you’ve decided to cancel your Friend subscription to the magazine. We really very much appreciate all the support you’ve shown Gutter, both as a reader and a contributor. 

Over the years, the number of submissions we receive at the magazine has increased dramatically. We currently read and consider upwards of a thousand poems from 400-500 poets for each issue. Only a small number of those can be selected for publication. 

Nevertheless, we really hope you’ll continue to submit your work to us, and that we’ll have the opportunity to publish it again in future. 

Very best wishes,

No attempt whatsoever to address the issues.  Ah well. That's it, Gutter. Cancelled.

Retire? Me?

When does a writer retire?

When do we stop feeling the urge, the need, to express ourselves?

Possibly never.

And so it is that I'm happy to have my small successes through the year. 

Recent publications

In Spring 2025, I was delighted that my short story 'Flight' was published in the Aberdeen-based literary magazine Pushing Out The Boat. 'Flight' is a story about a doctor who grew up and studied in Scotland, but who left for Africa shortly after qualifying, in part because he faced ostracisation for being gay. I originally conceived this story decades ago, and the memory part of it is set in the 1980s and 1990s. In 'Flight', the character Bird returns to his old family home in Scotland and processes his loss and gains. I really appreciate POTB publishing it.

Forthcoming in October is another publication in an Aberdeen-based magazine. This time it's a poem in Causeway/Cabhsair. More about that later. Suffice to say that I'm really pleased to have my poem 'Arbitrary' included there.

Also forthcoming in October is my poem 'The Storm Woke Us' in the Linen Press anthology Look Away Now.  

Huge news for me is that my poetry pamphlet submission entitled 'One Half of the Sky is Clear' has been shortlisted for the Wigtown Poetry Prize Alastair Reid Pamphlet Prize 2025. Results on 3rd October.

My thanks to the publishers and editors. And as for retiring - nah, keep on keeping on.

Goodbye 2024. Welcome, 2025

You don't need me to say it. It's been a turbulent time on the world's stage this year, with conflicts and catastrophes. If only it really was a stage and we could pelt the 'bad-guy' players with over-ripe tomatoes and rotten eggs, and make them clear right off. Unlikely. Well, we might feel our efforts go nowhere, but I believe that being present, acknowledging, not forgetting, helps. Whether that's writing to our MP or peacefully attending demonstrations, or giving to charities like War Child, Oxfam, UNRWA, MAP - it all helps. Read widely. Don't be blinkered or shuttered in your views. My new MP responded fully and positively to my email about the situation in Gaza, addressing my concerns about the carnage - the genocide - there, and he has been pro-active in parliament on the subject, too. I appreciate his efforts and thank him for that. 

I could be negative. I remember the demonstrations and dissent just over twenty years ago. A million demonstrating, urging the government - Don't attack Iraq! That didn't go well, did it? But what else can ordinary individuals do? Ditto with climate action. Yet, at this year end, it's good to take stock and recognise that we can play our part (that stage metaphor again), even if it is just a tiny part. With positivity, maybe we can help bring about peace in the world's major war zones in 2025. The earliest part of it, hopefully. And take urgent action to prevent climate catastrophe.

Closer to home, 2024 has been a year of many blessings for me. Mostly family-related. I'm lucky to be surrounded by many loved ones. When I was a child, I assumed I'd grow up and be a mum - girl children did, then - but I never dreamed of this sense of security and belonging I have at age 69, living with a loving partner for almost fifty years, with this world-wide web of children, grand-children, siblings, cousins - and a much-loved and valued network of friends. Thank you, all of you. 

Of course, there have been mires and bogs and quicksands and scratchy patches of densely packed trees to scramble through. Every year has them. But beyond that, if we ever get a glimpse between those bin-bag clouds, there's a blue sky and bright sunshine, and lungs to be filled with fresh air, and even in the city you can see some stars at night. And if not this night, tomorrow night.

Creatively, this year, I've enjoyed a few special poetry successes, including poems in New Writing Scotland, Poetry Scotland and in Dreich's final issue, 100B. And I've just heard that Hedgehog Press have nominated my poem 'When the train slowed' - published by them in their Little Black Books series - for consideration for the Pushcart Prize. My chances of winning are slim, but I'll take them! My thanks to all the editors who've considered my writing over this past year. I love you for it. 

And that's it! Whatever the next year brings us, let's approach it with positivity and hope for the best!

Lang may yer lum reek! A guid new year tae yin an aw, and many may ye see.

Norman Bissell - Living on an Island: Expressing the Earth

I recently had the pleasure of reading Norman Bissell's latest book Living on an Island: Expressing the Earth and chatting with him about it. Part memoir and partly an account of the Scottish Geopoetic movement, it's especially timely as it was written just after the death of the man who coined the name 'geopoetics' - Kenneth White - a man who was a huge inspiration to many.

But first of all, what is geopoetics? There are several descriptions in the book, but here are the ones I like best (p.106) - 

seeking a new or renewed sense of the Earth, a sense of space, light and energy which is experienced both intellectually, by developing our knowledge, and sensitively, using all our senses to become attuned to the world...

learning from others who have attempted to leave 'the Motorway of Western civilisation' as Kenneth White called it, to find a new approach to thinking and living. For example, 'intellectual nomads' or 'outgoers', who approached the world in creative ways...

Living on an Island: Expressing the Earth 

Author Norman Bissell was born in the heart of industrial Clydeside in the late 1940s. He lived in Glasgow’s densely urban environment for most of his childhood, but visits to the Clyde coast and islands introduced him to the vastness and beauty of the wider world and awoke his love of the sea. 

At University in the 1960s, he encountered lecturer Kenneth White and became something of a wide-eyed disciple of White's views. This included the call for a reappraisal of our place in the world, and the need for radical cultural renewal that sees humankind not as a species set apart and free to use the earth and its resources mindlessly and without conscience. 

Rather, geopoetics sees humankind as one integral part of the physical earth and all life on it. This change in mindset is crucial to the understanding of geopoetics. And while there have been many influences and influencers on this philosophy, Norman Bissell is surely one of the most significant – yet most modest – having been for so many years instrumental in running the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics and arranging inspirational events within Scotland and internationally.

In Living on an Island: Expressing the Earth, Bissell recounts all this experience and reflects on it. In the opening section, he charts his early life and youthful introduction to the movement in an appealing writing voice which combines factual yet often entertaining prose with poems which express the essence of geopoetics. 

A large part of the book is devoted to documenting and evaluating the wider movement’s history, right up to the present. As well as appraising and applauding the role of key figures like Tony McManus, Bissell also considers earlier influencers such as John Ruskin and Robert Burns and looks beyond the western world to Zen Buddhism. 

Nan Shepherd, Joan Eardley, George Orwell and Alan Spence are among many creatives who feature in Bissell’s detailed survey of a way of living and writing that is underpinned by the geopoetics credo. It’s an informative and engaging account of this significant and growing approach to living. It's also extremely readable and I heartily recommend it!

Norman Bissell at the Atlantic Islands Centre in Cullipool on Luing

Q&A with Norman Bissell

CMcK: Thanks for joining my blog, Norrie. Your new book is called Living on an Island: Expressing the Earth. What drew a Glasgow boy like you to the Isle of Luing?

NB: My pleasure - and thanks for the 'boy'! I write about my childhood in Kelvinhaugh and Partick in my new book and how my parents gave me a love of the coast by taking me on holidays to Dunoon, Kirn and other seaside places. I went just for the day to the Isle of Luing for the first time in 1995, as many day trippers still do, and fell in love with it right away. So much so that I knocked on the door of a cottage that was for sale that first visit and kept going back on holidays from Glasgow until I got one four years later. It was the view west to the long coast of Mull and all the little islands in the Firth of Lorn that bowled me over, and the sense of space and changing light that inspired me to write poems and want to live there once I could afford to. My first poetry collection Slate, Sea and Sky, a journey from Glasgow to the Isle of Luing has both city and island poems in it. There are plenty of walks you can take on Luing and the people are very welcoming, wherever you're from. 'It's not where you come from that matters, it's what you do when you get here,' says one of Luing's oldest inhabitants. And I've done plenty since getting here, as my new book reveals.

CMcK: You’re Director of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics. What do you consider the SCG’s greatest aims and achievements?

NB: Our aim is to raise awareness of how the creative expression of the Earth can help to protect the planet and all its forms of life, and can enrich, inspire and sustain human lives as part of that. Geopoetics aims to bring about radical cultural renewal to enable us all to live our lives more fully and be more creative in whichever ways we choose. It's a big idea whose time has come and it is attracting more and more people in different parts of the world to get involved. The International Institute of Geopoetics was formed by Kenneth White and others in Paris in 1989 and the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics was set up in Edinburgh in 1995 by Tony McManus, myself and others. In my view the Scottish Centre's greatest achievement is to have grown in strength and influence in the last 29 years by consistently holding geopoetics days, weekends and even a week long Festival on Luing in 2009. These have led to its publication of 14 issues to date of its online journal Stravaig containing, poems, essays and artwork, and to its publishing imprint Alba Editions bringing out four books so far. We have held a series of online Geopoetics Conversations since the first Covid-19 lockdown and these have helped to increase our membership worldwide to over 140 who include 6 arts and science professors as well as lecturers, artists and scientists of all kinds. We now have an actual Scottish Centre with an extensive library and archive here in Cullipool Village on Luing and I'm looking forward to hosting artists' and scientists' residencies in it next year. 

CMcK: There’s a captivating film in production. Can you tell us a bit about it and when it’ll be released?

NB: It's called Expressing the Earth and we crowdfunded it in 2022-2023 to enable it to be filmed professionally by Glenda Rome, a wonderful film-maker from Portobello. She's filmed and edited it beautifully on the west and east coast to share a variety of perspectives on geopoetics along with some archive film of Kenneth White in Scotland and France. I've worked as its producer with Glenda and it's now in post-production with a view to its release at film festivals and elsewhere in Spring 2025. I think it will have a major impact and will encourage even more people to get involved in geopoetics.

Norman Bissell at the Atlantic Islands Centre in Cullipool on Luing

CMcK: You’re the author of Barnhill, a novel about George Orwell, and you’re also a fine poet. Where can we find out more about you, your books, and the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics?

NB: My website www.normanbissell.com has lots of information about me, my background and my books which can all be bought there. I'm pleased to say that Barnhill has been translated into Turkish and Arabic and hope that Orwell's warning to the world in Nineteen Eighty-Four, which he wrote on Jura about 12 miles from Cullipool, will prove useful to all those facing dictatorship and oppression. The website of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics is at www.geopoetics.org.uk and it contains many articles and essays which explain what it's all about, news of our activities and events as well as online issues of Stravaig and our other publications. You can also read about who some of the members are, and can apply to join there. It only costs £10/£5 unwaged per year! 

CMcK: Thank you, Norrie! 

 

None of This Makes Any Sense

In December 2023, I collaborated with my long-term creative partner Keith McKay on a project to produce four poems and four artworks that would inter-relate with and respond to each other. 

We entered the manuscript to Hedgehog Press 'Little Black Books' poetry pamphlet competition. And we were ecstatic when we learned we'd won! We were joint-winners alongside the softly mesmerising 'Snow', produced by Palo Almond and Peter Kenny.

Our pamphlet 'None of This Makes Any Sense' was published by Hedgehog Press on 15 May 2024. 

But is it poetry?

None of This Makes Any Sense is comprised of four poems and four asemic poems. The four poems I wrote are formed from words. Intelligible words, hopefully! But what about the four asemic poems Keith created?

First off, what does ‘asemic’ actually mean? Analysing the word's roots, it means ‘A-semic’ or ‘non-sense’. 

I’d describe asemic writing as part of a genre of visual poetry, which is becoming increasingly popular as an art form, and increasingly interesting. The asemic poems Keith has in this pamphlet are a selection of works he wrote using computer code, and writing freehand. See Keith’s website for more info on the genre.

So, I have a question for you. Can it be poetry if it's essentially meaningless? Isn't that the exact opposite? Isn't the point of writing to express how we feel about things? 

Our pamphlet is A6 in size, with full-colour images of Keith’s asemic works, one of which was sought out for an exhibition in Buenos Aires in November 2023.

My poems muse on the search for meaning and purpose in life, when – sometimes – it can seem none of it makes any sense.

You can order your signed, limited edition micro-pamphlet direct from Carol (and Keith) for £6.99 including p+p (UK only) via the link at the bottom of this post.

You can order None of This Makes Any Sense from the publisher, Hedgehog Press, too

Is it poetry? 

Is it art?

Let us know your thoughts via the 'comments' section of this blog post!

Alan Humm - The Sparkler

 

The Sparkler is a fictionalised account of part of the life of author Charles Dickens. I opened it in happy anticipation. Alan Humm is well known for his poetry, and as editor of One Hand Clapping magazine, but this is his first novel, so I didn’t know quite what to expect from him, or from the novel’s subject. I’ve read several novels by Charles Dickens, but have never given much thought to the man himself. And of course, The Sparkler is a work of fiction, rather than a factual biography. So, what did I think of it?

Alan Humm's The Sparkler, published by Vine Leaves Press

I have to say, it is a sparkling read. It’s glittering and luminous in terms of story, characterisation and writing style. It’s a vibrant read, whisking us back almost two centuries in time to a world which turns out to be just as lively, glorious and even abrasive as our own. Twenty-something Charles Dickens crackles off the page. Through Alan Humm’s prose we are caught in the sense of animation as we follow the restless, newly married, optimistic, ambitious young man who is fully committed to becoming a famous writer. Dickens is mercurial and impulsive, trawling the grimiest streets of Victorian London by gaslight, infatuated with Sarah, who’s sometime bar-maid, sometime prostitute, fiercely independent woman. Dickens is obsessed with her, and with his wife’s 17-year-old sister. He’s also obsessed with the theatre, and writing, and above all, in making his name. Obsession doesn’t quite reach his relationship with his wife, and this is an interesting aspect of the story. It’s as if having a good wife, in Dickens’s eyes, was all about helping him achieve and maintain his desired social status. And though this might make us critical of him, it can also make us see him as vulnerable.

Having read and enjoyed the novel, I sought out information about the real Dickens, and it’s clear Alan Humm crafted his novel meticulously as a work of fiction drawing on conflicts and notoriety attached to the man himself. It seems Dickens could perfect a world in fiction, while recklessness and spontaneity jeopardised his own life’s story. The Dickens in The Sparkler seems to be all ‘me, me, me’. Tempering this is Humm’s almost tender portrayal of him tormented by memories of being a young lad feeling brutalised and adrift in the harsh streets of the city, and suffering anxieties over loss of home, security – and status. There’s a lot to think about in this novel. Through his vivid storytelling, Alan Humm has created for us Dickens the character who is spirited, energetic, and something of a firecracker. In short, The Sparkler is exactly that.

Author Alan Humm

Extract of The Sparkler

He decided to sit it out. He found a space just to the rear. It was a side street, suburban enough, with pots of flowers and a pump that seemed somehow apologetic. The sky was lower here, more threatening, but also more contained. It seemed to hide between the chimney pots. There was a bench from which he would see her when she came out. It wouldn’t matter how long he had to wait, he told himself, and, indeed, it didn’t. It took on the nature of a vigil. The longer he waited the more approving of himself he was. In his imagination, there was something medieval, something almost exemplary, about his profile. This was what fidelity would look like if you should want to draw it. 

He became colder and colder but he would not stop. He would not give in. Sometimes he paced up and down but that was all that he allowed himself to do. He was there for hours. His thoughts seemed to clang around, uselessly, inside him. All they were, really, were the tail end of his observation of the stones beneath his feet, the small street and the gap at the end, a natural proscenium: the pub on one side and a house at the other and the clouds looming above them both. It was nine o’clock in the evening now. There were, he calculated, hours to go. But he would not move. He was not only proving something but exhibiting it to himself. As a child, in the factory, he had locked hands with the other boys and arm-wrestled over the packing cases. Not often. They had easily defeated him. But this felt like that: the way that all of you was rolled up into one fierce gesture of concentration; the way that the strength of your opponent was something that you were staring down. He would not allow himself to feel the cold. He would not think about how hungry he was feeling. And now he would not even stand. He took on the bench in the same way that he had taken on all of the things he had had to wrestle with since he was a boy. Then, there she was. (p.226-7)

Q&A with Alan Humm

CMcK: Hello Alan. Welcome to my blog! The Sparkler is such an intriguing novel. What drew you to write about Dickens?

AH: I've been reading Dickens ever since I was a child. There are aspects of his writing that I still enjoy very much - I particularly like his gift for metaphor, for example - but, as I've got older, I've become more and more interested in his life, and by its relation to his writing. Why did he write so little about sex? Why are so many of his female characters so very sweet and wan and unassuming? These were questions that I found, more and more, that I wanted the answers to.

CMcK: Why did you choose to write fiction rather than biography?

AH: If you want facts, then a biography is the place to go. And, yes, there are many biographies that also convey some sense of emotional truth but I do think that fiction also has its place here. We can only ever know so much about a person's life, especially about one that was lived so long ago, and there are gaps that I'm sure we'd all like to see filled in. The biggest gap in Dickens's life, it seems to me, is what he actually felt about his sister-in-law. When she died he was distraught; way more than you might have expected him to be. Fiction allowed me to suggest an answer to my own question. Having said that, I only ever worked within the parameters of his real life. I didn't change a single known fact. In the end, I started to believe in the plot of the book myself.

CMcK: Why did you choose that particular time of his life?

AH: It was more that it was chosen for me. I read Becoming Dickens by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst and it was all there: the characters; the milieu; the conflicts. I couldn't resist.

CMcK: Was Charles Dickens a nice person?

AH: It depends what you mean by "nice". He was funny, charming, intelligent and a warm-hearted and passionately indignant social reformer. He was also a loyal and generous friend. But he could be extraordinarily unkind and self-absorbed. He was as much of a human being, in other words, as the rest of us: as good and as bad as we all are in our daily lives. The one thing he undoubtedly was (and is) is fascinating. I hope I've been able to communicate that, at least. 

CMcK: These are such interesting answers to my questions! Thanks so much for guesting on my blog, Alan. I really enjoyed reading The Sparkler, and wish it every success.

For more information about Alan Humm and his writing, visit his website   

The Sparkler is widely available to buy. See publisher Vine Leaves Press's website for full information.

Julie Kennedy - Ma Mum and William Wordsworth

 

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.

 

Ma Mum and William Wordsworth

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.

Author Julie Kennedy

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

Julie S Kennedy

https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/authors/julie-kennedy