Barbara LaMorticella lives in the woods outside Portland, Oregon, and tries to see both the forest and the trees. Co-host of KBOO radio’s Talking Earth, she has given over 200 poetry readings. Her poems range freely from the personal to the social and political, from the world of nature to the world of the spirit. She was a founding member, actress and writer with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and her readings are often surprising, sometimes inspiring, and always entertaining. Her second collection of poems, Rain on Waterless Mountain, published by Dan Raphael’s 26 Books press, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award, and she won the Stewart H. Holbrook Award for Outstanding Contribution to Oregon Literary Arts and was awarded the first Oregon Literary Arts fellowship for women writers. She will be reading at Joe’s Cellar in NW Portland on Tuesday, September 20th at 7:00PM.

Shawna Harch) What originally drew you to poetry? Was there a major turning point in your life that led you to where you are today?

Barbara LaMorticella) I loved poetry in high school, and had long discussions about it with friends. I was always interested in the expressive arts, and acted, directed and played music in school. The school considered me a brilliant student, but I dressed like a bohemian, didn’t like shopping, and was very much the black sheep of my family, which had great contempt for both arts and intellectual endeavors. I left home early, married at 19 and had a child at 20. My husband and I were founding members of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. We left San Francisco in the late 60s. I began writing poetry seriously after we moved to rural Marin County, as it seemed to me that that was an art that could be practiced with nothing but a tool to write with. I pretty much figured I would always be poor ― a calculation that has proven accurate! – and I felt poetry was an art that nothing could take away. I still think that, and see a boom in the writing of poetry as the economic world falls apart.

SH) Can you explain how and why you got involved with KBOO and The Talking Earth program?

BLM) Walt Curtis started Talking Earth, at first as a weekly show. He got tired of doing four shows a month and farmed half the month out to Doug Spangle and to Lois Lewis, a sweet black poet who has since died. When Doug’s job made it impossible for him to do the show any more, he asked me if I would like to.

At about this time, in 1986, I noticed a woman showing up at many of my poetry readings. I went out of my way to speak to her, as she was always alone and listening so attentively. Unbeknown to me, she was Kathleen Stephenson, a program director at KBOO. I never asked her about it, but I suspect she was auditioning me, as Doug had recommended me to take his place. When Lois couldn’t do her week any more, I took over that slot also, and from then on hosted half the Talking Earth shows.

SH) What are three things you learned from hosting this program?

BLM) The most important thing I’ve learned is how to really read a poem. I aim to present poems that represent the whole wide spectrum of poetry as it’s being written and read today, not just one genre or style, and not just poetry that I personally value the most. I read a lot of poetry for the show that I wouldn’t spontaneously pick out and read myself. I’ve found that I can enter and hear any poem that’s well-wrought. I’ve also learned that most poets are very happy to present their work. Whether or not they write poetry that combines image, experience, mind and heart in a way that I personally prefer, I’ve found that it makes me happy to interact with people who have done something that pleases them as much as writing a poem does.

SH) What is the most difficult part about being a poet?

BLM) In a culture that values money and material above all else, poetry is easy to scorn. Words are a poet’s chief material, and words are seemingly cheap. Poetry can’t be eaten, worn or looked at on the wall. Poets are not paid for their efforts. These are double-sided debits, as these very same factors help make poetry an important art. We need a counter to materialism, some way to measure worth besides money. We also need a channel for non-commercial vision. In a culture that proclaims the importance of the individual but beats the individual down and aims to drown the individual voice, poetry can provide a simple way of saying, “I am” and “We are.” But once people begin to try writing poetry, they run into another difficulty – that many of the voices and themes we carry in our head come from the commercial media. Some poets are able to play successfully with this, but others are simply unaware of it, and produce poetry that never gets beyond the level of contemporary cliché. It’s difficult for many of us to find our own deepest authentic voice.

SH) You received the first Oregon Literary Fellowship for women writers. Can you talk about the importance of this type of award and what receiving this fellowship meant to you?

BLM) This kind of recognition is very important for all artists, maybe particularly for me as an outsider artist, someone working and living outside the mainstream. It’s hard for someone not academically credentialed to be taken seriously as a poet.

In the late mid to late 70s, there was an openness and mingling in the literary community that hasn’t existed since. Poets from colleges, taverns, cafes and bookstores met, mingled and read at the Portland Poetry Festival. In 1975, because of a letter to the editor defending poetry that I wrote to an underground paper, I was asked to edit the Portland Poetry Festival Anthology. One male poet wrote a letter of complaint that the Festival had chosen an “unknown Scappoose woman” to edit rather than one of the fine established (male) poets around town! There was a lot of male posturing in those days, and my voice, the voice of a woman struggling to simultaneously raise children and find her own artistic ground, could easily have been buried in all the noise. Judith Barrington, Ruth Gundle, and a very active women’s community would not allow the burial, but for many years were the main supporters and promoters of my work. I was deeply honored to be chosen for the first women’s fellowship, and I think it acknowledges that still there is a territory of writing, traditionally overlooked or downgraded – although that is happily changing today– that women have entered more readily than men – writing about family and the struggles of the family. Again, I am happy to say that this is changing, with many enlightened male poets writing about family and children today.

Each of the three honors I have received from Literary Arts has had an enormous influence, validating and giving me an immediate credibility I might have had to struggle mightily to achieve otherwise. There are people in my immediate family and circle of friends who only began to take my poetry at all seriously when my second book was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. I’m still striving to live up to my Stewart Holbrook Award for outstanding contribution to Oregon Literary Arts! And the fellowship for Women Writers was a reminder that the roots of my writing are deep as motherhood and mammalian being.

SH) In your poem After. Life you write:

3.
Poetry relies on the conviction there are
trapdoors in words where great changes can enter,
the words themselves turn to windows or doors big enough
for revolution, revelation, kisses or friends

4.
The poet says she knows there is no afterlife
and then kisses life so thoroughly from top to bottom
there isn’t any room for
after.
life.

I absolutely love this. Can you expand on what you’re saying here?

BLM) I think the third stanza is quite literally true: witness the multi-billion dollar advertising industry, and also the efforts that any repressive society make to control language and thus to control thought. For many years the language of class analysis was banned in the US – if you even used a word like “working class, “ you were branded as a pinko or worse. The myth was that there were no classes in America – and I had quite sophisticated, educated people tell me that! Therefore, Americans were somewhat retarded in thinking about their true economic interests. I do think that words have a kind of alchemical power. Words can’t in themselves change things, but without words no constructive change can take place.

I wrote the fourth stanza after talking to the poet Dorianne Laux, who began her writing by scribbling notes on her breaks as a waitress. I don’t agree with Dorianne about the after-life, although I think whatever comes after will certainly not be “Barbara LaMorticella” – this particular being’s existence is a one-time shot. I don’t think you can really love life without also acknowledging, embracing in a sense, the idea that you will ultimately die.

The Buddhists say that the highest level of enlightenment is to step completely off the wheel of birth and death, and in being so equanimous about there being no after-life, it seemed to me Dorianne perhaps was already in this enlightened place. I personally like the Buddhist idea of sticking around on the wheel until every sentient being is enlightened!

Your question reminds me of a quote I read the other day by Alice B. Toklas, who said about Gertrude Stein: “Gertrude was really brilliant tonight! She said things that she won’t even begin to understand for ten years.” The stanza about the after-life is maybe a little ineffable, but I tried to say something about it…

SH) Have you seen the literary community in Oregon change since you’ve been here? If so, how?

BLM) The scene has changed enormously, and in many ways for the good. Poets tend to be cliquish and somewhat stratified, and I still regret the ending of the Portland Poetry Festival, which was a rare, wonderful and democratic mixing of all kinds of poets who performed and listened to each other. But the advent of the internet has gone a long way towards breaking the dominance of universities and a few big magazines and newspapers as arbiters of poetic value, and desktop publishing has made it much easier for poets to get their work out – big publishing houses will hardly even touch poetry now, as it is not economically viable. But more and more people are writing poetry, which is understandable given all the forces, economic and social, that aim to grind people down. My friend Andrea Drinard, who runs Paper Moon Books, tells me she’s noticed a big change in the past couple of years. She says that young people who come into the store head straight to the poetry section, a new phenomenon.

The reading scene is hopping. It may be somewhat cliquish, but the cliques are open to anybody who shows up. Friendships are important. In any scene, people find their level – people who are really good at what they’re doing, whatever their schtick may be – are recognized. There are levels, and levels, and levels. In Constantine Cavafy’s poem, The First Step (after a poet complained that the ladder of poetry is exceedingly tall, that he had been writing for two years and only completed one work) Cavafy famously wrote:

Just to be on the first step/should make you happy and proud./Even this first step/is a long way above the ordinary world/To stand on this step/you must be in your own right/ a member of the city of ideas./And it’s a hard, unusual thing/to be enrolled as a citizen of that city./Its councils are full of Legislators/no charlatan can fool./To have reached this point is no small achievement:/what you’ve done already is a wonderful thing.

The universities of course still to a large part control the canon, but more important than the canon is living a life, and for those who practice it, poetry, like the practice of any art, adds a dimension of richness.

SH) What local publisher are you most interested in at the moment? Why?

BLM) Airlie Press, which is a local cooperative press, is innovative and interesting. And I cannot overpraise David Memmott, who works from LaGrande on a shoestring, runs Wordcraft of Oregon, which has published over 60 books by Oregon writers, ranging from poetry to science and speculative fiction. Ruth Gundle’s Eighth Mountain Press has been a fabulous boon to women writers. And I am very sorry that Eric Muller’s Traprook Books will stop publishing this year. Eric, like the all the publishers I’ve mentioned, has been dedicated to publishing to the point of personal sacrifice. Dan Raphael has published a wide variety of fine poetic voices in the past, and no doubt will again in the future when he’s no longer working on his bread job.

SH) Name two of your favorite Oregon-based authors. What do you like about them?

BLM) I can’t pick just two. There are many really good writers in Oregon, poets, novelists and essayists, some well and many little known. I’ll limit my reply only to poets, and only to a few who I feel are not only dedicated writers but have worked to build and foster Oregon’s literary community. William Stafford not only wrote great poetry but aimed to build community. Ursula LeGuin is not only a great writer, but has sought always to nourish the local community of writers in Portland. The Left Hand of Darkness is one of her finest books in my opinion. The wonderful feminist poet Judith Barrington, with her partner Ruth, has always worked to nourish a local and national literary community. Paulann Petersen is a fine poet who has been a marvelous Oregon Poet Laureate, traveling all over the state working to nourish and foster a poetic community. And two relative newcomers, Steve Williams and Constance Hall, are not only serious writers who run a lively and innovative reading series at In Other Words, but also offer free workshops and a free online poetry workshop that has members from around the world.

SH) What three books have had the greatest impact on you? Why?

BLM) When I left home at 16, walking six miles to the train station in the dark, I slipped James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man into my pocket. I identified with Stephen Dedalus’ emerging into being as an artist, though I’m not sure that I ever even finished it. Henry Miller wrote a whole book that was a mainly a list of the books in his life that he felt had most influenced him, although he freely admitted that he had never read many of them – the title alone was enough to influence him!

When I was 18, working at the Illinois State Psychiatric Institute at the height of the intense McCarthy anti-communist years, I checked out a book from the institute’s library called Studies in a Dying Culture, written by Christopher Caudwell, a Communist writer who was killed in the Spanish Civil War at age 30. As I read it, riding on the El in Chicago, I remember looking up and thinking, “Wow! This all makes sense to me. I must be a Communist! My God, people would be really horrified if they knew there was a Communist on this train.”

Later, in the 60’s, I was influenced by Robert Bly’s Leaping Poetry: An Idea with Poems and Translations. Many of Bly’s words over the years have had the ability to set me vibrating like a tuning fork (William Stafford, a friend of Bly’s, once jokingly said something like, “Watch out for Bly… he influences people…). Someone once remarked about my earliest poetry, “It reads like Spanish poetry in English translation.” Bly’s words about the deep image, about surrealism, about the dryness of (then) contemporary English and American poetry, its lack of duende, heart, and gravitas compared to European poetry, struck deep chords and influenced my writing, as did his journeying into political poetry.

Image credit: James Honzik

watching for our bus, and the firs

shake their needles

at a patchwork of snow.

It’s now we remind ourselves

why we left our jackets

in the trembling hands of mom,

stitched with worry.

Sleeve droop. Hood sag. Zipper

teeth wide and waiting.

It’s not so much that we think

we can fabricate the sun

with our wills or that

grey is a dark-shaded blue. No.

We just want to feel the sky

slide off the blanket of our skin,

to know wetness

without turning soggy inside.

Dave Jarecki owns Breakerboy Communications, a writing firm that helps businesses, individuals and non-profit organizations communicate through story. In addition, he facilitates writing workshops for youth and adult writers throughout the greater Portland area. His fiction, non-fiction and poetry have appeared in a number of journals and publications, including Cloudbank Literary Magazine, INUR Magazine, Baseball Savvy, and Reed Magazine. He and his wife Courtney live in NE Portland with their newborn daughter, Lazadae.

Shawna Harch) I often hear students ask you, “What is a poem?” How do you respond to this question?

Dave Jarecki) When I took my first poetry workshop in 1998 at Penn State as an undergrad, Bruce Weigl was teaching. He was a fantastic teacher, and he asked this same question on one of the last days of spring semester. We had to go around the room and answer in one sentence. I remember I compared a poem to Steve Carlton’s slider, which would cut low and inside at the batter’s ankles. Right-hand hitters would swing at that thing and literally spin in a circle.

I know I react to the stuff that hits me viscerally and emotionally first. I think I always will. Hence my comparison to the slider. Even when I’m looking at Peter Sears‘ work or John Morrison’s work (we have an ongoing workshop), I’m doing it from a visceral place. Then I go in and start cracking the shell and looking at the poem from a more academic and mental place, if you will.

With my own work, I want to create the clear image and message. Even when I’m trying to be obscure, I still want there to be a certain level of clarity. The first draft is as much a poem as the last. But the drafting process is key – things shouldn’t be just visceral. I want people to say, “He’s spent some time on this. I see why he chose this form.”

Poetry is a thing people do, but then it’s also this broader essence. You hear people describe a woman’s walk as, “poetry in motion.” But you don’t hear people say, “she has a five-paragraph essay about her.”

SH) You talk about approaching “meaning” in a slightly different way as a workshop facilitator. Can you elaborate on this?

DJ) Meaning is drilled into us way too early on. We’re taught that poetry must rhyme, and instead of asking what a poem means to you, the reader, we often ask what the poet means. There’s no way we can know for sure, and so we’re left dangling.

I remember being in middle school and reading “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell. The language is really esoteric and Dalton-Trumbo-esque. I had no idea what it meant. Now, as an adult, I can see why this piece was so difficult. If you don’t stay with poetry over time (or write regularly on your own or have someone who can help explain it), you can easily get turned off by it.

There is so much more to poetry outside of meaning. Clarity of image helps expand what meaning can be. Matthew Dickman has a poem called “Country Music” that’s about guys sinking back into “guyhood.” Dickman has these hilarious images in the poem.

You can carry your groceries home in your public radio tote bag.

You can organize a book club.

You can date an Indonesian hippie with dread-locks

but you are never far from breaking someone’s jaw.

Reading it makes me think at some point in the drafting process he was just playing with images, and then the greater meaning arrived. I don’t think he sat down and decided he wanted to write about the difficulties of being a sensitive guy. But I guess we’d have to ask him. As for me, I’ve never sat down and tried to write a great, profound poem. I think it’s the small thing that starts the poem. It’s an image or a memory or a smell, etc.

SH) On your site, you’ve integrated audio files of yourself reading (and singing) your work. Can you talk about why you chose to do this?

DJ) My wife used to give me a hard time because I didn’t have anything recorded, so I made a CD for her for our anniversary about seven years ago. When it came time to launch my website, I initially did so in a pretty bare-bones way. I posted a lot of interviews, but I had nothing of me on the internet (apart from Breakerboy Communications). I decided I wanted to get my stuff out there. When I saw the audio player songwriter Nathan Moore was using on his website, I decided to use the same approach. Eventually I added poems to the audio player. I figured since literary journals are becoming stricter about not wanting your work to appear anywhere in print, recording was a safer route.

Also, I interviewed Todd Boss (who wrote “Yellowrocket”) about a year ago. He told me the thing that tipped the scale in his favor when Norton picked up his manuscript was that he had recorded himself reading his work.

I don’t think poetry needs to be heard necessarily, but it should be read out loud because there’s a tremendous amount of music in poetry. Paulann Petersen has so much breath in her work, which you wouldn’t pick up by reading silently to yourself. It’s a whole other experience when you speak a piece of literature. You get to embody the poet, and guess how the poet sounds. You get to hear the slant rhymes and the language. The Oregon Poetic Voices website is a great place to listen to and read work.

SH) What advice would you give someone who is wanting to self-publish and/or get their work published by a press?

DJ) For self-publishers:

1. Have a website with your work on it – whether that means posting a daily narrative or previously published stuff. Don’t be afraid to put your work out there for free. Make people want more.
2. Work with someone who is a designer and understands layout. It’s a worthwhile investment. Plus, you’ll have someone to complain to and celebrate with.
3. Have five people read your manuscript, including a copy editor, someone who’s never read your work, and someone who doesn’t like your work. If you pay out of pocket to get something printed and it comes back with a typo, you’ll feel like shit.
4. Go small. If you have 84 poems, make a nice book of 30. Just put your best work in.

For those seeking publication by a press:

1. Send your work out.
2. Keep your rejections in an envelope. Don’t throw them away but don’t cry over them.
3. Be organized. Create a spreadsheet and track when and where you submit your work. Just don’t let it become an attractive distraction.
4. Remember the real work is the writing. Publishing will come.

SH) What makes a piece of literature successful in your mind? Should poets and/or fiction writers identify their “reader audience” before they begin writing?

DJ) Each individual piece has its own definition of success. I’ll give you two different examples.

I was sitting in Random Order in February 2010, thinking about the man who flew into that IRS building in Austin, Texas. One person died, but the story didn’t really make big news. People seemed unconcerned, as if this event wasn’t a big deal compared to 9/11. I thought this was kind of fucked up. At the same time, I was reading the Mercury’s annual sex survey, pondering the term “docking,” which I’d never heard before, having to do with foreskin. This got me thinking of circumcision, which my wife and I had been talking about – we were trying to get pregnant, and decided we wouldn’t circumcise if we had a son. With all of this swirling in my head, I started writing, and tried to get as much of it as possible in a poem (men flying into buildings, docking and circumcision). I was determined to make the poem gel, but not to write a political piece. It was a puzzle, and I felt so relieved and happy when I solved it. I’m not sure if the poem is successful to others, but to me, “Why Men Fly Into Buildings” captures all three things.

There are other times when all I want is to arrive at a powerful image or to create some kind of a relationship. In my “Feeding Emu” poem, I wanted to create a connection between the speaker and the emu. And I wanted something that was weird. For a while I couldn’t move the poem beyond just feeling like a strange monster movie with a cliché ending. Finally I came to a good end image, and when I read the piece out loud in public the first time, I heard a woman in the audience gasp. That was the exact reaction I’d been looking for. I don’t care if no one else ever reacts to the piece again – that one woman’s gasp still makes me feel good about the poem.

Now in terms of identifying an audience, I think it depends on the project. I’m writing a book right now about my life in the writing world. I see the reader as a young writer who is just starting out, and this helps me when I sit down to type. I even had my parents send me a baby picture of myself when I was about an hour old. I put the picture on my desk, and I imagine I am writing to my young self. I usually talk to him too.

When it comes to poetry, I’ve never written with a reader in mind. I feel that I write poems for myself. The challenge is to be able to step away and be open to feedback.

SH) Can you talk about process vs. content? What’s the significance of cultivating a process?

DJ) I think we live in a highly content-driven society and it starts affecting us at a very young age. The focus is on the product, the final grade. When I teach at public schools, I tell students that it’s okay to make a mess. Rather than dictating a word count or a due date or a structure, I emphasize the drafting process. When I work with adults, I tell them they need to write 1,000 words to get 100 good ones.

I had a dream once that Hilary Clinton and I were at a conference and had to write a haiku. She insisted on writing the perfect haiku, and I was trying to convince her to write a mess. We went back and forth with battling philosophies.

I maintain you have to trust the mess and trust that you will work your way out of it. Most people become gifted writers over time, with practice. I think of Malcolm Gladwell’s “ten-thousand hour” rule. You have to put in those ten thousand hours. The more you trust process and the mess that comes, the faster you will arrive at the “right words,” if they even exist.

SH) What is the best untapped resource for poets (or writers in general) in Portland?

DJ) (Cough) My workshops! But seriously, we have a vibrant reading collective here, an unaffiliated confederation of reading events all over the area. On any night of the week, you can either pay $30 and see amazing, internationally acclaimed writers through Literary Arts or you can buy a two-dollar latte and listen to regional writers read for Show and Tell Gallery at Three Friends Coffee House. In Other Words hosts the Figures of Speech readings series, which is great, and the Barnes and Noble in Vancouver brings in wonderful writers every month. Mountain Writer Series hosts readings on the third Wednesday of each month at The Press Club. This is not a shameless plug for Reading Local, but the site does a great job promoting all that is going on in this region.

If you want to experience other people’s work or showcase your own work, you should be going out to readings. It’s good to go to places where reading and writing are appreciated. It gives you a chance to hear some really good stuff, get inspired and evolve your own work. I encourage everyone to go to open mics. It’s okay to try reading something you are not totally settled with – you will hear where it needs work, and you’ll see people’s reactions.

SH) What are you reading right now? What is the most recent book you’ve read by a Portland author and/or publisher?

DJ) Right now I’m reading, “Lucky Life” by Gerald Stern. The most recent book I’ve read by a Portland author is “All-American Poem” by Matthew Dickman. It was one of the few books of poetry I’ve read cover to cover in the order the author intended, and I enjoyed falling into the individual poems as well as the book’s arc.

I also thoroughly enjoyed reading Jackie’s interview with Time Out New York.

So here they are:

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself.” -Colm Tóibín

“Learn poems by heart.” -Helen Dunmore

“Read. Read everything you can lay hands on. I always advise people who want to write a fantasy or science fiction or romance to stop reading everything in those genres and start reading everything else from Bunyan to Byatt.” -Michael Moorcock

“Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.” -PD James

“Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea forever.” -Will Self

“Record moments, fleeting impressions, overheard dialogue, your own sadnesses and bewilderments and joys.” -Michael Morpurgo / Ted Hughes

“Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.” -Zadie Smith

“Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.” -Neil Gaiman

“Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn’t work, throw it away. It’s a nice feeling, and you don’t want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need.” -Helen Dunmore

“Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them.” -Elmore Leonard

“Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.” -Margaret Atwood

“Do change your mind. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones.” -Roddy Doyle

“Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.” -Neil Gainman

“Think big and stay particular.” -Andrew Motion

“Honour the miraculousness of the ordinary.” -Andrew Motion

“Try to think of others’ good luck as encouragement to yourself.” -Richard Ford

“[Remember] the reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.” -Jonathan Frazen

“A story needs rhythm. Read it aloud to yourself. If it doesn’t spin a bit of magic, it’s missing something.” -Esther Freud

“Do, occasionally, give in to temptation. Wash the kitchen floor, hang out the washing. It’s research.” -Roddy Doyle

“Only bad writers think that their work is really good.” -Anne Enright

“Have humility. Older/more experienced/more convincing writers may offer rules and varieties of advice. Consider what they say. However, don’t automatically give them charge of your brain, or anything else – they might be bitter, twisted, burned-out, manipulative, or just not very like you.” -AL Kennedy

“Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.” -Zadie Smith

“Write [something] you’d like to read. If you wouldn’t read it, why would anybody else? Don’t write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book’s ready.” -Hilary Mantel

“Learn from cinema. Be economic with descriptions. Sort out the telling detail from the lifeless one. Write dialogue that people would actually speak.” -Rose Tremain

“Defend your work. Organisations, institutions and individuals will often think they know best about your work – especially if they are paying you. When you genuinely believe their decisions would damage your work – walk away. Run away. The money doesn’t matter that much.” -AL Kennedy

“To cheer yourself up, read biographies of writers who went insane.” -Colm Tóibín

“Take no notice of anyone you don’t respect.” -Jeanette Winterson

“Defend yourself. Find out what keeps you happy, motivated and creative.” -AL Kennedy

“Remember you love writing. It wouldn’t be worth it if you didn’t. If the love fades, do what you need to and get it back.” -AL Kennedy