Reading & Writing

With all this summer weather in September, I decided to ride my bike to the beach and write for a few hours. Instead, I should have brought the book I am reading: Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood by bell hooks. It was just that kind of writing day; the kind where I should be reading instead of writing. Sometimes, when I am stuck in my writing (and I have to admit I am at the moment) it is always best to go back to reading what is in your genre and what speaks to you. Sometimes this reading can cause further despair, more questions of “What was I thinking? I can’t do this!” But for me, it often spurs valuable thinking time and a resettling of what I am trying to achieve.

While I tried to write and very little sputtered out of my pen, I kept looking up at what was hanging on the tree. A child’s hat? No, it was a bikini top. Size Large. I smiled at the story it presented: a late-night skinny dip full of passion and fire that the top was lost once it’s owner was back on the dark shore.

Michael Crummey on poetry and home

 

This morning I went to the first event of the first day of the Sunshine Coast Writers Festival. Hard to get over the festival is celebrating its 25th year. I thought—at 9 a.m.—I would be one of a small number of people in the theatre, but it was almost packed! Michael Crummey, Newfoundland writer and fantastic storyteller was a hit. Normally I don’t go to hear fiction writers read or talk about their work. I am drawn to poets and creative non-fiction and memoir writers. However, the write-up in the program said he has written 3 books of poetry. I thought of my friends Rob Madden and dianna hurford who write incredible, lyrical narratives, because of their strong roots in poetry. So I was hoping Mr. Crummey would begin from his roots, his family, his own stories.

He did.

He read from his first book, Hard Light, which he described as a love letter to his father. It made everyone in the theatre (including me) laugh out loud. The stories were filled with things I love to read: lightness, darkness, humor and small moments of beauty. Then he read from his latest novel, The Wreckage (2005), which was definitely good writing, but not as home for me as his early poems. When someone asked him if he still writes poetry, he said no, not really. That the work a novel requires leaves little else for writing any poetry. He also said he has been writing for 20 years and has only made any money from it in the last 7. I also suspect this is why he switched forms. While everyone shuffled off to buy his latest novel and get it signed, I came home and looked up Hard Light in the SFU library catalogue: it’s in!

I was also wondering if it was just a bad haircut the day he shot the photo for his book jacket, or if he actually looks like that. Mystery solved: he looks exactly like his photo.