'Words, for me, are meant to be spoken'

Anne Pia Guest Blog (Part III)

So, now, why do I write? And for who? I am often asked, what do I do?

And for ease, I say that I am a writer, but I don’t think of myself that way. I am often looking for ideas about what to write and when I am sometimes overwhelmed by a strong emotion I write out or store it in a mental filing cabinet for when I have enough to address it.

But I have many identities, many interests… I love hosting, cooking, playing music with friends; I am passionate about education and the mystery and circumstances around how and why people learn; I am both fully Scottish and equally fully Italian; I am very in love with both languages and the culture and landscapes of both countries. I love to be in France too and to inhabit, to imbibe, both the way of life and the language. I am fiercely political.

All of these experiences, an engagement with people and ideas, throw up issues for a poem or a book. So writing is my commentary… reactions to, questions about, a record of my life and how I encounter, hear or read about other people.

I think there is some value in that writing if it leads to a conversation; to sharing other perspectives; and very importantly, to seeing life differently… seeing human experience afresh. Isn’t writing a way of describing the human experience in a new way; or articulating something that is hard to put into words?

So, I don’t write so that my books sit on a bookshelf. I write to engage and to talk openly with people. It was this objective for my own writing that made the pandemic years so hard. Writing in those years, became an arid, self-serving endeavour.

Words, for me, are meant to be spoken.

I am a teacher deep within my soul. After years of a rich and eventful life, of struggle, of pushing through, of wrestling with anxiety, fear and a lack of self-belief, of questions about my own sexuality, of facing down prejudice in order to live my own life in my way and after mothering three girls, now grown women facing some of these same issues, I write for the generations after me.

For the generations that my daughters are part of. Through my writing, I want to speak with much younger people. While there is a personal reassurance about sharing with people of my own age, the impetus for writing, for me, comes from a desire to connect with younger people in an age of unprecedented challenge as to who we are; to identities, to how we manage our social and personal relationships, and how we navigate the ethical issues around careers… what and how we deal with our value-base, living in a world that is under threat of immediate extinction and where there are no longer any norms or guidelines.

That connection between me and my readers is I hope, good for both of us… solid, reassuring and hopeful on the one hand, exciting and challenging on the other.

I have a particular take on writing in the 21st century and as a writer living in Europe. My literary background is varied and eclectic. I came to literature firstly through my mother… born as she was in an Italian-speaking home, both immigrant parents unable to read or write, she somehow found her way to books and loved them. They transported her to romantic and beautiful places. They extended her life experience. She read with enthusiasm and shared what thrilled her. I visited our local library with her when I was able to read myself, was always so exciting.

Higher English at school, was when I discovered poetry and at university, the study of Italian, French and English literature, combined with philosophy broadened my interest. I discovered new poets, Renaissance and medieval writing, Futurism, Modernism and the influence of the Scottish Enlightenment, painting and music on our own literature.

I have a strong interest in feminist Asian writing; in the poetry of Lorca and Pablo Neruda. I have loved the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the writing on education as freedoms and democracy by the Brazilian Paolo Freire.

I have a strong belief therefore, that we need, as writers, to endeavour to be worthy of those giants; we have much to live up to; much to fire and inspire us. And I believe too that in writing, we try to create something which will last beyond our span of years and will be a testament to our time and this century.

Influences aside, the focus of my writing apart from relationships, gender and contemporary issues such as immigration, is human existence which is not solid. Our concrete world is not solid and life patterns are always changeable as are we.

We are not reliable nor is anything we have come to rely on.

This precariousness is scary. It is also very exciting and it offers hope every day of our lives. In each day and with every person that we meet or experience that we have, there is so much possibility. This idea is based on Buddhist thinking but it represents my own life experience.

I believe that life is a self-making journey right until the end. There is opportunity in almost every context and conversation…something to learn, something to aim for, to involve us, to explore.

I have been tempted many times by despair but even in the darkest times, as we have seen during the pandemic, there is hope and opportunity.

At the time of writing this blog, my family is facing a lot of personal changes and the very difficult challenges that a change in circumstance presents. And even as I hear the tears, anger, frustration, disappointments and we talk in those lonely moments, I can see that more and better change is ahead, and that life will be good again.

I know that because of the self-determination that is basic in us all, they will be wild and mad again; we will dance and laugh… we will laugh until we are sore!

Anne Pia