DH: How did you come to writing? Has your profession as a medical doctor influenced on your writing at all?
DG:I
have always had an affinity for books and writing – I demanded to be
taught to read at a very early age and wrote my first poem at seven.
Left to my own devices, I might have become a librarian, but life had
other plans for me. My family decided I would do medicine, and I fell in
with their ideas. The split I have felt between my calling as a writer,
my training as a scientist and my interest in psychology has provided a
tension in my life which I have attempted to resolve on the page in my
forthcoming nonfiction book Eloquent Body.
A
doctor is in a privileged position of having access to intimate details
of people’s lives. This has deepened my understanding of human
frailties and strengths. In the consulting room I have also been able to
observe the patterns we set up for ourselves, and how we often do not
act in our own best interests.
Medicine has enabled me to work part-time, and to keep the space open to write.
You are known mainly as
a fiction writer. How do you see the relationship between fiction and
your poetry, particularly with regards to your approach to the two
genres? I am thinking of how Lawrence Durrell said something to the
effect that novels are like lorries, but poetry is like an arrow.
I
like that! I experience poetry as an instant download, which I then
have to work out further on the page, whereas a novel is like finding
the end of a thread and following it on down. Both forms ultimately
contain the pleasure and the difficulty of trying to solve a problem
that lives simultaneously inside myself, out in the world, and on the
page; each offering I bring into being is a part-answer to the puzzle of
who I am and what the world is about.
What writers have influenced you – fiction as well as poetry?
So
many: Lewis Carroll, Virginia Woolf, Patrick White, Ted Hughes, Doris
Lessing, Margaret Atwood’s poetry, Joan Metelerkamp, Salman Rushdie,
Tsitsi Dangarembga, Sharon Olds, Tristan Tzara, Marion Milner, Ivan
Vladislavic, Mxolisi Nyezwa - to name a few who changed the way I
thought about writing. Who opened doors in my head and my heart. Who
gave me permission to experiment.
In your poetry collection Difficult Gifts, there are recurrent images of searching, of journey, of opening and discovery, as well as intimacy.
I
write out of disturbances that arrive in my body. Sometimes the
disturbance is unbearably beautiful, or it arrives out of enormous
difficulty. Writers who have affected or influenced me have written as
honestly as possible from an intimate space; they have helped me respect
my body as an antenna or radar, and offered a chink through which I
could view what is happening beneath consensus or veneer.
If
I take a step back and try to see what I have been doing on the page
when writing poetry over the years, primarily it has been a medium
through which I try to find out what I am feeling and thinking – a
discharge of tension which sometimes speaks to other people, and then
finds its way into print. I think that underneath many of my poems is a
conversation I constantly have with the creative process itself – The
Edge, Great Fish, The Proper Use Of Flowers, Making Fire, Difficult
Gifts – these and
others are about what they purport to be, but also about the urge and
search for connection with the creative force itself. I see desire, sex,
libido, love and creativity on the same continuum – the trajectory that
must look elsewhere for completion, the driving spirit behind life
itself.
Your
poem Miracle, from the collection, won the 2011 EU Sol Plaatje Poetry
Award. What is your feeling about literary awards in SA? Do we have
enough or too many? Should we have more genre-specific awards?
I
feel split about poetry awards. On the one hand it was wonderful to
have that acknowledgement, and I am immensely grateful to the European
Union for their vision of encouraging diversity of cultural expression
by supporting the least valued and possibly most ubiquitous art form:
poetry. On the other hand, it did feel uncomfortable to be awarded ‘best
poem’. Best collection of poetry is more understandable, and easier to
judge, I imagine.
Awards
do create a bit of a stir, and they hopefully encourage people to
support local writers. We have much more talent in South Africa than
people realise. My first drafts of Eloquent Body contained quite a
number of quotes and extracts of poems from writers abroad. When we
applied for permission, many publishers wanted prohibitive royalties. So
I again turned to local poets, and spent weeks reading, trying to find
suitable replacements that complemented the text. Although I do
regularly read local work, I was astonished by how much truly stunning
poetry had escaped my attention. And the local poets were only too
willing to let me quote their work in the spirit of collegiality.
What
are your thoughts about publishing in SA? A few years ago, when the
Kindle first came out, there was a feeling that e-readers would not take
off in SA. Now sales are rising...
If
e-publishing allows writers to flourish, that is great. Personally, I
still like the feel and smell of a real book, and to have tangible old
friends sitting on a shelf near me in my study. And as someone pointed
out, you cannot lend out a downloaded Kindle book. It is attached to the
gizmo. Another said, when all books are virtual, how will we decorate
our walls?
Publishing
in SA took off after 1994, but now in the recession, I have the
impression that it is slowing down again. Both impetuses are perhaps a
good thing – initially broadening what South Africans write about and
what kind of work was published, and now tightening up, making authors
work harder to improve what they are doing.
What do you feel are the main challenges facing writers in SA?
There
is much interesting writing coming out of SA; the question is how to
get noticed in the great overwhelming sea of mega-publishing. I have the
notion that most readers do not hone in on literature – or any other art form –
as a way of finding out what artists are reporting back on. Readers buy
newspapers regularly to see what journalists are saying about the
day-to-day state of the world; they need to understand that artists are
reporting back on the Zeitgeist –
the themes and spirit of our times. If readers took art in all its
forms as seriously as they take the newspapers, they would, to my mind,
be better informed. In addition, our writers and artists would attain
the recognition they deserve.
What about you busy writing at the moment?
I am putting the final touches to Eloquent Body,
and catching the odd poem when it falls. I have started two novels,
both of which intrigue me. One is a reworking of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in
the biological age, and the other is an exploration of love in all its
guises. In both, I am eager to find out what is going to happen next.
One of them will have to wait for a year or so in the bottom drawer...
(For more interviews with innovative and independent poets and writers, visit http://dyehardinterviews.blogspot.com)
