Andrew Taylor interviews Ursula Hurley
Andrew: When was it that you realised that you were a writer? Was it when you were a child or when you went to university?
Ursula: I think I was probably about 20 when I self-consciously labelled myself as a ‘writer’ (and got the predictable pitying looks and ‘don’t give up the day job’ comments from the usual smart-arse suspects). But I have always been fascinated with language, and my mum remembers my primary school teacher being amazed at my seven year old self’s description of water sparkling on a lake. About that age I started making booklets – folding paper and asking someone to bind it for me so I could write in it. That’s also when I started writing poems. I had a little grey notebook with a red poppy sticker on the front. There’s one couplet that I’m still proud of: ‘the frost forms a delicate rimming of white/ while the ice on the pond stretches tight’. I think my rhyme schemes were a bit dodgy though! I remember another teacher giving me a poor mark because my poems rhymed. When I asked her how you could recognise poetry if the words didn’t rhyme, she couldn’t answer. My mum was so cross that she contacted one of the English lecturers at what was then Edge Hill College – we still didn’t get our answer, but the response was much more thoughtful and accepting of complexity. I think that’s stayed with me in my own teaching – being careful not to make general statements or inflexible rules.
Andrew: You come from a Creative Writing background. Aside from the academic aspects, do you find that teaching writing is useful to your practice? What do you think about the whole ‘writing can’t be taught’ argument?
Ursula: I’ll have to answer this one carefully or I’ll be in danger of putting myself out of a job! Is teaching writing useful to my practice? Most writers have to do other work in order to make ends meet. I’m privileged to be able to work as a lecturer and researcher in an area that I love. At certain times of the year, the demands of teaching, marking and administering a degree programme can take over completely, and it’s very difficult to get anything else done. Sometimes when you’ve been trying to help and encourage other writers all day long, there’s nothing left in the tank for your own stuff. But like anything worthwhile, it’s about managing your time and your energy.
However, teaching writing can be very useful because it makes you self-conscious about your own practice. What makes good writing? What techniques can I identify and improve? Am I practising what I preach? These questions are immensely useful when I finally get around to looking at my own work. In order to articulate what I’m doing to others, I first have to explain it to myself. And I’m constantly learning from my students. The diversity and creativity of their responses never ceases to amaze me. There is a joy and wonder there that keeps you fresh.
Can writing be taught? Yes and no. I can’t teach someone to be like Wordsworth or Shakespeare. That’s something innate. I can make students aware of effective writing tools (like imagery, or line breaks), and show them how to make use of these techniques. If someone comes to my classes, participates in the exercises, reads widely, is willing to workshop their material, and put the hours in re-drafting, then I’m fairly confident that they’ll leave with a well-equipped writer’s toolbox. What they do with it is beyond my control.
Andrew: As far as I’m aware, you came from a fiction background, with your short story being published in Cambridge University’s May anthology. When did you make the leap to poetry?
Ursula: As I said, I started writing poems when I was seven, so I suppose I was a poet before I was anything else. But you’re right to sense that I probably package myself as a fiction writer first and a poet second. I think that’s because I have to work much harder at my fiction, whereas poetry is so instinctive and pleasurable that it would feel like cheating to wear the official ‘poet’ badge. Actually having seen that written down, it sounds ridiculous. I’m going to go out and get a t-shirt printed with POET on it!
Andrew: Can you explain something about the genesis of your poem ‘Cathedral Notes’?
Ursula: You know the answer to this! But for the (dubious) benefit of those who don’t, here goes: You and I have been partners in poetry for quite some time. Since we met on a Master’s course in Creative Writing in 1997 we have been editors and critics of each other’s work, so we each have an intimate knowledge of what makes the other tick as a writer. You have long been obsessed with Liverpool Cathedral, and have spent many hours visiting it, researching its history, talking, thinking and writing about it. Your responses to the Cathedral are consistently positive – a place of comfort, the instinctive source of shelter in the face of bad news. I am much more wary of the place. I have a deep mistrust of organized religion, and the more I thought about having to go to a place designated as a site of worship, and one of the grandest, most impressive sites in Europe at that, the more it became a huge oppressive silhouette on my spiritual horizon. The Cathedral demanded a response and I was reluctant to give it, choosing not to engage with the place rather than confront its definition. During the course of our discussions, you threw down a poetical gauntlet: challenged me to go to the Cathedral and try writing about it, just to see what would happen. Cathedral Notes is what happened.
Andrew: There is an over-riding sense of nature in your work. I know that you are a keen gardener and spend much time carefully nurturing seeds to germination. Do you feel that this feeds directly into your work? To me it seems that this carefulness extends to your poetry
Ursula: I do think of myself as a ‘nature’ poet. I find observing the natural world gives me endless material, as if every one of my poems is another attempt to capture an impression of the wonders that surround us. Each attempt is inevitably a failure, but some get closer than others, and I suppose that’s what keeps me writing. I’ve never thought about an explicit link between my writing and my gardening, but of course there are many parallels, and the more I think about it the more I see. Writing, like gardening, is craft as much as art; it’s about managing what nature provides through a deep affinity with your material and the careful application of technique. So I suppose the metaphor of pruning could be applied to my editorial practice. Just like an overgrown plant, I start with too many words, and gradually pare them down; taking one out, just like you might take out a branch which crosses another, then standing back, thinking about proportion, the relation of the parts to the whole, whether there is enough light to allow each branch, or in this case each word, to flourish. The advantage with poetry is that it’s much easier to put something back if you decide you shouldn’t have taken it out!
Andrew: Charles Bukowski said in his poem ‘The Machinery of Loss’ that ‘when there’s nothing to write about one writes about writing’. Do you think the students that you teach understand where Bukowski is coming from with his poetics and do they understand poetics at large?
Ursula: The ever-quotable Bukowski! I need to check that I understand where he is coming from first. I think this is about how you keep going as a writer, how you keep producing even if you feel uninspired, or your life is unspeakably boring. If you can’t think of anything to say, then you need to interrogate yourself. Why am I trying to write? What is it that draws or compels? What are my concerns?My passions? My fears? Why am I trying to do this? It’s the ultimate consolation really: whatever happens, there will always be writing, it will always be there, but you need to engage with it. Perhaps it’s about managing your creativity. You don’t sit waiting for inspiration to strike; you grind it out through determination and a refusal to accept defeat. I’ve been doing this a lot with the novel that I’m currently writing. It works!
Anyone familiar with Robert Sheppard’s work will know what a gloriously elusive concept poetics can be. If we define poetics rather crudely as a statement on ‘how and why I write’; at once a manifesto, celebration, justification, tool, and creative product, then I think we can see how Bukowski’s statement fits. ‘Writing about writing’ may be a rant in your journal that curses the muse and sticks two fingers up to all the editors who ever rejected you. You might rip it up and burn it afterwards, but you’ll feel better, able to go on. Your interrogation of writing may become a creative text in its own right(write),or you may get the flash of an idea, an intriguing image, a startling metaphor, which prompts a new endeavour.
So, finally (!), to answer your question: I think students who are effective writers, or are in the process of becoming so, have an instinctive understanding. They know that ‘I couldn’t think of anything to write’ isn’t good enough. I can stand in front of a class and talk about poetics until I’m blue in the face, but I think this is something that every writer has to understand for themselves as an individual experience. As a teacher you can suggest and encourage and gently nudge (in some cases shove!) but it’s something a writer has to arrive at in their own time. Some of the best student pieces I’ve seen have been interrogations of the writing process: metaphysical poetry, a dramatisation of the writer’s role, surreal or metafictional explorations of writing about writing. And strangely enough, those who cite Bukowski in their bibliographies usually tend to do well. I think I should make him required reading.
Do they understand poetics at large? Does anyone? On a less facetious note, we do try to teach self-awareness in writing practice. Students are asked to produce what we call ‘Writers’ Reflections’ on a regular basis. In this reflection they are encouraged to talk about what sort of writer they think they are, what sort of writer they would like to be, what their influences are, what inspires them. Some of the best have been hugely entertaining or moving, and it’s pleasing to see how the germs of future creative pieces start life in this arena.
Andrew: Thank you for your time Ursula.
*****
Page(s) 2-5
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The