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Ep. 7. Amy Key, Arrangements in Blue
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In this episode, we read a passage from Amy Key's Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Love and Making a Life (2023). Buy the book from a local independent bookshop or Bookshop.org.
Amy Key is a writer based in London. She is the author of Arrangements in Blue (Jonathan Cape, 2023), chosen as a Book of the Year by The Sunday Times, Independent, Irish Times and Granta and shortlisted by Foyles for their Non Fiction Book of the Year 2023. She is also the author of two collections of poetry, Luxe (Salt, 2013) and Isn’t Forever (Bloodaxe, 2018). Her essays have appeared in the collections At The Pond (2019) and By the River (2024) published by Daunt, as well as Granta, Vogue, The Observer, The Poetry Review, Independent and elsewhere. She writes the substack So Glad I’m Me.
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Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.
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Transcript
Introduction to Books Up Close Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Books Up Close, the podcast. I'm Chris Lloyd, a writer and academic, and on this show I talk to other writers about their work and their practice. We also collaborate on a close reading of their writing, looking at a particular passage or a whole poem, and talk about its meanings, resonances and the technicalities of language.
00:00:22
Speaker
This is a show for book nerds, aspiring and established authors, or anyone interested in how texts get made.
Conversation with Amy Key
00:00:30
Speaker
In this episode, I talk to Amy Key about a passage from her book Arrangements in Blue.
00:00:36
Speaker
We talk about the opening of the fourth section, which is called Flowers. It's on page 71 of the UK hardback edition, if you have that. Amy Key is a writer based in London.
00:00:47
Speaker
She is the author of Arrangements in Blue, as well as two poetry collections, Lux and Isn't Forever. Thank you so much for joining me, Amy. Oh, it's lovely you to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
00:00:58
Speaker
It's great to see you and the podcast listeners will be sad that they can't see your wonderful cat in the background and your beautiful pink walls, which are really helping with this recording.
Influence of Poetry on Prose Writing
00:01:07
Speaker
um So my first question that I've been asking everyone is like, what are your thoughts on close reading as a activity or a practice? And how do you feel about close reading your work with me today?
00:01:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's so interesting because I was contemplating this question before the podcast and realised that I haven't really given close reading a lot of thought. And I think...
00:01:29
Speaker
In part, that's because I didn't like come up through creative writing academia, where I would have been doing this in a way that was you know led by an expert and really encouraged to think about writing in that way.
00:01:46
Speaker
But that's not to say that I haven't done it, because obviously, as a poet, You really, you have to, you can't avoid close reading, right? Especially when you're workshopping other people's poems and you're bringing your work to to people through critique.
00:02:04
Speaker
So I guess it's poetry that provides my background in close reading. And it's probably that that informs how I read my own work in prose, but also it probably influences how I read prose more than I thought about before. So it's it been an interesting question for me to contemplate.
00:02:27
Speaker
No, it's interesting. I mean, I've got two questions off the back of that.
Transition from Poetry to Prose
00:02:31
Speaker
One is, how did you find the transition from writing poetry to writing nonfiction prose? And I know this book, Arrangements in Blue, started as an essay writer that turned into the longer book. And I wonder how you managed that move from like a kind of tight, condensed essay to like a more extended book and like whether those two questions are even related. I think, yeah, no, I think they kind of are, they are definitely related for me.
00:02:56
Speaker
It took me a really long time to make the jump from writing poetry to prose. And a lot of that was... about me giving myself permission to kind of enter what I felt were the very threatening waters of taking up more space um in the literary world and writing long form, which I had told myself that I just simply couldn't do.
00:03:22
Speaker
And it's kind of weird because that the rationale I used for that is kind of is kind of warped because i would I would say to myself that, I don't know, I didn't have the authority to write prose. And actually people who don't write poetry often think that that is a really kind of exclusive highbrow community that isn't for everybody. Whereas I found poetry to be like this democratic space where...
00:03:51
Speaker
people could come from any different background and were given, i don't know, the the title of poet, regardless of their experience or regardless of whether they were good or bad or, you know, mediocre.
00:04:04
Speaker
And I think that was probably the the result of the teacher that I had. So I went into workshops with the poet Roddy Lumsden and he, that was the kind of community he created. Like he could be a snob and an idiot about these things and,
00:04:19
Speaker
ah you know, really dismissive, I guess, of some people's poetry and and really favoured others. But in his classroom, i don't know, like, I just felt that we were all on a level playing field, regardless of where we've been. And and he he automatically treated me as a poet. So...
00:04:36
Speaker
For me, it was like this space of acceptance and I thought that prose wasn't going to be like that. And I still don't really know if prose is or isn't isn't that, but because I kind of was publishing quite a lot of poems, I began to get asked to write about poetry and I thought, I'm just going to give that a go.
Origins of Amy's Book
00:04:57
Speaker
I found it really, really hard, if I'm honest.
00:04:59
Speaker
And I remember like the earliest reviews that I wrote for things like Poetry London or Poetry Review, you know I would send to my friends and be like, ah, like help me, help me write this. And they would, you know, hold my hand through a lot of it. But I...
00:05:16
Speaker
I kind of feel like once I got like rid of the chip on my shoulder that was saying to me, oh Amy, you you are not allowed to have thoughts and feelings about these if you can't ah back them up with a shitload of theory or other examples.
00:05:32
Speaker
Once I kind of saw that there was a there was space in... responding to things in a personal way rather than necessarily ah ah critical way and that was my mode of writing critically I relaxed and and so so kind of that's where that came from very long-winded answer to the first bit of that question I know you were also interested in the the essay so The essay that I wrote for Granta, which was the, I guess, the stimulus for my book Arrangements in Blue, when I pitched it to Granta, it was an entirely different beast.
00:06:08
Speaker
So I actually pitched them an essay about the relationship of Joni Mitchell to my poetics, you know. and And again, that was very much about like, oh, I feel like I can have some authority in that space. So that's the space I'm going to write into.
00:06:24
Speaker
And it was only when I sent the first draft to the editor there, Eleanor Chandler, that she pointed out to me that like the essay was a Trojan horse for an entirely different subject, which was this preoccupation with romantic absence in my life.
00:06:45
Speaker
And that was actually what the emotional insight that I was trying to... address yeah i'd like built this kind of thing around it which was this you know like oh joanie mitchell poetic so i'm gonna now discuss someone else's poem and talk about how joanie shows up in the lives of the melancholy poets of this land you know ah so it was interesting to me that she sort of saw through all of my bullshit and that came this completely different story
00:07:17
Speaker
No, and that's interesting because i because I've been thinking in the interview so far and hear about like form quite radically,
From Essay to Memoir
00:07:25
Speaker
right? and And really trying to take form more seriously than I think probably most, you know, newspaper reviews give a new book that comes out, right?
00:07:33
Speaker
And thinking about what can be done in that short essay form or that short essay length versus like extending it to a whole book then but that becomes a memoir, right? Like that has this other title that means something else that has these other significations.
00:07:48
Speaker
And we're going to talk about a bit, a little extract from the book that's kind of later on. So I can ask you to read it in a minute. But is there anything that listeners, if they haven't read it or if they have the need to know about where this is coming in the book or or what the book is generally arguing?
00:08:02
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So it's a book about my experience of living... largely without romantic love. And I use the framework of Joni Mitchell's album Blue to explore the different bits of life that I had falsely, I guess, assumed or or attached to having a kind of partnered status.
00:08:24
Speaker
So I talk about the idea of creating a family home self-esteem and and and kind of self-love our ability to have kind of intimacy in our lives travel sex the idea of soulmates all of the all of these different things that i knew were sort of burning questions in me like are these things for me can i still have them if if romantic love is absent And the songs give me a framework for thinking that through by providing like a little spur that I use to to explore those questions.
00:09:02
Speaker
Amazing.
Close Reading on Self-Love and Societal Expectations
00:09:03
Speaker
So if you could read this little extract for us, that'd be great. And then we can start talking about it. And this is from the chapter Flowers, which is the the chapter about kind of self-love and self-care.
00:09:14
Speaker
And it takes a line from one of Joanie's songs, which is Clean White Linen and My Fancy French Cologne.
00:09:23
Speaker
The rhetoric that you must love yourself before you can expect anyone else to love you can feel like a terrible burden. i know I felt in a double bind. One of self-loathing, as culture tells me i will not be loved until that is overcome.
00:09:39
Speaker
And then one of dispossession, because I've listened to too many songs that tell me i am no one until somebody loves me. In that framework, the war between self-love as realisation and being loved as self-realisation, I lose on both sides.
00:09:59
Speaker
While self-care, in a superficial sense, can come easy, self-love can feel as remote a possibility as romantic love. If romantic love isn't a key that will unlock my self-esteem and self-love feels threatening in its difficulty, I still need to find a shape for my life, not just for my daily routines of care, but for what I'd like to see, feel and experience in my future.
00:10:28
Speaker
Joni's songs never tell me I'm nobody because I don't have romantic love. I'm grateful. She doesn't preach that it's only love that will make you. i find comfort in her own uncertainty about what move to make, to stay or leave, whether to dwell on what love takes from us or its gifts.
00:10:51
Speaker
Amazing. Thank you so much. What really struck me in this passage is why I was really interested in this reading this one is because you do something I think about like at the level of the sentence and kind of weighing things up.
00:11:05
Speaker
I remember reading it twice when I first read this chapter, the first couple of pages. I was like, wait, Not that I don't understand, but rather like, where do I sit in relation to these kind of like formulations? Sure, yeah. Because you open with like the rhetoric that and you're like, okay, we're we're in the, we're in the language of other people, right? Like in in this kind of like societal discourse about what should be happening, that you must love yourself before you can expect anyone else to love you can feel like a terrible burden.
00:11:30
Speaker
that you, that second person you that kind of is interesting in this book. It's not one and it's not, it becomes I right in that second sentence. I know I felt in a double bind, but the you is both a pulling in of like your reader, but also ah kind of comment on generalized sense of like what love is supposed to be or self acceptance.
00:11:51
Speaker
And I really think that's an interesting way to start that chapter. So we kind of start in this kind of the language of others and then immediately you go to, I know I've felt in a double bind. So kind of pulling from that generic to the very specific.
00:12:05
Speaker
Yeah, I guess I really wanted people to immediately be asking themselves the same question. So it's something we accept as like received wisdom, right? That I've probably even said it to other people, like, look, you have to love yourself, you know, let's forget about this other person, love yourself. And then like, love is going to like come to you, like manifesting or, you know, and I just think,
00:12:32
Speaker
It makes me quite angry to think about it because it places all this responsibility on the person. It says like you're at fault, right? You have to fix yourself before you are worthy of someone else's love. And I just think that's a really cruel way of looking at things.
00:12:52
Speaker
Yeah, no, it is. And it's something I definitely talked to my therapist and he was like, no, sometimes, you know, you need other people to show you things and and to be in dialogue with others. and And I was like, oh, okay, let's talk about this. Let's have a reading group.
00:13:06
Speaker
um But I, but here's the bit that I think that was interesting to me. Like I felt in a double bind and you get colon, right? And you're like, okay, let's set up this
Language and Societal Influence
00:13:16
Speaker
debate. One of self-loathing and then one of dispossession.
00:13:20
Speaker
And that kind of, the double bind that you're talking about emotionally is also then set up at the level of the sentence, right? Like they could easily be two sentences, but instead you're kind of weighing them with those commas as culture tells me I will not be loved until I is overcome. And then with a disposition, because I've listened to too many songs that tell me I am no until somebody loves me.
00:13:39
Speaker
and i And I really found as I was reading that sentence, like, where do I wait on those scales? Like, yeah you almost, do you do feel trapped between the double bind, like as as a reader, because you're like, well, these are your two options.
00:13:51
Speaker
And as the sentence is snaking, right? The sentence is kind of snaking. You don't get a letter. You don't get a break in the sentence to be like, well, it could be. Maybe that's to do with this, I guess what I perceive as like a general discomfort that I have, but also I think other people have, like maybe this is just me projecting, to be honest, a discomfort with being in the kind of ambivalent middle where you can recognize that something is bullshit, but understand the kind of magnetism it has on your life and how it is casting
00:14:26
Speaker
everything that you think and feel about yourself. And that's definitely the kind of trapped space that i i felt within. Because, you know, like culturally, all of all of the things that I feel about myself and my relationship to romantic love have like built in such small increments over such time. Like I feel like ah a slice of rock that has got all these different types of sediment. and And someone's asking me to try and like obliterate something that has been in there for millennia.
00:14:57
Speaker
And it's really, really deep down. And like, how how am I supposed to kind of, get that out of my system even even if my rational mind can marshal its arguments against it right it's and it's interesting how you're reading it because like i probably wasn't conscious of doing that in the text No, but that's good. that This is what everyone has said so far. and And that's the thing I think is important.
00:15:20
Speaker
I think for readers who aren't, like as you said, in these creative writing spaces or in like workshops or classrooms, to think about what, you know, authorial intention or like, like maybe that's a stupid idea, right? That actually like like some of these stuff is coming up unconsciously. It's happening with rhythm. It's how it sounds on the page.
00:15:36
Speaker
And yeah, what a reader can see in a text that maybe the author isn't even thinking about in any kind of conscious way. Like that to me is interesting to kind of think about with a wider listenership.
00:15:48
Speaker
Because you also, the one of the other things I think about this passage, ah it is about the coercive power of language, right? Like the rhetoric of you must love. And then listened to too many songs that say, i am no one until somebody loves me. And I'm thinking about particular songs that use that line, right?
00:16:03
Speaker
But it's almost like you're caught between different kinds of language, like the language of culture that's saying you must be X, the language of music that's saying you must be X, and then your own language that's like, how do I sit in relation to those things?
00:16:15
Speaker
And there's something about words themselves that are doing some damage in this process too. I think you're right. Like when I was writing the book, I had all of these epigraphs for each chapter.
00:16:26
Speaker
And I remember like one of them was a song by the crystals, which was something like, if you're going to hurt somebody, please hurt me. but You know, this, this idea of like romantic damage as as a compelling thing on my psyche which doesn't directly relate to this particular chapter but it links to that idea of these the different levels that language is operating on and how you're kind of don't know all of this stuff is sticking to you like you're bit of sellotape and you're picking up fluff off the floor or something or you're debobbling your sweater and you've got cat hair and you've got all sorts of stuff on it well that's just me because of my cats but um
00:17:07
Speaker
It's quite hard to like pick apart how all of those things have combined and produced this worldview that you have, or that I am exploring in in this chapter, which is, I talk to myself in a way I would never talk to a friend.
00:17:21
Speaker
And I have accepted as fact things about love you know my own lovableness and my capacity to be like a kind, loving friend to myself that if a friend was talking to me about, I would want to completely dismantle.
00:17:41
Speaker
and ah But the the kind of the bad thing is, is that we're all we're all like that, pretty much. We're all, you know, um subject to this negative self-talk and we treat other people entirely differently. it's It's like an insult to our intelligence, the way that it's like, what Why am I doing this to myself?
Self-Perception and Trust
00:18:05
Speaker
There's a there's a bit later on where you talk about. letting other people take photographs of you where they think you look good in them and believing them and trusting in that. That went in my notebook immediately. I was like, right, that's it. I'm no longer going to judge like what other people put photos of me online or whatever. like That really stuck with me as a kind of form of seeing this self through others and and doing it in a tender way. Yeah, yeah. And it can be really hard because, like, if you're confronted with an image that doesn't align with your self-image, yeah, it can be really confronting. But um I don't want to kind of try to police how other people perceive me, you know through through that.
00:18:50
Speaker
And then the next line in that framework... Here, we're going get nerdy, everybody. Okay. You might want fast forward if you're not interested in endashes. But in that framework, endash, the war between self-love as realization and being loved as self-realization, I lose on both sides.
00:19:05
Speaker
And then while self-care, endash in a superficial sense, endash can come easily. so you've got two of these back-to-back, right? These sentences where there's this is kind of parenthetical bit. Then the first one, it's the framework.
00:19:18
Speaker
But again, the balancing act, right? Like in the sentence before, you did that as...
Instinctual Writing and Style
00:19:22
Speaker
kind of clauses within clauses right this kind of long flowing sentences and here it's in that framework here's one thing and here's the other thing i lose on both sides and it's almost like you're demonstrating us to us the kind of dangers of black and white thinking right it's like either this or this but you do it in that little okay so why n dashes not m dashes right like and why not brackets right like what is that little parenthetical bit doing do you think Yeah, it's a really good question. i really wish I had a smart answer. I think I
00:19:53
Speaker
i use endashes a lot in poetry. i kind of think of them as like little annotations um in the text. And aesthetically, I'm more drawn to them, like how they look on the page. Like a lot of the...
00:20:09
Speaker
When I write poems in particular, I think of punctuation as a kind of adornment. And ah there are certain adornments that I find ugly. um Semicolons is one probably. I'm not even a massive fan of the colon.
00:20:26
Speaker
And I think when you've got too many commas, it can... Yeah, I get a bit lost and confused. So my, yeah, my preference, I've just got a preference for the end dash. I don't use end dashes because they're kind of they feel like quite an American form of punctuation, even though like,
00:20:46
Speaker
they quite ah they're quite appealing, but I'm not sure if I'm like chic enough to just drop in a load of endashes. and And I think that endash has this kind of more like rapid rapid kind of, like I say, like that little and scribbled in annotation, which is please think about this with this other thought in mind. Like I wanna just give you this other thing, but I i don't wanna tell you what to think, you know?
00:21:13
Speaker
See, I love an M dash because it joins the letters together. Oh, yeah, yeah. things the The space in an M dash, like, that's the difference me. But there is something about, like, giving some room right there in that sentence. Like...
00:21:26
Speaker
think and breathe i also think we should go back to like emily dickinson's time right and writing those dashes like in all different directions right like she was not confined to the short or long she was just like it's gonna go upwards or downwards yeah i mean i'm a big fan of emily dickinson and too so that's probably uh a little bit why i'm
Exploring Types of Love
00:21:46
Speaker
i'm in the dash yeah i'm like if anyone if any poet uses a dash i'm like emily like what are we doing hello emily So yeah I think the sentence is starting to do some of the intellectual work as well. It's like demonstrating the emotional intellectual work as well as just describing it.
00:22:04
Speaker
And then while self-care can come easy, self-love can feel as remote as a possibility as romantic love. If romantic love isn't a key, like I'm interested in the kind of you turning around these phrases that like seem to be conflatable, right? Self-love, self-care, romantic love.
00:22:18
Speaker
Like they're similar kinds of words, but what you're trying to do is pass out the kind of differences between them and how they linger or register. And I think that little bit is quite interesting because it's almost... If you heard it quickly, you it would sound repetitive, but actually you're slowly trying to say like, there are minute differences here and how do we think about them? And I think that's quite interesting to me in such a small paragraph that you return to those same ideas that might seem repetitive, but is actually trying to aim for clarity or something.
00:22:46
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that it was really important for me in this book to try to demarcate between these different types of of love, right? Romantic love is one thing.
00:22:58
Speaker
Self-care is sold as a thing that will generate a feeling of self-love. And later in this chapter, I kind of land in the space of actually, for me, it would be more helpful to think about self friendship. And that links back to this idea of how I aspire to treat myself as I would.
00:23:22
Speaker
want to treat a friend who yeah was talking to me. But I think like in our culture, all of this stuff becomes like totally enmeshed, you know, so they, i this idea of, you gotta to love yourself if you want someone to like treat you with respect and and love you.
00:23:41
Speaker
Yeah, which I think is phony and like a bogus idea um and the commodification of the word self, you know, self-care and self-love. It's just something that is marketed and sold rather than an actual like product of like self-inquiry and care and friendship towards yourself, which is something for me that's very distinct.
00:24:05
Speaker
Mm hmm. Yeah, and I think then, you know, you then start to think, if romantic love isn't a key that will unlock my esteem, I still need to find a shape.
Joni Mitchell's Influence
00:24:14
Speaker
So then you've got the the voice kind of changes a little but it becomes a bit more speculative, right? You're like, well, here's the bind. Now what comes?
00:24:21
Speaker
And then we get a break. Also, we could talk about this, like, that your paragraphs have space between them rather than, like, indents. And whether that's a conscious choice, too, I'd be interested to know. We then move to Joanie's, right? And it's Joanie's songs.
00:24:34
Speaker
And almost that line... feels like the register is slightly different, right? We've suddenly gone into this much more intimate space of Joni songs. Like she's your best friend here, right? In this book. And we've moved from like the rhetoric of like the world versus Joni songs never tell me. Like it's much more intimate, much softer. Yeah.
00:24:50
Speaker
And those songs never tell me I'm nobody. Full stop. I'm grateful. Full stop. Like the shortest sentence we've had in this whole chapter, right? And that I'm grateful, like feels so huge, right? like you could have a three line sentence previously, but that I'm grateful is small, but massive emotionally.
00:25:06
Speaker
Yeah, I guess it was important for me to show why is Joni helping me tackle this question, right? Let's slow right down the pause here.
00:25:18
Speaker
And I want to talk to you about that. So guess that's what... um so i guess that's what that's what I'm doing there. And that's probably why when I feel like I'm kind of beginning a new thought, I i want a paragraph break and want to kind of signal that actually we're we're going somewhere else now. Yeah.
00:25:38
Speaker
No, because I talk a a lot about that with my students, right? Like what a what a break versus like an indented paragraph does for a reader, like how how that makes the reading experience and what that breath in between is going to do or not do.
00:25:52
Speaker
Then I love, she doesn't preach that it's only love that will make you. I find comfort in her own uncertainty about what move to make, to stay or leave. Like I can not but hear that. Like it feels almost iambic, right? Like what move to make, to stay or leave.
00:26:06
Speaker
Like it starts to flow in a really soft way that's quite different from like the lines above that we're all about. This kind of syntactical balancing, right? So this and then actually we move into a softer register. Yeah.
00:26:17
Speaker
And I think part of that is trying to ah mimic, I guess, the rhythm and cadence of the lyrics. I'm aware of that now that you say it and now that I read it, but I probably, i wasn't consciously trying to do that, but it is something that I was i subconsciously did.
00:26:35
Speaker
So I must have had like some little hidden intent there that was, okay, we're going to get a bit like melodious here. Yeah. Yeah, you hear it and you hear the, you know, even the what move to make like the alliteration of that is like a soft alliteration. Like I think these things are kind of permeate the language in different ways. Like you're also trying to say like the language of Joanie that's both kind of written and Sonic is a whole different place from that rhetoric of, you know, cliche of like you must do X.
00:27:04
Speaker
Yeah, and I feel like I'm a bit grumpy. you know, like I'm grumpy when I'm starting this chapter and like i'm like i've got like this I've got a bone to pick and i want you to I want you to kind of walk with me while I talk talk it out.
00:27:18
Speaker
And then I'm like, okay, let's borrow some music. Let's borrow some music that to now think about it. And i would when I was writing, i would always read back to myself aloud.
00:27:33
Speaker
which is what I do with poetry, to see how it feels to say and in in my mouth, you know, like as I'm forming the words and also like rhythmically, how is it feeling?
Amy's Writing Process and Conditions
00:27:45
Speaker
And there were times when I did have to pull back from going like full poem core, you know but i I feel that is really important to my practice.
00:27:57
Speaker
and how like the sentences kind of balance and, and way I'm just testing it out and I respond to my ear. I'm probably not responding.
00:28:08
Speaker
so I'm, I'm responding to my ear on the level of instinct rather than, you know, like counting my, my beats and, you know, thinking about meter and all of that ah sort of stuff. Yeah. And, but, and then that's one of the points I think I'm,
00:28:22
Speaker
trying to like explore with people is that you know we can identify these metric feet whatever but some of it is instinctual some of it's like in it's through the body that you feel it and hear it and and make sense of it absolutely yeah I want to ask you some questions about your writing process this is like a nice transition but one question I had that I didn't write down was were you playing the journey songs on repeat as you were writing those chapters or was did you go back to them and I know obviously you know the album back to front but was there a sense of hearing it as you were writing or not So i I need silence to write. So i can't sit there and like have Joanie on in the background as i'm as I'm writing. It doesn't really work for me like that.
00:29:00
Speaker
But I would often listen to her when I was like out driving or walking around and I would make notes of things different kind of emotional experiences or life experiences that I felt connected to the songs so I would have have that and I would refer to it I would refer to the lyrics a lot but I didn't ever write alongside listening no that's yeah that's interesting to me i was trying to think about yeah where where that was sitting in relation to the background because each chapter is kind of taking one of those songs and I wondered how weaved in it was to the writing process I also can't write with any sound I'm
00:29:41
Speaker
It has to be dead silence, so otherwise my brain just... I just want to listen to the song. Yeah, and and like it's interesting because now when I listen to that album, I don't think about my book at all. like It's not like I'm suddenly like, oh yeah, and in my chapter I talk about this line. It's just like, joie the songs, they're Jonies.
00:30:01
Speaker
I still listen to them and you know as I did when I was 20 years old or whatever. Yeah, no, that's great. um Do you have or did you for this book have a strict writing process? Do you have like...
00:30:14
Speaker
ah practices rituals are you doing in a particular place are there snacks on the table my so I wrote this while I was working full-time and also it was during the pandemic when I was working not just full-time but often several hours beyond my working hours a day and over weekends and because I was working in the ah health sector and it was a really intense time I often wrote for an hour before work and at the weekends and using all of my holiday.
00:30:51
Speaker
So that's that's how I did it. i don't actually know how I've how that how I managed it now, if I'm completely honest, especially as like I'm trying to work on something new at the moment and I've taken a bit of time out of full-time work and seemingly can't write at all when ah when that's not happening. So maybe it was the ideal conditions for me to write. In terms of where I write, I write in bed, largely.
00:31:15
Speaker
I write in bed if I get stuck I move into my living room and I sit at my dining table and I write there when I get really really stuck I go out for a drive or something and I just try and think think a little bit and then I'll might send myself some voice notes and then at the end of the day if I've been writing I quite often have like thoughts that rise to the surface and then I just send them to myself by email and I wake up I've got like six emails with these fragmented thoughts so I wouldn't recommend my writing practice to anybody i think it probably leads to a very bad back it means that all of your ideas are just like cast to the four winds because I'm not really collecting them in any way any sensible place and now I'm so easily distracted that i have to use like white noise
00:32:04
Speaker
So i I do have sound now. but I used to have complete silence, but now I have the sound of rushing water, which is one of the things that i find helps me focus. I wish I had like a more chic writing practice, but I i just don't. I have to be alone.
00:32:20
Speaker
i can't write in a coffee shop. I like to be in bed, feel safe. I don't need any snacks while I'm writing. You're not the first person I've interviewed to say they write in bed, so don't worry. You're all chic to me.
00:32:32
Speaker
is that the same with poetry? It's the same, yeah. and Yeah, it's the same. But poetry is like a more potent, intense form. Sometimes you can write a whole poem, you know, in under an hour or something, and you're like, yeah, I've done it, I smashed it, and you get this incredible dopamine hit and feel feel fantastic.
00:32:56
Speaker
And it's done, right? But writing long form is never done. And you have to have this stamina. And that's probably the transition that I found really challenging.
00:33:07
Speaker
was like having the stamina to just keep going back to the same thing again and again, particularly when I'm revising or responding to comments and edits or just trying to push the word count so that I had enough material to bring it into a good form.
00:33:26
Speaker
and really hard, much harder than wrote. That's why I write poems because it's like it's quite instant. it's quite a you let You get the and like, great, I did a thing today.
00:33:37
Speaker
Well done. Do you have a memory of first writing?
Early Writing Experiences and Influences
00:33:41
Speaker
Do you remember the first time you started writing or even you know the first time you were reading quite consciously? um I probably well I used to keep a diary when I was a teenager I i i no longer do that so you know that there was my diaries and then I started to write like I guess you would call it flash fiction although it wasn't you know this was the early ninety s so it it wasn't called flash fiction then but um I wrote these like little stories and poems when I was about
00:34:11
Speaker
18, 19 and I think that's the first time other than in school that I wrote creatively apart from i thought I wrote a brilliant story for my GCSE English which I later realised I totally ripped off Janice Galloway's book The Trick Is To Keep Breathing and did not I thought I was a stone-cold genius and my English teacher wrote in it I can't wait to read this published one day know But ah later on, I i realized there was significant element of plagiarism, which I didn't ah consciously. So it's a good job I didn't submit it anyway, because that might have ended my career before it even even began.
00:34:49
Speaker
ah i love this. Amy Key camp yeah exactly ah for plagiarism. Are there any books you wish you'd written? Oh, I mean, there are so many books that I really admire.
00:35:02
Speaker
i But, like, it's so hard to, like, imagine yourself into having written them, right? and So, like, if I think of something like Catherine Scanlon's Kick the Latch is ah is a book that...
00:35:14
Speaker
I just like vibrates in my brain, like long you know years after I i first read it or a book that I read recently and it's called On the Calculation of Volume. The author Solveig Ball.
00:35:30
Speaker
I'm not sure if I've pronounced that right or or not, but it's a it's a book in seven volumes. that are about a woman who is like trapped in the same day.
00:35:41
Speaker
And it's it's just like the audacity of writing seven volumes of it is just so funny and brilliant to me. But the kind of immersion and the the skill that it takes to make that engaging for the reader and compelling to keep going,
00:36:00
Speaker
over like such a long time period I've only read the first two volumes but I'm like what a brilliant idea what an incredible writer so ah I don't I don't ah don't often feel like I wish I had written that I just feel like deep admiration for other people's skill I sometimes envy their imagination or like their sentences and think oh I wish I could do that but um I feel like we should only be writing the books that only us can write. So that's the thing that I come back to.
00:36:34
Speaker
No, that's great. Like, I always wonder if I should ask that question. But there are certain books that like, when I finished it, was like, ah, I wish I wish I were capable of that. or I wish I had been able to do something like that, that feels so yeah close to maybe my sensibility or aesthetic, perhaps. It was like, that feels like a it's something that's within my world, but somehow I'm not able to articulate that.
00:36:56
Speaker
Yeah, so so for example, so um I read recently Sean Fay's book that's coming out in February, Love in Exile. And to a certain extent, like we're writing into the same space, except, you know, like I'm not a queer trans person, for example. So like Sean is bringing this entirely different perspective to it.
00:37:16
Speaker
And she's writing like beautiful memoir, but she's also bringing in kind of quite a lot of like cultural criticism too. And i kind of I wish sometimes that I could write in that space, but it's it's it's not. you know I just can't do it.
00:37:32
Speaker
But I'm like thrilled that Sean has it. You know, so I know what you mean. Like sometimes you're like, ah, this is a book I could have written if I was this completely different person.
00:37:44
Speaker
yeah So that's how how I often think about it. Yeah. Maybe that maybe that is what you've been saying, right? Like showing a tenderness to oneself and saying like you write the book that you need to write, not this other thing. you know Because you don't want be feeling like all of these other books that are actually contributing to a conversation that's really important to you are somehow threatening. They're not. like It's all adding to the the culture of the question that you're really interested in exploring. So that's the way I try to think about it.
00:38:15
Speaker
The final question, like you've recommended three beautiful books there. So like, those are great. Were there any others or were there any books about writing like as craft and putting craft in quote
Recommended Reading on Writing Craft
00:38:24
Speaker
marks? There's two that I use a lot.
00:38:27
Speaker
One is Vivian Gornick's The Situation and the Story about the art of personal narrative. um which i I just find, well, I think it's brilliant, but also I just found it really helpful because like what she talks about is the idea of understanding what the story is and what your situation is and how those two things aren't the same.
00:38:48
Speaker
And quite often we think we can we think about story as like the events of a life and we think that that gives us the story. So like maybe it's divorce.
00:39:00
Speaker
it's't that isn't the story, right? and That is the situation that you're in. The story is about like what are the emotional insights that you can derive from that experience and how are you going to access them?
00:39:14
Speaker
Because divorce in itself is not interesting, yeah? So she writes about that and I find it really helpful and and use it in teaching a lot. And the other one is Melissa Fabos' bodywork.
00:39:26
Speaker
which I really love. That's always on my list. That's the one. If anybody asked me the question, that would be my instinctive response. So so glad you said that. Yeah. Yeah. It's really, it's really great. And I was like, when I, when I got it, i for some reason, I just, I ah don't think I really understood what the book was. And I was like, oh, this is a craft book. I was like expecting something else.
00:39:47
Speaker
And then like, I picked it up again and I was like, oh, holy shit, this is so helpful. Thank God this book exists. And I particularly love like the stuff that she writes about ah in terms of like the dilemmas of writing about your own life and the lives of others.
00:40:02
Speaker
And there's just a lot of wisdom in there and ways of thinking about personal writing that I think are really helpful and seem to really resonate when I talk to to students and others about it that's amazing um I will link to that and she's got a new book coming out this year called the dry season yeah I am yeah I can't wait to read that's another thing that you know that that sort of book it like plays into this kind of cultural story doesn't it about the role that love is playing in our lives and its absence and its presence and it you know sexual desire and all ah all of this kind of stuff so I'm really I'm really can't wait to read that one
00:40:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think we can put those three on a syllabus
Closing Remarks and Listener Engagement
00:40:40
Speaker
together, right? You've got Amy's book, you've got Sean's book. so like If anyone is teaching that module, please get in touch and let us know. to know Well, thank you so much, Amy, for your time. I really appreciate it. This was great.
00:40:53
Speaker
Oh, it's really nice to chat to you. I'm excited to listen to all the other episodes. Thank you for listening to this episode. Please subscribe if you haven't already, leave a review and share with people you know.
00:41:06
Speaker
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00:41:17
Speaker
You can get show transcripts and more information by subscribing to the subject. This show is made possible by Impact Accelerator Award from the University of Hertfordshire and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.