Teasing out
Anne Pia Guest Blog (Part II)
I had turned inwards; I was finding my voice.
I wasn’t interested in poetic form; I didn’t want to write a sonnet or a villanelle, but I found that I had certainly started something.
Whether it was through my journey with meditation and mindfulness, my visits to Buddhist centres, or my fresh awareness, I had certainly opened something up inside. Writing poems became an endless flow.
I found coffee shops, took out my pen and notebook and waited, staring at the page. Once the first line of something arrived, though I hadn’t planned or realised it, I knew a poem was there.
It just needed to be teased out.
I would then spend the next two or three days, walking the city and thinking about each line… rearranging, and finding the word I needed. Each poem was a journey that consumed me until it was done… or done for now because poems, for most of us, are a work in progress and unfinished.
I wrote frantically during those years – my output has slowed down since then. I now find that words come much more easily. Maybe my poetry is more direct and distilled.
These things are for others to judge.
But in those few years at the start, it was as if I had been ignoring some inner stream or fierce undercurrent. And having unwittingly given space to it, it had me in its grip.
I loved poetry, I discovered a world I didn’t know existed. I joined a creative writing class. Found a writing group. I joined several.
I went to poetry gatherings and festivals; and was astonished when my poem “Waiting For the Film” was chosen for the Stanza Poetry Festival Masterclass which I went to, knowing no one. It was quite a big deal. Then, a few months later, I plucked up the courage to read that poem in public at an open mic event. It was my first reading. I read too fast, was too nervous, head down, eyes glued to my page, I made no eye contact with anyone and while the other readers read two or three, I read only one.
Towards the end of 2014, a good friend challenged me to write a book. I dismissed the idea… I hadn’t the commitment.
What if I spent years writing and no one would publish it? What would I write about anyway? I’m certainly not a storyteller… I was terrible at telling my girls bedtime stories.
Then gradually I thought I might write something for my daughters… I wanted to connect them to their Italian roots; I would tell them about survival; how I escaped expectations, a culture and a set of norms. I wanted them to know who I really am and more importantly, I hoped in the telling of my story, that they might learn to challenge, draw on their own resolve and inner strength; that they might be steered by an innate inner voice and compass; that they might see that in life, we can be who we want to be.
We continually self-make as we confront and overcome barriers and seize opportunities. I wanted them, as I have, to see living as an endless possibility; that every day holds the potential for inner change, for a new direction and for something exciting and new.
Throughout that year I thought about the cost and the practicalities of paying someone to put my words into print. I had no clue about the world of publishing or, indeed, writing.
No clue either about how competitive it can be; about how disappointing it can be; how it can challenge your own sense of self; how vulnerable it can make you feel; how it often makes you wonder why you started in the first place; question why you write what you write.
No one tells you either about that strange sensation once the work is done, of feeling sated and emptied.
Then, when you know there is nothing left in you, that it’s all on the page, you conclude; and with trembling fingers, mustering all your resolve, you finally tap the SEND on your computer and the book goes to the publisher:
“what will they say about you, little book, as you navigate the views of readers, reviewers and editors”; “off you go into the big world!”.
I finished Language of My Choosing on Holy Isle in 2016. I was overjoyed that Luath Press accepted it for publication and I didn’t have to endure endless refusals.
I couldn’t believe it.
Everyone was delighted for me. We launched it, my “creative memoir”, in 2017 which then went on to become a Finalist as a First Non-Fiction Book of the Year, in the Scottish National Book Awards.
Not long after the thrill of the launch, the big party in an Italian eatery in Central Edinburgh, we were approached by a publisher in Italy. With a grant from Publishing Scotland to pay for a translation of the book into Italian, Ho Scelto la Mia Lingua was published.
A year later, having been nominated by the Italian Cultural Institute here in Scotland, I was awarded the prestigious Premio Flaiano Linguistica in Italy, an international award for artistic achievement.
Anne Pia