This is a blog post from
Dec. 31, 2015
Invited to a company on Friday afternoon to talk about my creative life as a writer. Company people wear lanyards with their names and faces on them. I’m the afternoon distraction. Hey people, take a break from your desk! Come listen to a P-O-E-T before the weekend begins! Feel fidgety. Conference rooms make me uncomfortable. It’s all a little airless. Nice guy offers me tea. “Nobody reads books anymore,” he says, cheerfully. Feel like dinosaur-type extinct species. Falter through presentation. Worry that it might have been too much about me. Pretty sure I said something about why poetry is important. Still, feel deflated. Who cares? Nobody reads books anymore, right?
Company does not offer to pay for presentation. Too late to ask now. They did organise a car and driver.
During Q&A session, someone asks practical question:
Mean part of me wants to say...
But, desist. Want to be perceived as nice. Not sure why, except feel essentially I am nice, except when talking to a bunch of blockheads. Accept token gift. It’s not a book (that would have been too ironic). Go home and feel slightly bristly. Decide that I do not like to be brought in as creative monkey. Make note to self: Do NOT go in to be creative monkey unless you are paid for it. Feel sad. Did not convert a single person to poetry today. My job as poetry evangelist in dire straits.
... Things are looking up. I’m going to three literary festivals in January. Hurrah! I don’t even have a new book to promote. Well, I do. But it’s only available in the Caribbean, and nobody can find the right panel for it. It has to do with why we move from one country to another and the seduction of elsewhere. Tough. So, I’m going to do poetry stuff and moderate other people’s sessions.
Will not get paid for this either but happy to go for the exotic locations and free flight and hotel and food. And company! What should I pack? Who’s going to be there?
First literary festival: Hyderabad. Feel sick! In bed, coughing up my body weight in phlegm. (Ugh, sorry). Travelling with my own pharmacy. Friend comes to save me with homemade rasam and rice. Attempt to forge through with panel. After popping first antibiotic, feel slightly woozy. Look, there’s Kiran Nagarkar! Such a nice man.
Think of lurching over to where writers are eating lunch. All looks so pretty and good but no can do. Back to bed. Hope things pick up for the next two festivals.
Next stop: Galle.
What a pretty place this is. I have almost nothing to do here but I get to spend five days in a beautiful house and meet other writers. One of my events with a poet gets cancelled because there aren’t enough people to attend. Oh, dear. The other poet and I drink gin and tonics all afternoon to console ourselves.
Workshop is good, though. Eight people show up on a Saturday morning. Can’t complain. Teatime poetry reading is best. Offering people goodies is a powerful incentive. Other writers are much busier than I am. They’re being worked hard. People flocking to their events. I’m cool with that. I’m on holiday mode, working on tan, finding the perfect egg-hoppers, enjoying evening soirées.
Favourite snippets of conversation overheard:
This party is sooo one-dimensional!
Also, overheard a lady talking about wild-boar shooting in the Czech Republic… Fascinating, the lives some people lead!
"What do you call a group of flautists?"
"A Flotilla of Flautists"
Have interesting breakfast conversation with Sebastian Faulks, who is sharing the house with me, who is being worked very hard.
He quizzes me on why novel number two has not yet seen the light of day. I tell him about my multifaceted life. I tell him that writing novels is different from writing poetry. Poetry is organic, sustainable, vegetable-patch-like.
Novel is a never-ending compost pit. Faulks interjects my blah blah blah with words of wisdom that I immediately write in my diary. “You need to stop everything else. Stop poetry, stop dance, stop journalism, and for god’s sake stop going to literary festivals until you finish your novel. Just get on with it, luv.”
Thinking of tattooing 'Just get on with it luv' on my forehead.
Talked with group of writers including Mr. Faulks about Philip Pullman resigning from Oxford Literary Festival because of their refusal to pay writers and the ensuing brouhaha. Most of us broadly agree. Nice if you could get paid. Get into debate about economics and costs of festivals and whether they charge for events or don’t charge. Uncomfortable silence settles after realising that none of us know much about the economics of running a festival. Some writers know they can demand money and be paid because people want to come see them. Others know if we demand, we may be told, "Sorry, but..."
Conclusion:It’s difficult to take the high road when you have a short horse.
Best image of festival is seeing Mr. Faulks (I can actually call him Sebastian now) dancing barefoot with his wife in a courtyard while rapper-poet Omar Musa belts out tunes. Lots of people dancing. In fact, everyone is up and moving. Confirms what I already know. Music can make things happen that words can’t. Reinstates something primeval. Feels good. Feels Nina Simone good. Feels like it’s okay if a festival actually has festive bits to it. Can’t be serious all the time.
Other best thing, (more personal and close to heart) is woman coming up to me at festival closing lunch. I’m in the line for food, plate in hand. She has an Irish accent. “I just want to tell you that I don’t know what those other poems you read were about but that last one, that one made me cry!” Doing an internal fist-pump for poetry. Galle, you were worth it just for this!
Lingering Hyderabadi cough follows me to Jaipur. The colours of this place! Almost indecent. All the reds and pinks, so magical. I tell everyone how Rajasthan is exotic even for Indians, particularly South Indians. All those camels. All those forts and feudalists. Hordes of people walking around the grounds of Diggi Palace where the festival is held. People in the thousands.
Think, heck, getting crushed in bibliophilic stampede is not the worst way to go. Besides, look — there’s Colm Tóibín, there’s Aleksandar Hemon, there’s Margaret Atwood! I remind Margaret Atwood that we read together many years ago at another literary festival with Seamus Heaney. She says, “Huh! I must have blanked that out. I read poetry? Was it any good?” Not sure where to go from this conversation, so back away to the snacks table.
Kei Miller and Marlon James in conversation with me on 'From Jamaica to Zion' during the Jaipur Literature Festival at Diggi Palace in Jaipur
Everything on grand scale in Jaipur. Everyday dinner parties and whatnot. Jollying it up. I’m being worked very hard. Feel important, feel good. Everywhere someone is saying something profound. I scribble in notebook. I could give up writing but I couldn’t give up reading ~ Sunjeev Sahota, young writer from UK. The only way to live in this world is with brutal self-awareness ~ Kei Miller, young writer from Jamaica. A little nap could do no harm ~ Anonymous.
Favourite snippet of conversation overheard:
Some people at the festival are brilliant… only some people. Others are quite boring and ridiculous.
Writer’s Ball on closing night. One-hour bumpy bus ride to venue. Chat on the way to writer and academic Laleh Khalili about memories and how tricky they are. Swap fake memories with each other. Bonding experience. Once there — woo hoo! Elephant, drummers, razzmatazz! Swan about on lawns looking for sources of heat. Gradually drift towards stage. Chugge Khan playing with Jaisalmer boys and George Brooks. Dancers and fire-eaters. Watch transfixed, arms and legs moving like octopi. Dance floor heaving. Lots of writers flinging caution to the wind. Everyone saying this is the best Jaipur fest ever. From corner of eye see novelist David Grossman in a bubble jacket (sensible) and his wife moving to the music too. Feel enveloped by the world. Bop bop bop. Life is beautiful.
Arrive home with suitcase full of books. Quite tired. January has disappeared. No work done. Yikes. How to get back in the saddle? Was it really necessary to do all that gadding about? Reading articles about the glut of January festivals. Some bashing and finger-wagging going on in press. Writers are cowards, writers are frivolous because they go to literary festivals only to have fun, writers should boycott festivals unless they get paid, writers not talking about X, Y, Z because they’re too busy shovelling free wine down their gullets. Feel guilty. Yes, we should have been talking more about X, Y, Z. If we writers don’t step up to say important things then who will? Books are so important after all.
On the last day of January, open document called “NOVEL RESURRECTED.” Get through first ten pages without cringing. Phew. After that things get shaky. Think of the task ahead — feel sputum and worry rising. Lie down and think about the dangers of being a writer. Resolve to stop everything. Resolve to be paid for my time. Resolve to finish novel. Resolve to take it easy with reading George Saunders as he’s seriously influencing my style. Lie down some more. A little nap can do no harm.
